So I fell off the wagon pretty bad Saturday. I’m talking whip cream can bad and a trip to KFC in your pyjamas bad. However for the record, they were Peter Alexander pyjamas, so being out in public with them on at 6pm is totally acceptable. Well it’s acceptable as long as you stay in the car and act like you are confident in your decision to be driving around in broad daylight with your ET nightie and obligatory no bra accessory. In fact you look so dam good and comfortable, that you prolly won’t get out of it till 2pm tomorrow. 

Anyway as I was saying, it was like a carnival of binge eating. It all started with the shopping trip from hell. I had decided to go to the gym before I went shopping, not because of the New Year, new me bulls%^t but because I had checked our bank balance the night before. Don't you just love the feeling of opening your account and hoping to see if you have enough money in it to combat the onslaught of school supplies, uniforms and sign up fees for a whole new year of life draining children’s extra curricular activities or will you have to go and sell a kidney? It’s like the Kinder Surprise of life. 

As I looked at the transactions, I saw my gym membership flipping me off. Nothing makes you feel more terrible then seeing a stupid amount of money coming out of your account and knowing you did not get your money’s worth that month and let’s be honest, the month before that. 
It’s like a pain stabbing into my black heart, especially when I think of all the money I’m spending at the gym which could equate to me going to Thailand and coming back with a new stomach, boobs and maybe some cool robotic legs so I can run faster. 

As I stared at this stupid amount of money, I made a promise to myself that I would go to the gym before I went shopping. I mean, who doesn’t love shopping in sweaty gym clothes, with sweaty gym hair and prolly a camel toe for good measure. 

I got the kids up at what would be a normal time but because it’s holidays and my parenting skills are also on holidays, they went to bed late ( for the 30th night in a row) and were not loving life one bit. The 1 year old was though. She was on her morning mission to destroy the lounge room and eat everyone’s breakfast. Squealing with delight, as everyone had to hide to eat in peace. The mood was pretty sh%^ty, so I had to bring out the big guns. I had to do the only thing that makes my children actually pull their finger out and change their behaviour. You guessed it, I threatened no technology for the rest of their lives and it worked a treat. We eventually got to the gym and I felt as unfit as a dirty big sloth (which isn’t surprising when you don’t consistently go). We finished at the gym and I surprised the kids with the announcement that we were going school supply shopping and grocery shopping. 

The five year old was practically jumping out of her seat with excitement. You see, It’s her first year of primary school (prep) and she was keen as mustard to get her bag, shoes and other miscellaneous stuff. The ten year old cringed slightly, then asked where we were getting his shoes from. 
I don’t blame him really, the poor bastard had a bit of a rough trot with his school shoes last year. We previously got his school shoes from a sports store, as I thought they would be better, being more of a sporting shoe. Oh how wrong can one be. By halfway through the term, the top lip thing (technical term) on the shoe had peeled back causing him to stack it constantly, as it would bend and hit the pavement acting like a rubber stopper. 
I tried to glue that baby back up and even resorted to sticky taping but every single bloody day it would come undone. 
In term two I had the idea to cut that little asshole off. Yeh great idea d*%#head... All this did was begin the slow process of the whole front rubber part of his shoe peeling off. 
By the end of Term Three, his toes were on show.  I refused to buy him new shoes because this kid was growing like some type of wayward fairytale beanstalk, so no doubt he would need new ones for the coming year.
So I did what any amazing parent would do. I wrote him a note and made him wear his joggers for the rest of the year. This went down a treat with the rule abiding 10 year old, who was having anxiety over teachers constantly saying “where are you school shoes and why are up wearing these”. 
So yeh he was pretty serious about his shoes for 2019.

The 1 year old just replied to the whole matter with a shriek of death and then a toothy smile because she had great plans for the shopping trip. Plans that involved her making it hell for everyone else. 

We got to the shops and got a park, which wasn’t at all stressful since everyone else decided to go shopping on this day. This was made worse by the fact my husband had left his mountain bikes attached to the bike holder on the back of the car. Bike on the back means I can only park over a garden, so they dont hang out and get swiped. This means limited parks to chose from. This means stressed me!
Good lord! I prolly could have given the gym a miss with the amount of walking we then had to do, since I had to park a thousand kilometres away. 

The 1 year old wasted no time and began pinching my neck, which is her evil way of telling me to put her down. Like hell I was putting her down. Her being at ground level at the shops ends in chaos. Things being pulled out and her running full pelt in the opposite direction to where we want to go.

I knew shit was about to get real. I could feel it in me waters! 

The 5 year old found her school bag pretty much straight away and it was love at first Moana blue (her favourite colour) overly expensive bag sight. 
She insisted on wearing it on her back for the duration of the shopping trip. The 10 year old decided he would just keep his bag from last year, because it was in great shape ( unlike his shoes and I think he just moved up to Golden Child status). So off we went to get the ever so important shoes. 
The 10 year old was very happy with his choice of shoes and I’m pretty sure I saw him trying to rip the front off every one he picked up for quality testing purposes. The 5  year old once again was living out her dreams, as she had her first pair of real school shoes. The 1 year old, who I had no choice but to put down, was now happily eating the insole from someones shoe..... but at least she wasn’t escaping. 


I was feeling pretty triumphant at this stage and was mentally giving myself a high five. The 1 year old must have sensed this with her mutant powers and decided that she would not return to the trolley. Literally as I was wrestling her into the trolley like a crocodile in a death roll, the 5 year old insisted in that annoying chipmunk voice that she be put into the trolley because her legs were to tired. So I’ve got a kid screaming to get out of the trolley and a kid whinging to get in... My stress levels were rising. 

Once the 5 year old got into the trolley, I felt like I was in some rugby union scrum trying to push the opposition. The stupid trolley did not want to go anywhere I wanted it to go and the 1 year old was not helping by trying to crawl up my arms and neck to get out of the seat. For good measure,  the 10 year old started abusing the 5 year old for making it too hard for me ( bless his cotton socks) but then it turned into a yelling match with the 5 year old trying to use her body weight to ram the trolley towards the 10 year old. The 1 year old was still screaming. 

I declared the shopping trip over and that we had no choice but to go home. All I could do was give the 1 year old a sleep and go back again.

The 1 year old fell asleep as soon as she was in her car seat but the 5 year old and 10 year old were now arguing over whether laces or Velcro were better. My head was pounding. 

We got home and I carried the 1 year old to her cot and just as I carefully laid her little baby Satan body down, she opened her eyes and smiled. Apparently the car trip home was her sleep (10min if that) and she would no longer require a nap. We were all going to die! 

I had no choice but to get off my ass and get the groceries because the husband was complaining about there being nothing to eat ( what the stick of butter is not good enough for you???) and I would rather face the shops with devil baby then listen to a lecture about me always doing the grocery shopping the day before he is due to go back to work ( which may be true).

The 10 year old decided he was not coming to the shops and I didn’t blame him and the 5 year old was loudly begging to come because she would never miss an opportunity to hopefully sneak a treat into the trolley. The 1 year old said something that sounded awfully like “goo, goo, gah gah your soul is mine woman!”. 


We got to the shops and once again the bikes on the back made my parking choices limited and I cursed my husband under my breath. Once inside the grocery store the 1 year old started screaming cause she wanted the one banana that was in the free fruit basket. The same banana that the 5 year old also wanted but would not share... help me Baby Jesus. So I had to go and buy a single banana. I did briefly think of just grabbing one but knowing my luck, my name would be plastered all over the front of the local newspaper with “frazzled lady in her active wear caught stealing a 89c banana". 

I shouldn’t have wasted my money or my time because the second I gave it to the 1 year old, she no joke looked at it and pegged it on the floor.....She then proceeded to scream because she now wanted the grapes she could see. Lord give me strength. 

So I did what any stressed out mum who hasn’t had a sugar hit in quite some time would do. I put some caramel brownies in the trolley, ONLY because they were half price on sale. I couldn't go past this bargain. Then I threw in some chocolate brownies because they too were on sale. Then a block of Cadbury chocolate made its way into the trolley. You can see where this is heading. It ended with me grabbing two bottles of whipped cream BECAUSE they were low carb and low sugar and I could have a dollop on my iced coffee (totally not too smother the brownies in).

I made sure I evened out my purchases with lots of veggies and more fruit then usual because I’m a responsible adult like that.

When I finally got home. I was hangry (angry and hungry). The husband had gone out, so I had no one to judge me for the choices I was about to make.

I put the baby to bed because she was tired as hell and then put the groceries away. I decided to treat myself to one tiny square of brownie with one squirt of whipped cream..... nek minute I’m spraying the whipped cream straight into my mouth and also shovelling in brownies like there was no tomorrow. This was the yummiest thing ever. I then moved onto chocolate with whipped cream.

The 5 year old was all up for this whipped cream party and demanded I spray it into her mouth too. So here we were sitting on the couch, just bonding over our sugar fix.

After I had managed to eat the whole brownie I started to feel a bit sick in my guts. The sugar karma Gods were angry. I decided I needed to sleep it off and asked the 5 year old to join me. It was a glorious 2 hour nanna nap/sugar coma.
When I did awake to the sound of the 1 year old screaming to be freed from her prison, I realised it was getting way too late to organise dinner and by late I meant I just couldn’t give a fark. So I was like, meh I already cheated, mose well get some KFC. 

The KFC was not glorious, it was actually kinda gross but those chips were on point! 👌🏽❤️❤️❤️❤️

I wasn’t feeling too guilty until the 10 year old piped up “ Mum,  I thought you were being healthy again, why are you eating unhealthy food?”... I replied with “ ummm tomorrow I’ll start!” but wanted to say "Who made you the Bloody Junk Food Police, you little turd". 

However this is the best part! Guess what, I did????????
I didn’t let it turn into a binge week or more so binge year. It was a one day event and I actually kept it that way and went back to eating my keto and sugar free lifestyle straight away.

I didn’t feel too bad about it. It gave me the realisation that it wasn’t even that good ( I lie, the brownies were to die for) However I had the mentality of new day, new week. New stresses and continuing stresses ( hello children) but I totally got this! This isn't how my brain usually works. It takes at least a week of binging for me to feel content.

My goal this week is to create a low carb, low sugar treat to combat my cravings! Being on this lifestyle shouldn’t be about missing out! 


Happy Monday and enjoy your week ❤️

So I decided that I wanted to update the photos on my Facebook page. To me, it just seemed wrong that I had my profile picture showcasing how much weight I had lost, when it was over four years ago. I wish my belly looked like that currently, so it seemed a little deceiving promoting myself as this. 

I had this idea that I should do a photo collage of my weight loss journey with real  pics of me on my journey over the last year ( not me in my undies  weight loss pics) Easy one would think? But apparently I’m a vain piece of work..
I couldn’t find any fat photos of me on my phone? Why would that be? There should be thousands? Oh that’s right.... Now I remember.... That would be because I consider myself the "fat photo natzi" and eliminate any three chinned, unflattering muffin top photos instantly.
Instead, all I could find were a shit load of head tilted selfies. You know the ones which come about from trying to work an angle to disguise the family of chins living on your face. Then there were the children as props photos. You know the ones where you strategically place a child in front of your belly. “But mum, I want to stand next to the pony for the photo! NO GOD DAMMIT!!!! GET IN FRONT OF MY BELLY!” 

It makes me sad to think that I am so judgemental and harsh on myself. Not to mention being so egotistical that I would be focusing NOT on the moment of WHY I was taking the photo but putting all the emphasis on how I looked in the photo. I mean it’s not like anyone but me would even see these bloody photos on my phone, yet here I was acting like I was the editor of Vogue and that these photos were not making the cut for the latest edition.

The reality ends up being this: 

Sorry 10 Year old, there are no photos of us together at your birthday dinner because I decided they must be deleted because I look like I was hiding your birthday cake in my third chin. It’s ok buddy, there are lots of photos of you and everyone else though... 

Sorry 5 year old there isn’t any photos of us playing on the beach and how we built that sandcastle for 3 hours because I didn’t like how I looked like the whale in Free Willy 2. You looked cute though! As a matter of fact, I don’t even look like I was on this holiday. According to all the family photos of us there, I don’t exist. 

Sorry 1 year old, your photos of us contain a lot of me looking like I have something wrong with my neck. It’s ok though, you see I had to strain it at all angles to make it look less chin-tactic. You will thank me for this in the future. I’m totally sure of it.

I’m absolutely disgusted in myself, reading this back but it is the truth. We are so harsh on ourselves and put so much emphasis into looking a certain way,  that it takes away from what is really important in that moment.
Photos are to capture a moment in time and all I was worried about was myself. 

Don’t get me wrong, there are some absolute gems of me on my phone that the five year old had taken. I mean, who can say no, when a kid tells you to say “cheese”. There are some hilarious and absolutely horrific photos of myself, but god they make me laugh. Due to her midget height, the angles are terrible ( totally the angles not the subject) and the fact I could be taking a shit when she wants me to pose, means they are random as fark. Yet for some reason those blurry messes are still on my phone over some truely beautiful moments I have deleted.
 
It’s funny how hard we are on ourselves and how we focus on the negatives straight away. My husband will take a photo of me and say “I love this pic of you” and I will point out ten things I hate about it.  
My husband has taken lots of photos of me when I  didn't know they were being taken. This happens when one takes them hiding outside the house, laying in the bushes, outside the bathroom window at night... (I kid.... we have no bathroom window). But his photos aren’t staged and no one is ever posing for the camera, so it’s just a moment of happiness in time captured and that’s what’s important.

I hear people say, you need to live in the moment. Stop taking photos on your phone but the moment can be fleeting and the photos can last forever. 

My 5 year old will spend literally hours going through photos from over the years on my phone and just loves it. Not once has she ever said to me “ Guuuurl, you need to lose weight, you bringing this photo down dawg” ( in my head she talks like this because my daughter is a sassy, street talking west side gang member... I’m totally sure of it).

I would love to say, the more weight I lose the more I love myself but that would be a lie. I constantly look back at photos and think, wow look how fit I was there and then remember that I thought that version of me was still a big mumma. It’s stupid really.


However there is hope at the end of the tunnel. Me acknowledging this, is me calling myself out on my bullsh#*t. Me being sick of my bullsh#%t. 


I want to be the best version of me and I see myself as a work in progress. I have goals and they are no longer about the number on the scales ( mainly because our scales don’t work and I’m too cheap to buy some more).
​
I’m no longer going to delete the crappy photos of myself! I’m no longer going to give the 10 year old arm cramps by making him take the photo again for the six millionth time because I look too fat in that one. I’m no longer going to tilt my head in photos so I look like my ear is glued to my shoulder. I’m no longer going to strategically place my kids in front of me in photos to hide my mid section.


I will however continue eating sugar free and keto. I will continue exercising and playing sport. I will appreciate the journey and not just be obsessed on the destination. I will be easier on myself, well I will try.


It’s not going to be easy but I hope it will be worth it.


Big love and here are some links to some meals we have had this week 
https://www.dietdoctor.com/recipes/keto-caesar-salad (no anchovies)
https://www.dietdoctor.com/recipes/keto-chicken-cordon-bleu
https://www.dietdoctor.com/recipes/keto-avocado-pie ( left out chilli for kids) 

​

For those of you who don’t like or follow my Facebook page, well you should. I mean it would be rude not too really... You could even click on the button above if you wanted too!

So I’m writing tonight not because I want you to LIKE my Facebook page but because I have had to change my bloody Facebook page name.
Why? So glad you asked?
It’s a problem that I’m sure every single one of you has had to experience at one time or another. You know, casually having your face book page mistaken for a hook up site for African men looking for a sugar mumma?? 
You haven’t?? That’s awkward then....

You see my Facebook page was called Sugar Free The Big Mum. Which to most seems pretty straight forward but apparently it can also be read as “Sugar Mumma”. Which is a person who willingly takes financial care of a young gentleman and gets god knows what in return. However judging by some of their personal messages to me, I’m guessing probably an STD. 

In my absence from Facebook for over a year I didn’t expect any people to really go to my Facebook page once they could see nothing was being posted and the website not being updated. But instead of losing followers I gained like a thousand, actually more then a thousand, I think it came close to two thousand. My loyal Nigerian princes didn’t care if I wasn’t posting sugar free recipes and telling stories about my kids being a-holes, nope they were messaging me at all hours of the day and night checking in to see if I had a Sugar Mumma for them. I just ignored their posts because I assumed that saying nothing at all was the best approach but holy shit they are persistent little bastards.

It got to the point where it truely looked to my husband that I was having an affair. Yep, with not one but at least 900 Nigerian males.
“ Who is sending you a message at 1am”
“Oh that’s just Samuel Tigerthorn the third babe, he is just writing to say Hi and that he needs me to send him a Sugar Mumma stat and something about a big eggplant”. 
"A what?"
"A eggplant oh and a peach, all good babe, go back to sleep".

To be honest, I just turned off the notifications and when I occasionally checked there was always more there. I was barely giving a flying duck about real stuff going on in my life, so this was just something that barely stayed on my radar. With the constant bombardment of messages, I would read one here and there and I actually felt sorry for some of them.. well the ones who weren’t sending me their modelling portfolios of there nether regions.

I just let it go. What’s the worst that could happen?

Fast forward nearly two years later and me waking up one morning and going, you know what, I want to start writing again. Only to see my site is now linked to porn looking sites and sugar mumma everything. Those dirty little bastards had got me good!!! At the end of the day it doesn't really matter who is on my page but when it is getting promoted next to "Hot and Naked Sugar Mummas" (no joke). It was creeping me out.

So tonight I’m going on a massive cull which will prolly bring my audience down to just my mum ( hi mum) but I can live with this because writing gives me an escape. I just don't want to escape into the world of pornstars and naked mums...

So here is my final farewell to my Nigerian Princes 

An ode to all my Nigerian Princes


Sadly our time together must come to an end.


I will miss the way you message me at all hours of the night ( prolly because of our time zone difference) and the photos you send that are meant to convince a grown woman to send you all her money. 


I will miss the way you like all of my recipes and then reply with “ hook me up with sugar” even though the recipe contains no sugar. 


I will miss the way it can sometimes take me an hour to decipher what your message means because it’s all random emojis that obviously mean you love eggplant 🍆 and peaches 🍑 


I will miss the way you continue to like my photos that are of food and inspirational quotes and still manage to think the page you are visiting is about rich women who want to take care of men like yourself.  I feel you are not very good at connecting the dots


I will miss the way you make my page now be related to ‘big rich b%^ches’ and my now favourite ‘big lesbian sugar mummas’.  My mind is literally blown with how??? 


I am sorry but the time has come to delete you from my page, let you free into the world where you may find a real sugar mumma and not a sugar free family page... unless you were wanting me to adopt you as our 4th child but I don’t think the husband would agree to that and I think you would eat to much, especially with your love of eggplant 🍆 


I want you to know it’s not you, it’s me.
It’s always been me. I can’t give you what you want. I must let you go. 


Until we meet again my sweet sweet princes. It is goodbye.


Much love
Me xxx 

Ok let’s do real talk here.

How bloody hard is it to try and eat healthy and stick to it with a baby/turdler (cross between a turd and a toddler). I mean even without a baby to blame, its still hard. To be honest, I can barely get my shit together and make good decisions when I’m in a fully slept functioning state. I feel like i'm a zombie hunting down brains, but with less hot guys with shoulder length hair... You don’t care who’s brains it is, you just want what you want and this has been my relationship with food for nearly a year. I see it and I need it. I mean why spend time creating a delicious healthy nutrious meal when I can eat a family block of chocolate?? Great role model really.

The funny thing is, I act like it was all ok but I was absolutely hating myself over it, to the point that it was depressing. I would go to bed every single bloody night saying to myself “ tomorrow I’m going to be healthy and I legit would try my best, until something stressed me out ( we all know it’s kids) and I would have this attitude of ‘stuff it, I’ll start tomorrow’ I always seemed to be "Hangry" (hungry and angry for those playing at home). I was fighting these demons in my head constantly. During this pregnancy, I had invested a lot of money in maternity clothes. Therefore it would be silly not to keep wearing them (the lies you tell yourself). So,  I kept wearing them and let me tell you, a dress made to flatter a bump does nothing to flatter a muffin top. I basically lived in my stretchy pants and big tops. The amount of times the husband would come into the room and see my whole wardrobe scrunched up on the ground, from me trying to find something I felt comfortable in, was a hell of a lot. It got to the point where I didn’t even bother hanging them back up, just chucked them in the ironing basket, so I could ravage through them again in a weeks time, hoping they would look better on me.

I decided to get back into exercising again because what would be more inspiring then getting out into the beautiful outdoors and walking the baby. What a great idea! What a shit idea thought the baby. Let me sing you the song of my people, while I scream so loud the birds fly off in panic. The only way I could get her to stop screaming was to breast feed her, which in the comfort of your own home or on a chair is fine but out for a jog is not so fine. I mean you are walking on a path, the person in the opposite direction is walking on the path: there is a lot of eye contact and looking as you slowly get closer and closer together. Because you can’t cover your boob in the wind with a blanket and good luck to you pushing the pram with one hand and cradling the baby in the other, it just means a whole lot of awkwardness from the person coming towards you. If it was a female, it was all nods of "you go girl" but if it was a male it was "lord Jesus, my eyes are burning!!" I don’t really have small breasts so to those poor guys coming towards me, they had no option but to try and keep their eyes to the ground, but lets face it, it was like a lighthouse beacon! Look away before you crash into the rocks!!!!!
The screaming baby and public nudity really turned me off exercising outdoors. Not to mention the horror of the 10 year old at the thought of his mum walking next to him showing any skin. He stopped coming for walks pretty quick and when he did walk, he was sprinting off ahead so he didn't have to be associated with the shit show that was coming up the path behind him.
So I was no longer good at or able to really exercise with the baby. I can't even just blame the baby because the 5 year old was also an absolute mongrel in my exercise scheme because after walking for say 5 steps ( no exaggeration) her legs hurt. This meant she had to sit on the front of the pram, which was like pushing a trolley with the crap wheels.. you know the ones where it just wants to veer left. So yeh no support from any of the kids and the husband was just like “ eat healthy, that’s all you need to do!” I won’t tell you what I told him to eat in reply to this comment. 

Eating healthy is hard! But when you’ve been a skinny greyhound all your life, you don’t get the struggle. ( no offence to all the skinny greyhounds, keep chasing those rabbits).

So I started getting all my sugar free books out again and looking at recipes. However cooking with a clingy baby was hard and not to mention the time factor of where do I fit in this cooking now that we only have one free afternoon a week free. Why is this? Its because some d#$khead signed up their kids to a stupid amount of extra curricular activities, knowing they would have to drag around a baby. Yep that d#$khead is me!

It became obvious that I couldn’t give the time I used to give to my cooking but I could start making little changes. Cutting back the simple sugars like tomato sauce and my beloved fruitloops. Nothing says mum of the year, then being too lazy to make dinner but giving your kids cereal at night! 5 year old loved me for it but I think I saw the 10 year old googling child protection services.

Some days I felt like I was making some good changes and I must have been doing okay because the 5 year old lost her shit when she saw her strawberry milk tin had been thrown out... thank God for that bottle of Nutella hiding in the back of the pantry that got her through a very tough time. 

At the end of the day, I had to think I was doing ok because I was TRYING my best and that’s all we can do. I  still wasn’t happy with my body and having the 5 year old constantly grab my belly fat to get my attention wasn’t helping my esteem issues either.

I have always had the mentality that when I want something I go hard and will get it. Hard work and sacrifice don’t scare me and I love a challenge but my mentality had changed to “ when is it bed time??” Living on 3/4 hours sleep was killing me but not being happy with myself was hurting me even more. So I decided to join a gym and enter their overhaul challenge! I got second place (thank you, thank you) but the diet was bloody hard and I was constantly hungry, to the point where I was dreaming about food and stalking food Instagram pages constantly. I was doing a restricted calorie diet with protein and veggie choices. It wasn’t anything like my sugar free living and I didnt want to continue obsessing over food but I constantly was. However the exercise was on point with the crèche dealing with my child and me no longer being a flasher.

I ended up having lunch with a friend who lost about 20kg in about 4 months and we talked about what she was doing because nothing motivates a person more then seeing someone smashing big goals. She was doing Keto which sounded very similar to what I was doing when I was a big advocate for sugar free. The more we talked, the more it dawned of me that if it’s low carb then it IS sugar free BUT sugar free does not always mean low carb if that makes sense. So some of my sugar substitutes wouldn’t sit in this lifestyle.

They seemed to both promote eating fats, which I think was where my restricted calorie diet was failing as I wasn’t feeling  satiated and satisfied. A whole life of failing diets has taught me that when you are full, you are less likely to fall off the wagon and binge on junk food and carbs. I  decided to give it a go and I can say that personally I am a lot more satisfied and not hungry between meals in the least. I do believe it’s a life style that is sustainable but its still very new for me.
I decided that I wanted to move a little more in this new direction but the focus of my blog will not and has not changed. Because unless made specifically for my kids,  everything I eat and post will be low in carbs AND sugar free. 

I’ve been doing a bit of research into ketones and ketosis since my friend went into how she pees on a stick daily and to be honest,  that lost me for awhile because the last time I peed on a stick, I had to tell the kids we were no longer going on a holiday to America and that they would now have to share a room for the rest of their lives. So no peeing on sticks for me! I am however researching and trialling the whole ketones thing and will share with you my results if it turns out to be a sustainable thing.
However in the mean time, let me leave you with this delicious recipe! 
https://www.sugarfreemom.com/recipes/2-minute-sugar-free-cheesecake-keto-low-carb/

Big love 
​xx

Guess who’s back?
Back again?
Yes I’m back?
Tell a friend! 

Ok so if you didn't sing that like Eminem, then I may have just started my first blog entry in over a year and a half on a pretty awkward note. 


Seriously though, It’s been a long time my friends! But it’s good to be back writing! 


If you are new to this site and only just joined the party, I may have pulled a bit of a Gone Girl and just fell off the planet but with less husband being set up for murder and shit I guess. 


So why did I stop writing? Did I finally answer the messages of one of my Nigerian friends looking for a sugar free mumma? Who for the record, constantly hit up my phone in my year and a half absence. Like to the point where my husband was wondering if there was something in it. Just goes to show they really weren’t reading my blog just obsessing over the word "sugar" and "mumma" 
But alas no I didn’t run off to become queen of the many men who can’t afford to look after themselves, instead I did something else a little crazy. I had another kid!

Say whaaaaaaat?


Yep another human has entered this world and this human has actually just turned one! And lets be honest, If i didn't birth her myself,  I may have thought she was sent from the pits of hell because she is an exact replica of me. Free spirited, hungry constantly, loud, demanding, in your face, loves to scream when she doesn’t get her way and adorable AF. Which now I think of it, would be my Tinder Bio.. (and no husband, I don't have a tinder bio, but man would i be a catch with that info!)
Don't get me wrong, man I love this little creature and she has completed our family. The family that we thought was completed with two kids.... buuuuut we were wrong apparently! SURPRISE!


So why did I stop writing? I mean people get pregnant every day and do blogs and run countries and according to a weird video I watched on you tube, can even have nude yoga channels ( don’t ever google, yoga for big girls).


I stopped writing for a couple of reasons. One being I had the energy of a 80 year of paraplegic sloth. I couldn’t do anything without wanting to vomit and crawl into a ball and die. So the time I did have, I guilted myself into being mum of the year to the now 10 year old and 5 year old! Because I owed them a lot.. like literally a lot because before we found out we were expecting baby number three, we had actually saved money to do a big family holiday. Im talking a real big one, as in take the kids to the States. So imagine saying to your kids “hey you know that trip to Disneyland we had planned?? Yeh your not going now because your going to get a new brother or sister”.  Way to create a loving bond with a future sibling really. So I felt a bit guilty about that and decided to try and throw myself into being like a super mum, but with less glamour and saving the planet and more vomiting into my handbag (this legit happened on numerous occasions).


I also stopped living sugar free because cooking was hell and the smell of anything baking would make me hurl. So I went back to convenience over the lifestyle I had lived and promoted for two years. I’m going to be honest, I enjoyed it.... maybe a little too much because after Baby number 3 popped out, I still looked like I was carrying twins and that I had invested in 5 extra chins. This sentiment was also shared by the five year old, who 4 months after her sister was born asked me when the other babies were coming out of my big belly. Nice... real nice!


The 5 year old was a massive supporter of this new lifestyle. Let’s not forget she was my main problem child when it came to trying to be sugar free. Now that there was no one stopping her, she was living her best life and was the Charlie Sheen version of herself, high on sugar and acting like a wild animal.


The 10 year old didn’t change his ways. He doesn’t like sugar treats anyway, which meant more for me and the 5 year old. 


Fast forward to now and I’ve spent the last 5 months trying to get myself and my family back on track. Failing miserably at times, causing the five year old to turn from Charlie Sheen to now a Kanye West level of attitude. There is nothing more enjoyable, then dealing with attitude and sass from someone who just learnt to write her own name but still thinks she knows better then someone who has been on the earth 7 times her life span.

So as usual, I turned to busting my ring and pushing myself back into it. I wanted to be able to fit into clothes that I didn't buy when I was pregnant, that for the record looked really cute with a baby bump but hideous without.  I have  managed to lose close to 15kg in the last three months from getting back into the low sugar domain but I went a bit hardcore and trialled a bit of dirty keto! The reason I say dirty keto is not because I eat in the nude, but because I was legit banned from a keto Facebook page because I was not a fully fledged put your hand on your heart keto follower. Apparently you go all in, or you burn in the depths of hell. Apparently my style is called “dirty keto” because it is flexible, still follows the same principles but isn’t as strict.  I found Keto was pretty much sugar free but with some adaptions and it seems to be working for me. However I will fill you in on my journey so far in future entries. I have new recipes and stories and a little something, something that I might be getting behind if it turns out to be more then empty promises and my bank balance getting depleted. 

I’m leaving you with a link to a yummy dinner recipe!
https://www.dietdoctor.com/recipes/keto-pesto-chicken-casserole


Enjoy and it’s good to be back! 

New Post up at my new webiste

http://www.sugarfreeadventure.com/home/the-witching-hour

Enjoy xxx
​

Hello beautiful people!!

New Post up on my new website

​Enjoy
​xx


http://www.sugarfreeadventure.com/home/christmas-breakout

Oh hey there!!

We now have the new website up and running. Lets be honest, it still has a lot of work but its a start!!

JUMP OVER AND HAVE A LOOK 

http://www.sugarfreeadventure.comwww.sugarfreeadventure.com

AND LIKE MY FACEBOOK PAGE, SO YOU ALWAYS KNOW WHEN IVE UPDATED 

https://www.facebook.com/sugarfreeadventure/

No Nigerian Princes allowed (read the below post for my info)

​Enjoy xx
​

Ok lets be honest, we all love a bit of attention from the opposite sex... some more then others (you know who you are) but who doesn't like to have their confidence boosted by a compliment here or there. 

Well now raise your hand if you like receiving up to 100 messages a day from blokes on the other side of the world thinking that you are either :

A) The madam of some "sugar mumma" website who finds women for those needing someone to pay for all their sh*t

B) An actual "Sugar Mumma" yourself, obviously holding auditions to find the perfect toy boy. To find this man, you create a website, that even though it is about healthy eating and stories of your family, this translates to "Yes, I am open, to spending my pay on some dark prince on the other side of the world

C) A dyslexic blogger who instead of swiping right looking for quick hook ups, keeps accidentally typing crap about Rice Malt Sugar and Satanic Children. But is totally open for receiving messages that would make a tradie, in a jackie howe singlet, on a night out on the piss with his mates blush.

This has been my life for the last couple of months. Ive tried so so many things to stop the constant messages. They would never stop but they were becoming less frequent. However it all came to a head in the first week of the school holidays when my 8 year old son, who was playing maths games on my phone (ok, that was totally made up, he was actually taking selfies as a dog on my snapchat) yells out to me:

"Mum you got a message come up on your phone, it says " I want you sex, i be good for you, thank you sugar mumma".

He then innocently looks at me and says "I think its from Uncle Dan, but I'm not sure cause he looks a bit black.

Ok, I'm close to my brother buuuuut not that close.

I literally would have broken the world record for long jump, as I was able to leap a good 2metres from the couch to the kitchen table and pluck the phone from his hands with all the grace of a drunk giraffe. In doing so I smashed the phone into the 8 year olds face, which then led him to burst into tears... but wait for it, not from the pain of a phone being smashed into your temple but because he didn't get to save his snap chat dog selfie and it was apparently a dalmatian one and he has never got to be a dalmatian one before.

I was so pi$$ed off that my 8 year old son, who luckily still thinks that sex is kissing and that babies come out of your belly or rumour has it in the year 4 playground, that they may come out of your bum .......had to be subject to the crap from having the word "MUM" in the same sentence as "SUGAR" for my blog.

So I have spent a good month and a half trying everything I could to stop the constant stream of men looking for a free ride from the other side of the world.
It was blatantly obvious that the only thing I could do was change my website name but apparently that is virtual suicide in the blogging world, once you have a following of people reading your site.

It was either start again from scratch and hope people followed or run the risk of my son telling people that Uncle Dan was maybe his father.... yeh I think I will go with the first one.

(No doubt my brother is reading this vomitting in his mouth a little and swearing he will never go out in sunlight again, so his skin is as white as humanly possible).

My new site name which has not gone live yet, will be 

SUGARFREEADVENTURE
www.sugarfreeadventure.com

No doubt I will now be getting messages from nigerian men thinking I am running some kind of adult adventure playground where women throw money at them because  thats what women love to do.

I swear to Rice Malt Syrup that if I get one message saying " I want to adventure you in the sugar", then I'm going to jump on a plane, and fly kick a muther fructose in the face.

So prepare for bulk posts, as I try and get this new site running. 

Hopefully www.sugarfreeadventure.com will be up and running in the next 24 hours

Much love (but not that much love, especially not to Uncle Dan)

Jess 

​xx

I’m sure if you asked the now 3 year old what she wanted for her birthday, the answer would be SUGAR and lots of it. We are nearing 2 years of being sugar free and the 3 year old is still "I do what I want, you don't own me!"


This was the first year she has been excited about her upcoming birthday becasue she is old enough to understand what presents are.  Every day for the last month and a half, she would declare that it was her birthday “tomorrow”. This made the 8 year old see red because no it wasn’t her birthday tomorrow and how dare such blasphemy come out of her mouth. 

Because she was so excited about it being her birthday, we kept asking her what presents she would like this year and her response was “ALL THE PRESENTS”.

Honestly, I like her style, why be specific when you want everything.


Her requests for her birthday were quite simple.

1 - Get ALL the presents
2 - Have chocolate cake for breakfast
3 - Have chocolate cake for lunch
4 - Have lemonade for tea


As you can see she is the epitome of a fructose free lifestyle. Poster girl for all the 3 year olds out there who fight the system.


DAM THE MAN, EAT THE SUGAR.


I decided that the only request that was going to ever happen was chocolate cake but obviously using dextrose instead of sugar. 

This recipe to be exact

3 YEAR OLD APPROVED CHOC CAKE


150g softened unsalted butter
1 cup dextrose
2 eggs, lightly beaten
1 teaspoon vanilla essence
½ cup frozen raspberries (optional)
1 ¼ cups self-raising flour, sifted
½ cup cocoa powder, sifted
1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
1 cup (250ml) milk


    1    Preheat oven to 180 (160C fan forced), grease and double line cake tin (that’s 2 layers of baking paper)
    2    Defrost raspberries and using a fork mash into a pulp
    3    Beat butter and dextrose with electric beaters until the mixture is light and creamy
    4    Add eggs one at a time beating slowly after each addition to combine
    5    Add vanilla essence and raspberry pulp and beat until combined
    6    To the butter mixture fold in half of the sifted flour combined with the bicarbonate of soda and cocoa powder with half the milk then repeat with the second half of the flour mix and milk.
    7    Stir until the mixture is just combined (don’t over mix!)
    8    Pour into the prepared tin and smooth top
    9    Bake for 45 minutes and test with a skewer.
    10    If the skewer comes out clean, remove from the oven and allow to cool in the tin for 10 minutes then turn our onto wire rack to completely cool


This is our go to chocolate cake recipe and we used to make it every couple of day. It was a lunchbox staple. Ok, lets be honest as to why I dont make it anymore. The truth was, that this big mum could and did devour a whole bloody chocolate cake to herself not once but maybe three times (but hey who is counting)


After finally getting the two year old to be a bit more specific with her presents, she declared that she would like a wishing well for her birthday (thanks Peppa Pig for that stupid idea). “ALL the presents” turned into 8 presents and we were ready to celebrate the birthday of our little demon. Finally she could say it was her birthday tomorrow without the 8 year old being all up in her grill for not getting her dates correct.


The best part of the 3 year olds birthday was watching her opening up her presents. The 3 year old opening her presents is best described as a mixture of a hyena ripping into a zebra carcas before the lions come back, mixed with someone really really drunk trying to get into their kebab on a night out on the pi$$. It was quite scary actually but hilarious to watch.


After opening her presents we asked her what she would like for her special birthday breakfast with the usual options being listed, so obviously cake was not one of them.

Yep, true to form she demanded chocolate cake and true to the ultimate best mum I am, I had one already premade in the fridge. She was in birthday heaven. Her face was one of pure bliss and chocolate crumbs smeared up to her eyebrows. Eating does not define what she did to that slice of cake, inhaling is a better description.


After playing with ALL the presents at pretty much the same time because apparently you can have a tea party, whilst playing basketball and nursing your baby doll and building blocks at the same time, we decided to take her to her first movie experience.


Im pretty sure if you asked her to tell you what her favourite part of the Trolls movie was, she would answer the popcorn. She actually devoured a whole box to herself, which for the record she was meant to be sharing with me but I backed off once she snarled at me in the darkness. There was a lot of dancing in the isles and then serious eating. We asked her if she would like to go to the movies again on the holidays, to which she replied “I love popcorn”. 


When we got home I thought the popcorn would have done her over until dinner time but no she was wanting more birthday cake. 


Now Im the type of person that absolutely loves the sh*t out of birthdays. I have been known to have birthday weeks for myself and once I even had a birthday month. So to me birthdays have to be special and what says special, like chocolate cake, not only for breakfast but for lunch. Little did I know that she would be demanding breakfast and lunch cake for the next week and I would have to battle her to the death to get her to eat her bloody sandwiches, but at the time I thought pfft you are only 3 once, so why not.


We went to her favourite pub for dinner, you know the one with the keno and $3 pints of rum. Yeh, there is that kids playground but we all know the 3 year old doesnt go for that.


She had her traditional nuggets and chips and when I ordered, the lady asked if we wanted a side of tomato sauce. I told her no. She then told me that it was free. Again I said no and she asked why my kids don’t eat tomato sauce. I stupidly said they don’t because of the sugar. Well didn’t I get the eye roll to absolutely take the title of eye roll of the year. My mind was dropping big “F bombs” but I just smiled and said “yeh, its crazy trying to reduce your kids sugar intake hey”.


We finished the night with a family ice-cream cake and this one was full of all things sugar. This cake was for everyone else not for us. The 8 year old didnt want any and the 3 year old took out a malteser but didn’t eat it. I’m not going to lie, I did have a taste but it was so bloody sweet, it cured any sweet cravings I had after one spoonful.


So there you go, I no longer get to type about my demon 2 year old. Its now my turd of a three year old.


Happy Monday  

Some people are just plain d*cks…There I said it.

What a lovely, romantic way to start a blog entry. It really makes you feel all warm and fuzzy inside.


Today I had the honour of wasting a good 30 minutes of my time fighting on the internet with some random who just happened to push the right button of a mum who didn't sleep much last night. I haven’t had a good fructose free argument in quite some time, so it was just the thing I needed to really make my Sunday something special.


It all started when I offered to help a reader of my blog with her families meal planning. She had written to me saying that she just can’t get her head around the whole thing and could I possibly be able to create a little somethin somethin with her families diet requirements (one of her kids had allergies). I had no problem doing this at all. 


Things were good for the first 3 weeks until her husband started sending me messages (and no this story doesn’t go in that direction, get your mind out of the gutter). 


At first he used lots of smiling face emojis and was thankful that his wife was making a change, as he was really worried that she was endangering her health as she was (his word) “waddling” when she walked. Random image now in my head,  but thank you for that piece of information about your wife.


Then the smile emojis started turning into angry/frustrated face emojis because his wife was being a cow to him (his words) whilst detoxing and he thinks that I should have slowly weened her off sugar instead of going the full hog.


I told him, this is something he needs to talk to his wife about and my meal plan is just that, a plan to follow. I told him  with all plans, changes can and will be made to accomodate the needs of the person putting them into action.


At the end of the first month she had lost 3.6kg and she said she was feeling AMAZING and everyone was commenting on her weight loss. However, her husband was absolutely hating the meals and was totally against it. She then said he was making things really hard because he was just eating whatever he wanted and buying the family meals even when she had already cooked.


Unfortunately I am not Jerry Springer nor am I Dr Phil and there was no way in hell I was getting involved in that sh*t. I just told her to do what is best for her and the family and I will send out 12 weeks of meal plans and then she is on her own.


Another 4 weeks passed and we were just shy of the 2 and a half month mark when I got another message from her husband, this time with the poo emoji (sh*t was getting really literally). I was also very concerned that a male adult was going so hard on the emojis but hey you go guuuurl!


This time the message was basically that I was brainwashing his wife and that he had done some research and the whole fructose free thing was absolute rubbish and the body needs all the things she was going without. That she had lost nearly 10kg and that much weight in a short amount of time was unhealthy and not sustainable and I needed to stop sending through any more information, as they both did not care for it.


I just wrote back that once again this is something to be discussed with his wife, I’m just sending her a meal plan that she requested. 


Then last night I saw on my website page all these messages saying things like 
“you are fat”
“obviously giving up sugar has the side affect of ugliness”
“gross look at your stretch marks”
“far out you are fat”
"who would want to marry a ugly fat mole like you"


and it literally went like this on every entry for the last month or two. 


They were all from different user names, as if to suggest that in the space of 1 hour 40 different people had decided that on a Saturday night, the best thing they could do is go spread their douchness on a website page. I mean that is my idea of a good Saturday night but unfortunately being an absolute piece of hyena sh*t seems to have been pushed back since having kids.


The funny thing was that even though all the messages were from “Patrick, Shane, Carl, Bill, Steve and some other members of the Village People, they were all from the same URL address. The same URL address that had posted a message 3 months ago saying thanks for the awesome Nacho recipe… Old poo emoji boy strikes again but under the disguise of no emojis… 


I was thinking about just letting it go, but unfortunately the 2 year old has ruined the concept of “let it go” by making me listen to Frozen on repeat for a good 5 month period. Letting it Go was not an option, just as watching Frozen for the 2 year old was not an option as the disc met a tragic accident. Yes, it seemed as though the dog somehow got his paws onto it and it was scratched to oblivion (RIP Frozen dvd) (and no mum if you are reading this, this is not a good idea for a christmas present for the 2 year old)


So I sent old man emoji a message this morning saying could he please pass on to Patty, Shaneo, Carl-mister-general, Billy Boy and my man Steve that their messages made my day, as it boosted my stats on my weebly account and nothing says traffic to your account like repeated messages.


At first there was denial, then there was anger, then there was remorse and then there was this:


“ I hope your children get cancer”


OH NO YOU DIDN’T!!!!!!!!!!!! 
ITS ON LIKE DONKEY KONG YOU EMOJI MOTHER .......



You see I avoid confrontation by playing to the humour side of things. I will call you out if you do the wrong thing but in a way that usually allows all people to walk away with no hard feelings. However when you bring my children into it, I become a mixture of the God Father, Connor McGregor mixed with a droplet of Samuel L Jackson. My vocabulary would make Gordan Ramsay blush.


I saw red!! 30 minutes I wasted on this pathetic excuse for a human. The funny thing is, that it turns out his actual problem with me was that his wife losing weight had lead to her getting attention from other males and I was a home wrecker for assisting her to lose weight.


In the end I handed the laptop to the 2 year old and told her to type away to her hearts content. She really put him in his place with a mixture of letter H’s and dramatic space bar spaces to really hit him where it hurts.


After sitting back with the kids and enjoying an afternoon swim, I had time to think about what the hell just happened and for some reason it made me laugh. So I thought I would share it on my blog. Ahh, the good old days where I became a keyboard warrior and also part Kanye West “imma let you finish but “. I don’t even know why I even bothered to reply to the original messages. Lets blame hormones for this one.


I hope your week is amazing!!


Love Jess

So last weekend the 2 year old got her second taste of soft drink. Well really her first actual given taste, because the other time she drank it, was when she went for the snatch and dash with a can of lemonade that was on the table at a bbq. Luckily for us it was not a can of scotch or rum.. still parenting failure much the same.


When the 8 year old was much younger, I thought I was Mother of the Year material because he made it to the age of 5 without drinking Coke. However he was drinking Fanta and Lemonade and whether I honestly didn't know or I just chose not to believe, I thought it wasn't as sugary as Coke and therefore a good alternative. Here I was judging people for giving their kids Coke and I was really just as bad.

It was the husbands birthday and we decided to celebrate his special day by going out to lunch. The 8 year old had asked if he could have a glass of lemonade because it was a very special day. 

Can I just point out that only 3 days earlier he had asked if we could have a can of lemonade to celebrate the fact that when we got home from school the dog had not dug a hole in the yard and this was worth celebrating because I wasn’t angry for once (very good point).

The 8 year old then had me in cheque mate when he said “but mum, I was allowed to have a can of lemonade for your birthday lunch, how come dads isn’t as special as yours”…

Oh sh*t! How the hell do I get out of that one. 

I literally had nothing.

He then said “the only time I have had a soft drink this year is at your birthday, my birthday, Uncle Dans birthday and Pops birthday. Why can’t I have one at Dad’s birthday, that will make Dad feel very sad.

Actually, your Dad won’t feel sad but he will probably store the info to use against me in some type of argument at a future date!”

“What do you mean, your going away for a boys weekend”
“I thought it was only fair since apparently the day I came out of my mothers who-ha, wasn’t special enough for a celebratory lemonade for the 8 year old.. this boys weekend will be the only thing that allows me to heal from the grief caused by it……..”

So to save any future therapy session for the husband, I said “ok you can have one glass, since today is special but that is all” (I had just been totally played by the 8 year old)

Thats when all hell decided to break loose.

“Mummy, can I please have a lemonade, please mummy”.

Two pleases, holy crap the 2 year old means business.

We have been in this same situation many times in the last 3 months. Whatever and I mean whatever the 8 year old has, the 2 year old must have as well. Even things the 2 year doesn’t actually want but if the 8 year old shows any interest in it, then it must be hers.

I tried all the usual responses like :

“eww lemonade is yucky”
“ouch its very hot”
“oh no the lemonade is all gone, no more”

The favourite of the guy at the table next to us was:
“its got poo poo in it”, to which she replied “yum, i love poo poo”.

Then she said, (wait for it ) “mummy, its Daddys birthday a special lemonade day”.

GODDAM you being able to comprehend things now!! I want my baby back!!

I then tried to be all sneaky and bring her back a water with some lemon in it. She looked at her brothers and saw no lemon and then looked at hers and saw no bubbles.  Sh*t was going to hit the fan.

I was so proud that the 2 year old was nearly 20 days out from turning 3 and hadn’t had soft drink. I did not want to break that streak now. I knew that I was 100 percent in control of this decision and the only way she would get it, was if I gave in but lets look at the all the facts.

We are in a packed restaurant at lunch time.
It was my husbands birthday and we were surrounded by family and wanted to enjoy his birthday lunch with him.
If the 2 year old lost her sh*t which was minutes away, the whole restaurant was going to be affected and I would have to go outside so she didn’t disrupt other people eating.
The 2 year old doesn’t do short tantrums, my food would be cold and we both wouldn’t eat.
The 8 year old was maintaining full eye contact with the 2 year old whilst sipping his lemonade whispering “this is the best drink I have ever had”

I went up to the bar and asked for half lemonade and half soda water. Better than full lemonade (well thats how I made myself feel a little better about my decision)

Now to all those people who say that sugar doesn’t have an affect on kids behaviour or personality, you should have seen the 2 year old. Holy Mother of Sugar Highs.

Within 5 minutes of her first mouthful she turned into a sugar drunk. She was literally yelling at the top of her lungs 

“IM DRINKING LEMONADE”
(yeh thanks for that, now everyone knows i gave you soft drink).

Then she stood up in her chair and actually started dancing and singing “I love lemonade, i love lemonade!”
It was like watching a video of myself out on the pi$$..
She then felt the need to run up and down the wheel chair ramp behind her table as if she was in the finals for the 50m dash.

I looked at my sister in law and said “this is what sugar does to a 2 year old”… Im pretty sure she no longer wants to have kids and this wasn’t even on full sugar.

She was an absolute menace. My Dad who does not like kids running amok in restaurants, was about to tie her to her highchair in an attempt to ride out this sugar high.
I basically inhaled my meal and decided that I had to get her over to the beach to run it off. The 8 year old was sitting there in his element, enjoying his lemonade beverage and I’m sure I saw him shake his head and whisper “rookie” at the 2 year old. 

The 2 year old literally drank about a quarter of her glass but that was enough for her to get that sugar hit. You would have thought I had just ordered her sugar on the rocks the way she was carrying on.

On the drive home, I made a huge point of telling her that we only ever have lemonade on very very special days because it makes us go way too crazy. The 2 year old nodded and said “its my dads birthday its special lemonade day!” The 8 year old then re-hashed some story he had heard from us about birthdays being special and that if we had lemonade all the time it would no longer be special”.  He then told her that sugar is not good for kids and makes them sick. It made me feel all warm inside knowing he understood the whys and the importance of things being special. 

We drove along in silence until the 2 year old pipes up “its my birthday soon and we are going to have lemonade YAY!!!!” 

SWEET MOTHER OF HELL NO

What have I created?????
​
All I can think of is, that lucozade will now become our families official birthday soft drink of choice. 

Happy Saturday 
xx

On Monday, I had one of those bad parent moments where there literally was nothing substantial In the house for the kids lunch boxes. I was meant to do the grocery shopping on Sunday, but decided that a family trip to the beach would be the much better choice, especially after the shenanigans the 2 year old had pulled on our last shopping expedition. Shopping with my 2 year old friend Satan, was not on my to do list!


So Monday morning rolls around and I look in the cupboard and realise that my kid is going to be "that kid" turning up with the most random array of food imaginable. Some almonds, a packet of chips ( that I'm sure were from a party bag in August), a piece of cheese and a seen better days carrot. My poor son was going to be opening his lunch box next to the kids who parents make their own sushi, put smiley faces on their roast chicken sandwiches and have an array of fruit and vegetables that look like a picture from a magazine.  


To his credit, the 8 year old is not a fussy child. He is a roll with the punches and is happy with his routine of vegemite and cheese cruskits, fruit salad, home made slice and biscuits and homemade yoghurt or custard. However this was not his regular lunch and I didn't think putting vegemite on his almonds were going to sit well with him.


You see having a fructose free pantry, means you have a lot of the staples for making stuff but nothing pre made. So when you are a lazy ass mother like I had chosen to be and didn't do your weekly bake up, then it really shows. 


I couldn't let the 8 year old go to school with a floppy carrot and told him to get his sh*t together quickly, cause we were going to SPARS to get some things for his lunch. You would swear I had just told him we were going to a 5 Michigan star restaurant because he was way too excited. I knew something was not right, he was being too compliant. He got his clothes on in record time and I didn't even have to threaten him with death trying to get him out the door. Before we left,  I quickly scoured the cupboard once more, in the hope of finding something amazing that would redeem my unorganised crappy mum status. NO DEAL.


We got to SPAR and my instincts were spot on. The 8 year old knew exactly what he wanted and ran straight over to the premade lunch packs. They are apparently the ones that hopes and dreams are made of. In reality it is a poppa, pack of chips ( apparently my stale chips weren't good enough) a packet of tiny teddies, a snak pack custard and a piece of fruit. The lunch of champions. He was so excited at the prospect of buying this lunch pack, that I thought he was going to break into song. Then holy mother of all things Dora the Bloody Explorer, he found one lunch pack that had a Dora poppa in it and excitedly showed it to his sister. So now I had the 2 year old jumping up and down screaming with excitement as if we had won the lotto. 


Best.day.ever


Apparently everyone has these packs for their lunch at school ( I didn't  feel so bad now ) and the 8 year old needed this in his life and couldn't wait to eat it. Finally he could be the same as everyone else. All I saw was sugar and nothing really substantial. All the 2 year old saw was Dora and tiny teddies. Satan was about to raise his ugly head again via the 2 year old, I could feel it coming. 


I told them they could get the lunch packs but they would need to get two pieces of fruit and  a sandwich as well. My one request was the fruit and sandwich had to be eaten before starting the lunch pack.
You seriously would have sworn I told them that our family was going off the grid Bear Grylls style and they would be required to eat the juice from an elephant turd and the intestines of a week old dead zebra before having the lunch pack.


The 8 year old grabbed his fruit whilst whinging that he would not have time to play if he had to eat the fruit and sandwich before the other stuff. I told him to think of it as a man vs food challenge and make me proud. He just rolled his eyes as if to say "lame joke d&ckhead."


The two year old was like " righto, whatever you say, but you know I'm going to be ripping into those tiny teddies before we even leave the car park..."Fruit, yep sure totes onto it"


As I went to the register I saw that two mums infront of me were carrying these lunch packs and the lady who just walked in was also headed in their direction.  Man I need to go into the lunch pack business. 


As we got in the car, I told the 8 year old to enjoy his snack pack and it can be a treat. You couldn't wipe the smile off his face. The 2 year old as predicted was already trying to tear through a Muslie bar with her bat teeth. 


When I picked up the 8 year old from school that afternoon, I asked the usual questions and got the usual response, that my school fees are apparently paying for "nothing" as he did nothing today. Although when you are tying to get him to go to bloody sleep at night, he will happily tell you a minute by minute recount of how amazing his day was and what he learnt... 


I asked how his lunch was and he said 
"The snak pack was disgusting"
"The muesli bar was too sweet"
"The tiny teddies were nice"
"The Poppa was like petrol" ( not dramatic at all) 
And he only ate the sandwich and the apple. 


The 2 year old also hadn't eaten her Muslie bar, had devoured half of her tiny teddy biscuits, refused the poppa and nearly spat the snak pack out in my face. 
However she did manage to score a strawberry milk from a radio station car giving away goodies, so that may have filled her up. 


The 8 year old declared the lunch pack as something he would not like tomorrow and on hearing the word "lunch" the 2 year old declared that she was hungry and needed me to get her food stat before she apparently died. 


Some days you feel like that mother of the year trophy is totally yours and other days you do what you have to do to get by. 


Some days are salads and vegetable quiches and other days are nuggets and chips that turn into 3 nights of nuggets and chips because your husband bought you an air fryer and man do they make good nuggets and chips.... 


I was always told that failure to prepare means preparing to fail and that is me this week. I would love to say I went grocery shopping the next day but it was my day off and I  had a 3 hour Nanna nap instead. Today is Thursday..... lets just say thank God for staying at Grandparents houses with their delicious foods during the week. 


Jess xx


Sent from my iPhone

The 2 year old is actually going to be a 3 year old in less then a month. It is crazy to think that the one member of the family who really puts up a fight against the sugar thing has been on the earth the least amount of time.


When I think about her journey into the world of Fructose Free living it really reminds me of an exorcism out of the movies.
“I CAST THEE OUT SUGAR DEMONS”
<insert 2 year old scaling up the walls with her head rotating 360 degrees >


She really has been the absolute worst out of all the family members and that is only because she is the most vocal. She is literally the only member of the family to put up any resistance. We only have to walk past someone eating something and she automatically decides that she needs that thing then and there in her life and will call upon the souls of a thousand dead banshees to get her way. 


Yesterday we were shopping and she was happily chatting away munching on her sugar free biscuit in one hand and taking bites out of her apple with the other hand. Absolutely loving life, until we walked past someone eating a sushi roll, but her brain interpreted it as a (wait for it ) a ‘big yummy chocolate stick.’


Then it was on for young and old 


“I WANT CHOCOLATE STICK”
“Thats not a chocolate stick thats made out of rice and seaweed”
“NO CHOCOLATE STICK”
“Its not a chocolate Stick”
“It is”
“Its sushi, what your brother eats that you don’t like”
“Its not, its a chocolate stick”
“It isn’t a chocolate stick, you will hate it”
“I neeeeeeed a chocolate stick”


PLAN A initiate
“Ok, well if you are good you can get one before we go”
“NoooOOOOOOOOO” 


PLAN  B initiate
“You have no manners you will get nothing”
(puts on the fakest smile and raises her voice an octive to sound like a chipmunk) “Please mummy, may i please have a chocolate stick”


Sweet mother of I’m about to lose my sh*t here


“Its sushi not chocolate”
“No its not”
“Yes it is”
“No its not”
“Yes it is”


This was clearly not working.


PLAN C, D, E and F initiate


I then tried to convince her that I had no money, that they had no chocolate sticks left, that we were going to find the chocolate stick shop, that the chocolate stick shop is just up around that next corner, then the next corner. All were met with whinging and sooking.


Nothing had worked, so I decided that she can have her “so called chocolate stick” and went and bought her some sushi. She took one look at it and smacked it out of my hand screaming in my face, “THAT IS NOT A CHOCOLATE STICK”.  (no sh*t Sherlock)


I automatically saw red. No one, smacks sushi out of my hand and gets away with it.

So I then snarled and in my angriest voice said, “You are a naughty girl and you will get no chocolate stick”


You would swear I just told her that Santa, the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy were not real and that I was cancelling her birthday because the tears were like that of a flowing waterfall and the cry was one of heart break and desperation. All I was thinking about was the $3.20 sushi that was covering my shopping bags, the sushi that I was actually going to eat…


Using all my strength and the serenity of buddha, I tried to shut out the noise and pretend that it was not my child that everyone was looking at, who was now whimpering something about a chocolate stick between soul piercing shrieks of death.

Seriously all this over a freaking chocolate stick…. DAM YOU TO HELL SUGAR!! 


I still had to go to the bank, put money on a lay-by and finish off my shopping and my stress level was at a “lets just get the hell out of here before I explode level”. The 2 year old was not giving up on wanting this chocolate stick and finally I cracked. 

“Ok I will get you a chocolate stick as long as you stop whinging and do not make another sound till we get home!!!”


She whimpered and said “I’m not a naughty girl, I’m a good girl”.


So the tears were now not even for the chocolate stick anymore, they were from being yelled at and called a naughty girl 15 minutes ago.


“Yes you are a good girl, but sometimes you make naughty girl decisions. Lets just go get you a chocolate stick and then get our jobs finished and get the hell out of here”


“No thank you mummy, I’ll just have my apple”


One word.


#SATAN


xxx Jess

How bloody hot is it?
​
You know its hot when you choose the colour of your clothing dependent on whether you will have visible sweat patches wearing them or not. Therefore you pretty much end up wearing black, the hottest colour possible because you would rather be a heat magnet, then have gigantic sweat patches covering your body.  Fashion first obviously. 


I am also pretty sure that I nearly managed to brand the 2 year old with the seatbelt this morning. I put her into the car and managed to drop the buckle of the seat belt onto her thigh. If she could have fly kicked me through the windshield, she would have. 


After managing to sweat it out all morning, we are currently in the middle of a storm. A storm that has led to not only the two year old attached to my side but the bloody cat and the dog. 


The two year old is only scared of the storm because her 8 year old brother got all excited and tried to turn the event into some type of game, where they sprint around the house hiding from the thunder. This was all good until an actual loud thunder clap occurred, which led the 8 year old to scream in excitement but the 2 year old to interpret this scream as a declaration of her immediate death. From that moment on she was not leaving my side, which usually I wouldn’t mind but when you finally sit down on your computer to type out a blog entry, it makes things a little interesting. Especially when the 2 year old wants to help you press the buttons and then the cat decides that it too wants to help press the buttons by walking all over the keyboard… good times for all.


Anyway lets get back to the original point of my entry, my 12 week challenge results.


On my Facebook page I posted a sneak peak at my results.
I was inundated with messages asking:
“Did you really lose that much weigh in 12 weeks”
“What was your diet consisting of”
“Did you photoshop that”
and my personal favourite “that is not even you in the after photos”


Lets start from the beginning. The beginning is my favourite place to start when telling a story. I hate watching those movies where they start at the end and rewind back… I need structure GOD DAMMIT!


Before starting the challenge, I was in a major rut. I was struggling to stick to this fructose free lifestyle because quite frankly I was getting a little bored with it and a lot of depressing things had been occurring in my life that was making it easy for me to turn back to my old friend chocolate.


I knew I was putting on weight, my selfies were looking very double chin like and my clothes were all of a sudden feeling quite snug and guess what?? I didn’t actually care. I had lost my mojo.


It all came to a head when I was at my parents house and decided to use their scales. Our scales had been broken. so I hadn’t weighed myself in quite some time. When I finally weighed myself, I vomitted in my mouth a little. I was pretty much back to my starting weight from when I started my fructose free journey and boy did that hurt.


I feebly attempted to push myself back into my fructose free lifestyle and would go good for about a week and a bit, but then I would find myself binging over a jar of nutella and I would be back to square one again.


The one thing that I knew was missing from my lifestyle was exercise. I had absolutely loved the fact that I was able to get results from this fructose free lifestyle without doing any type of cardio, but I openly admitted that I wasn’t as firm as I was when exercising and the old bingo arms were trying to get a look in. However I was rocking a size 8, so who gave a flying sh*t.


Once I was back at my original weight, I knew that I needed to bring back exercise into the equation. I wanted to feel like I was smashing goals again and I knew that once I got myself into the routine of exercise, I could make myself get back into the routine of healthy eating.


I signed up for a 12 week challenge with Griffin Personal Training. Lets be clear, I am not affiliated with these guys and they do not give me free PT’s for mentioning them or any such deal. However, I have to say Holy mother of Amazing Trainers. They consist of a brother and sister training team and it is pretty much the ying and the yang experience.


Here is a review I put on their website to give you a little insight into how I feel about them.


I will be the first to admit I am quite the bootcamp tart... Attending many boot camps all over town and all I can say compared to Griffin Personal training they are really just glorified "mothers groups". 
Griffin Personal Training puts the "amp" in bootcamp. On first impression of the head trainer Tash you will be lead to believe you have just met a small loveable lady. Only one of those 3 adjectives is correct. What she lacks in size, she makes up for in voice and a vocabulary that would make a grown man blush. The other half of Griffin Personal Training is James. You may be thinking I don't want a male training me, but rest assured James is not one of those male trainers who stares at himself in the mirror, flexing when he should be training you, nor does he give you that creepy vibe. Think of James as the brother you always wanted.
The truth is, If you want to get pushed to the brink of vomiting and then some, this is the place to be be. If actually losing weight fast, being kept accountable at all times through pure fear and meeting people at all stages of their fitness journey is where you want to be, then stop being a lazy a-hole and sign up.


Five out of Five star rating.


I knew that if anyone was going to make me accountable, it was them, because obviously being accountable to myself was becoming a huge joke 


“hey Jess is it ok if i eat some chocolate”
“sure Jess thats fine”
“are you sure Jess, I mean we aren’t meant to be eating sugar”
“eat all the sugar”
“ok”


The 12 week challenge included meal plans, unlimited bootcamp and circuit and a 1:1 PT a week. It wasn’t cheap but these things never are. Knowing that I was going to have money coming out of my account fortnightly, meant that if I didn’t pull my finger out and commit, I was going to have to mentally deal with the fact all of that money was being wasted. 


I have openly said that I am a competitive person. You tell me I can’t do something and you know that I am going to go out of my way to prove you wrong, even if it means me staying up till 1am each night trying to kick a bloody beanbag from my foot to my knee to my head because some kid said I couldn’t (true story).


I really pushed myself hard in those 12 weeks and my diet was on point. I did have a cheat meal each week, but those cheat meals were never high in fructose because that wasn’t what my brain was craving. It wanted bread and potato and all things carb. My sweet needs were being met with fruit.

Ahh the fruit debate. Are you truely fructose free if you are including fruit in your diet… I say frucking oath you are!! As long as you aren't  juicing 20 apples, eating fruit throughout your day is fine.


My will power was once again on point because I didn’t want my trainer ripping out my soul through my throat.  I spent the first 3 weeks detoxing hard off the sugar again and craving soft drink, but true to form, after 3 weeks I didn’t want the things my brain was begging for.


The funny thing was, that once I started committing myself to eating healthy and exercising, the weight started to drop off and more importantly my mental health started improving again. I was feeling happy, confident and started changing my goals from being numbers on a scale to trying to run 10km in under 50min or being able to lift something that an adult should lift (my upper body strength could be defined by one word, “sh*t).


My husband was probably my biggest motivator and also my biggest fan. He would constantly tell me how good I was looking and how it inspired him to see me dragging myself out of bed at 4am.
While he was feeling inspired in his comfy bed I was feeling jealous and wanting to kick him in the baby maker for getting more sleep then me. There were a couple of times, I stole his sleep and dragged him out of bed fearing for my life, as I thought there was someone waiting for me near the car port… watching murder mysteries before bed is never a good thing. 


I did try at one stage to get my husband to join me in my fitness journey by signing him up to circuit class. However he suffers from Ross River and at certain times of the year, he really struggles with it. Basically he starts getting lactic acid build up straight away when doing anything physical and it can take him weeks to recover. He gave it a good shot but I’m not sure if it was his ego or his body that convinced him that it wasn’t what he needed right now.


I know that not everyone is financially in a position to pay for a trainer etc but it was just the kick start I needed to get my a$$ into gear. There are so many free community programs out there that encourage active living and I just started doing Park Run on a Saturday morning to take advantage of running with a large group of people (less chance of being the one taken out by a magpie, dog or killer).


What I did love about this challenge was there was no set meal plan as such because the whole point of it was to find habits and recipes that suit our families needs and wants. We were given a collection of recipes to choose from and could adjust and do what we wanted to from there. Obviously there were foods that we could not have and that made it easier when meal planning. 


The problem with most of these challenges is that the meal plans are unreasonable and can’t be sustained for a long period of time, but this one was perfect. I used a lot of my own recipes for sweets and snacks but stuck to salads etc for lunch and vegetables and a meat for dinner. There were obviously other meals happening in between but I tried to keep it very simple. That way when it was cheat meal day I could indulge and not feel an inkling of guilt because I knew I bloody deserved it.


Without further ado here are my results.

Wow!! All I can say is Wow.

Once again I have managed to totally dismiss my blog for a long time… however I have some pretty dam good excuses.

Firstly there was the little incident with the cyber stalking. Yes one of my little Nigerian friends who still continue to believe that this is a site where I find them a sugar mumma (they obviously don’t bother to read a single bloody blog entry and therefore have no idea what the hell is going on) somehow found out my private email and then my private facebook account and pretty much bombarded me with messages. I couldn’t even log onto facebook without 99 messages a day and then my email started getting spammed with them. This got to the point where my phone was going flat because it was constantly going off. On one day I received 223 facebook private messages to my blog page, then 104 to my messenger and wait for it 147 emails. This is not some made up number to make this entry sound good, this is the truth!! I thought that blocking would work but each person I blocked, another would replace.  It was insane. At one point I had blocked from my facebook blog page a total of 87 people, who I’m pretty sure was just 1 person creating different profiles. 

So I spent a good month making sure that all connections to my blog and my personal life were non-existent. Yes there is a huge chunk of people who know me in real life and that this is my blog, they also know how incredibly good looking and modest I am, but more importantly they know not to mess with my facebook account because I have a tight schedule of stalking and these x boyfriends, new girlfriends, cousins, brothers aren’t going to stalk themselves. They also know that my life does not and will never revolve around finding them a sugar mumma or a sugar dada…. My business is eliminating sugar and destroying my kids’ lives in the process.

Luckily I have some friends who know their sh*t around computers and were able to make sure that my phone no longer beeps 101 times during the night with messages.  They also linked up some MacGuyver sh*t to make sure this never happens again. Try explaining to your husband without smiling that you have no idea why some Nigerian prince is messaging you at 1am.


Secondly I was busy losing 15.5kg in my 12 week challenge with Griffin Personal Training and taking out second place in doing so. Yeh no biggie, I lost the equivalent of my 2 year old from my body… And I did it by exercising hard and sticking to a very strict diet that was fructose free. Looking at my before and after photos it is really hard to believe that I was the same person. From having a massive slump and lack in motivation in my fructose free journey to totally doing a 360 and beginning to enjoy life and eating again. I can’t believe how amazing my results were in only 12 weeks. You know I worked dam hard for it, but I think being able to sink back into my fructose free lifestyle gave me a bit of an advantage. However, more about my weight loss journey in my next blog entry.

And lastly

DRUMROLL PLEASE

I have just started writing a book (did you just roll your eyes). Well this had been in the works for a little while but things took a different direction last month when I decided that I needed to believe more in myself and be true to myself like I have been since day 1 of this blog.

A long story short, I had someone  show some interest in my blog and my writing and wanted me to put something together for them.  I was completely floored that someone would actually think people would want to read anything I wrote, let alone pay to read it. However it soon became evident that certain products needed to be mentioned, even though I had never used them in my journey and that my story wasn’t really sounding like my story at all. 
It started to sound more like a fairy-tale, then the mess that was my life. I felt like I was taking all the good and dismissing all the bad. I was also very restricted in adding new material that hadn’t featured on my blog and this was an area that didn’t sit well with me. Why would people want to pay for something they could look at on my blog. I wanted to add my personal stories that never made the blog, but obviously meant enough for me to write in my private journal where no one could judge me. I wanted to include these pieces to the puzzle that has been my journey and not some edited version where all the pieces just fell into place and life was good, because we all know that life has its fair share of bad moments. I also wanted to dive into my past experiences in my life that got me to this stage in my weight loss journey. Baby food diet anyone???

So in-between writing and re-writing a version of my life that I was going to be paid for, I started writing my real story. It was only 3 chapters just a taste of what I could do. They were honest, dirty, funny and ultimately my family. Add to that playing constant referee to the kids, since the 2 year old has declared war on the 8 year old and life was really, really hectic and blogging got pushed to the back.

 I was also really struggling mentally with the whole project, as I was torn between following my heart and creating something I could be proud of, verses indulging my ego with the fact I was writing a book that someone wanted to hopefully publish.

I decided that that only thing I could do was seek the opinion of someone who was not invested emotionally or financially in my adventure. Someone who wouldn’t try and stroke my ego or tell me what they thought I wanted to hear. I had one friend in mind straight away, who I knew I could trust to be honest. The one friend that destroyed my life on numerous occasions by saying things like “what the hell are you wearing” (when I thought I looked dammn fine) “ that haircut makes you look like a cabbage patch doll who was rejected from the factory” (my new fringe) “ no you don’t need seconds I think your firsts are being stored in your chin” (I really wanted seconds of dessert) and my favourite “you need to change your profile picture on facebook you look like a tramp” (it was my best duckface ever…).
 
I gave her both copies of my story and told her that I needed her to be completely honest and tell me if:

A) they were any good
B) she would pay to read them
C) they would be worth continuing

Her response was something like  “ So you wrote them?? Good, I  need some new reading material to put me to sleep at night” (sahhh nice). I told her that I may have written one of them but I wasn’t going to tell her which one.

What I didn’t expect to get back from her 2 days later, was my papers looking like a high school English teacher had vomited red pen and all over them. Let’s just say she took her role of looking at them very seriously.

After looking at the page and trying not to have a stroke from all the red crosses and scribbles, I decided that I didn’t want to know what she thought because obviously it was not going to be good news.

Her exact words were, “you wrote this one and you got your husband to write this one using your blog as a guide”.  The one my husband supposedly wrote had barely any scribbles over it… she obviously took pleasure in destroying the one that she thought was mine. 
So what do you think?? I actually had butterflies in my stomach and felt really nervous and sick waiting to hear her response. 
She held up both of them and said “this one reads like you wrote it with pure hatred for the English language and all things grammatical correct”. Did you even proof read it??? Do you have any respect for the English language at all??

She had a point, it definitely wasn’t as polished as the second one. I had re-read it a couple of times, however when your 2 year old is lying next to you with Dora the Explorer at full volume on the ipad, you kind of give up. Add to that trying to get two different writing tasks pumped out in 21 days, doesn’t really leave much time to get my editing on. Apparently the Grammar Natzi was not impressed with my efforts. 

She dropped the one my husband supposedly wrote in my lap and said “At least your husband takes some pride in his work (I had re-written this one so many times, I nearly knew the script off by heart.) She then decided to twist the knife that little bit further into my heart by saying  “Maybe you need  to ask your husband to re-write this one out for you again so it doesn’t read like a dyslexic 4 year old wrote it….”

Ouch….

Before I could even launch into my re-buttal (which I had been planning mentally the moment I saw all the red pen)she said, “Honestly yours is hilarious. I loved it. I really, really did. I mean your husband’s is good but it’s missing the sense of humour that yours has and it seems like an old person wrote it. I dunno, I felt engaged when I wasn’t growing a brain tumour from your terrible grammar..”

That was all I needed to hear, it was what my heart knew the whole time. However just to make sure my heart (who has been known to get me into trouble before: Insert x-fiancé, bad financial choices and getting scammed by that homeless man) was completely right, I got 5 other people to read and give me their opinion as well….

Turns out, the heart was right after all.

However deciding to write and publish your own works is not easy. It is not cheap and it means that it all comes down to one person. I don’t have the luxury of someone financially backing my first print or doing it at cheap prices, but what I do have is complete control of what I do and don’t write.

So after busting my absolute ring trying to push out a copy for an interested investor, I am back to square one. However I am a little bit excited to keep going and see where it takes me.  
I do know that my book is going to be a warts and all account of my families journey to date. It’s going to be funny, rough around the edges and I’m also going to push myself completely out of my comfort zone and publish some of my personal journal entries and stories that I didn’t feel I was strong enough to put out there at the time. It won’t be a rehash of blog entries, although some stories are given in a little bit more detail. It will also have recipes and a giving up sugar guide for dummies!! 

So as you can see my absence hasn’t been me just lying in a hammock whilst my children fan me with a palm leaf, whilst gently rocking me to sleep… we all know that in reality that scene would actually be the 2 year old climbing all over my face as I tried to rest and then the 8 year old somehow hitting the 2 year old in the face with the palm leaf and a brawl breaking out on top of my body, ending in me being turfed out of the hammock, that would now be being used as a swing.


So ladies and gentleman and those still trying to look for a sugar mumma, I am back and this time I am here to stay. So prepare to get inundated with blog entries and sneak peaks of the book in progress.

​xx

With less then 3 weeks to go till I finish my 12 week bootcamp challenge with Griffin Personal Training, I have done a little bit of reflecting on my journey.

When I first started, mentally I was all over the place. I knew I wanted to succeed badly, but my body straight off the bat was not going to have a bar of it.


The first morning of the challenge we had to do a fitness test. Now I knew my fitness wasn’t anywhere near where it had been, but I felt like I wasn’t that out of shape…. WRONG. You know you’re out of shape when doing 2 minutes of high knees feels like you just ran a bloody marathon. Lets not even talk about the 10 push ups on my knees because they left me feeling sore in my arms for days. I had no idea how unfit I actually was and it was quite the confidence destroyer.


I remember going home and telling my husband that there was a pretty good chance that I was going to die on the drive home from bootcamp. This was because I couldn’t feel my arms and my legs were made of cement. There was no way I was going to be able to lift my foot off the accelerator or steer. He told me to stop being so dramatic and I told him to go f3$% himself. We are good like that.


For the first fortnight every session was horrible. I was sore in places I didn’t even know you could be sore in and I was craving sugar really really badly.  I was no joke having dreams about eating bad food and was waking up every 15min worried that I was going to over sleep my alarm and miss bootcamp. 


Getting up at 4:15am took a bit of getting used to. Rolling out of bed and then rolling my body down the corridor was probably my best chance of success, because if I even thought of snoozing the alarm or not getting up the second it went off, things would go down hill very fast. 


Its amazing the number of excuses you can come up with, as to why you should not get up and exercise.

The top 20 excuses that went through my head:
1 - The most obvious, “I’m so tired” insert back up comment about the kids keeping me awake all night
2 - It's too cold
3 - I will go in the afternoon
4 - I think I am getting sick, better not push myself
5 - I heard the dog barking 5 minutes ago, there could be someone outside, so I better not risk walking to the car
6 - My legs, arms, back, ass and ears hurt. Need a day to rest and recover
7 - I went yesterday
8 - Magpies… 
9 - I can’t find any hair clips, my hair is too wild to train today
10 - The husband and kids are asleep, this is so unfair, I should go back to sleep too
11 - I think it looks like rain (no clouds in the sky)
12-  I think I heard thunder (really husband farting)
13 - I totally deserve a sleep in… again
14 - I didn’t shave under my arms last night and nobody needs to see that
15 - I can’t find my lucky undies
16 - I can’t train because my fav sports bra is in the wash
17 - Stayed up too late Facebook stalking, I need my beauty sleep
18 - I think it may be cancelled… yes def cancelled today
19 - Not sure if my car has enough petrol to get me there (filled up car with petrol the day before)
20 - Its that time of the month.. no one wants to squat out an ovary.


Somehow I always managed to get myself to bootcamp by 5am, even if it meant waking up the husband and asking him to walk me to my car because I stupidly stayed up the night before watching true crime stories and thought someone was going to kill me.


You need to trust me on this though, as much as b*tch pig stink rat a$$hole of a thing getting up when its dark to exercise is, its so much better then doing it in the afternoon. By the afternoon you are already shattered from a thing called life and if you have kids, you have a ready made excuse right there. By the afternoon my kids have turned into demons and with the amount of extra curricular activities they have going on, my exercise has to take the back seat.


The 2 year old has been my biggest source of motivation. She has become a bit of a gym creche bandit. Her favourite activity is to go to the creche and she reminds me of this every 15 minutes or so. This means when I’m feeling like I couldn’t possibly go, she will be there begging to go to the gym. Such a beefcake!!!!!


I am now at the stage of my fitness journey where getting up in the morning has become the norm and it doesn’t seem to hurt as much as it did 8 weeks ago. As sick as it sounds, I actually love it!! Im still just as tired as I was before I even started exercising, so I think that just comes from being a mum. However, it feels good to know that you have gotten your exercise out of the way for the day.


Over the last 9 and  half weeks my diet has really been on point. I have made sure that I am maintaining my fructose free lifestyle and have been substituting some ingredients in my meal plan for ones that are more suited to me. Like honey to rice malt syrup etc.
The cheat meals have been the biggest blessing because it shows me that I can still have a blow out and keep losing/maintaining my weight.


The truth is, people do these challenges and go absolutely hardcore. They lose weight but can’t realistically keep it off because the lifestyle is not maintainable. Its easy when you know you are accountable to a trainer and you are part of a challenge. The hard part is when you are only accountable to yourself. 


In previous weight loss journeys I have always gone so bloody hardcore and got great results, but I put it all back on and then some. This is the first time in my life that I am trying to be realistic. I am making sure my meals are healthy, yet enjoyable for the whole family. No lettuce and ice cubes for me.I am having a treat each night, but only when I have worked hard for it and as mentioned, my treat meals are extremely appreciated and it puts me in the frame of mind to push myself. I have had a couple of messages asking what I have for my cheat meals and basically it's going out to dinner with the family and having whatever I like. I am still not having dessert, because that doesn’t fit into my fructose free lifestyle. Realistically, unless I make a dessert myself, fructose free options aren’t available at restaurants. 


Only once have I used my cheat meal for a sugar binge and it wasn’t really a huge one. Mum made an apple pie and when your mum makes an apple pie you don’t turn that sh*t down on your cheat meal night. 


I am currently feeling the strongest I have ever felt in my life.
I still cant do more then 4 push ups on my toes( if I'm lucky) or do an unassisted chin up, but I can lift a lot more weight then I ever imagined and when I flex my little biceps, something actually moves in there. 

Mentally I am feeling wonderful because I can see my hard work paying off in the mirror and in the clothes I am wearing.

My husband is my greatest supporter and constantly tells me how good I am looking.  This is much better then him telling me 12 weeks ago that I felt like a different person when he hugged me… like a hippo is how I took it.

The kids are loving having me back to running around in the yard with them and bonus points for me being able to go down the slide with the 2 year old at the playground and not getting my hips just about ripped off. True story, 3 months ago I nearly got jammed going down that same slide and had two massive bruises on my hips. 


Can't wait to smash out these last couple of weeks and post my before and after pics!!


Happy Wednesday Ya’ll and here is a simple fudge recipe

Ingredients
1/3 of a cup of coconut butter
3/4 cup of cacao powder
1/3 of a cup of Rice Malt Syrup
1 teaspoon of vanilla bean extract
1 teaspoon of natural peppermint extract

*can add any nuts you have in your pantry (i did)


To Do
1. Blitz all the ingredients together briefly until combined.
2. Scoop mixture into a baking paper lined tray and flatten out to the desired thickness.
3. Refrigerate for at least two hours.
4. Remove the fudge from the fridge and slice before serving.

When I first started this journey, which honestly seems like forever ago now. It was met with a lot of negative responses from people.  Some from friends and others from complete strangers.


It made it really hard at times to keep my chin up, when people were telling me that I was basically ruining my children's lives. That my children were going to turn out to be sugar junkies, injecting themselves with pure fructose in bathroom toilets, because I had kept it away from them when they were little.


Obviously I can’t see into the future, but when people start telling you that your kids are going to end up being sugar junkies, it does make you question if you are really doing the right thing.


My favourite time was when a cute old lady ripped sh*t off me when I was doing my groceries. All because she offered my kids some smarties and I told her that they don’t eat sugar. She literally launched into what seemed like the loudest speech ever, about how she has consumed sugar her whole life and there is nothing wrong with her and that I was being brainwashed. 
Good times for all those staring at me getting torn a new a-hole by the cutest looking old lady in the shops wearing a fluro pink bum bag (note to all :  don’t ever take advice from someone wearing a fluro bum bag…)


Then there was that time my supposed friends from mothers group held a little get together but didn’t invite me because I would make them feel “guilty” for eating sugar laden food. You know me, the person who has never ever said anything to anyone else about their food choices”. Strangely I have never spoken to any of those girls again.
I did run into one of them at the shops one day and screamed out  “Sugar demon!” and threw some holy water (fructose free of course) at her and ran off and hid in the clothes racks… because thats what someone like me does. 


I constantly get troll emails and messages through my website from people telling me that eating fats and creams will kill me and my children. A lot of emails saying not eating sugar will give me cancer and my personal favourite that sugar is an important part of our diets and that the whole sugar free thing is a conspiracy from the government. As the government is trying to boost the dairy industry and take attention off climate change because cattle are one of the biggest producers of poisonous gases that destroy the ozone layer.
Those bastard cows and their farts…. lucky they have the government support behind them.


Lately things have been quite, a little too quite. It is as if, everyone has accepted this is who I am and how my family rolls. Every event we go to, people seem to cater for us. You have no idea how touching it is to turn up to a BBQ and someone go “hey Jess, we made you a fructose free cheesecake for dessert”. OR we baked some fructose free cupcakes so the kids can have them too”. Never ever is this an expectation, because I know this is an effort for other people to have to go to, but holy shitballs do I appreciate it. Good times, good times.


On another note, I wanted to share a recipe that I was given by my PT for the 12 week challenge I am on. Seriously it is AMAZEBALLS. To the point I actually had to make 3 batches!!
This was because the 8 year old had friends over and no joke, they ate 12 biscuits leaving me 1… I could have fly kicked those little turds in the face. 
So I made another batch cursing the whole time because no one likes baking because their kids are greedy little piglets.
Guess what? Those were devoured by the 2nd day. I may have had a hand in this but the 2 year old was like some biscuit addict/cookie monster and went to town on them, because guess who can now open the fridge by herself?? 


The only downfall to these biscuits, is that they will leave little bits of almond meal in your teeth. I found this out the hard way when I ate one and then went and did all my errands, spoke to about 6 different people and god knows who else saw my teeth. I got in the car to drive home and noticed in the rear view mirror that I literally had almonds specs all up in my teeth like in every crevice possible.. Thanks for the heads up guys. 
​

More importantly, they also have the word “doodle” in them, which makes them a firm favourite of the 8 year old because what is more hilarious to a child then asking for a biscuit with a “rude” word in it.

You need to get onto these babies and bake them. Saaaaahhhhh amazing!!!!!


Snickerdoodles 
INGREDIENTS: 2 cookies = 1 serve
dry: 

2 cups almond flour 
1/4 tsp pink salt 
1/4 tsp baking soda 


wet: 
5 Tbsp. coconut oil
1/4 cup Rice Malt Syrup
1 1/2 Tbsp. vanilla extract 


DIRECTIONS: 
1. Preheat oven to 175 degrees. Line 2 cookie sheets with bleach free parchment paper. 
3. Mix dry ingredients together. 
4. Melt coconut oil in a sauce pan over low heat. Mix wet ingredients together in a separate bowl. (i just put my coconut oil in the microwave to melt)
6. Mix wet into dry bowl and stir until all incorporated. 
7. Scoop 1 Tbsp. of dough and roll it in a ball. Roll your ball of dough into the coating mixture and coat all the way. 
8. Place your coated dough onto the cookie sheet and use a ball jar (grease the bottom with coconut oil/butter) and press down until your cookie is about 1/4 in thick. Lift up the jar and voila! (Thanks Urban Poser for the tip!) 
9. Repeat for all of the dough. (We made about 20 cookies). Keep the smashed cookie dough 2-3 inches apart from each other, because they expand some. 
10. Bake for 8 minutes. If you like them a little chewier-crunchy bake them for 10 minutes. 
13. Let the cookies cool on the pan for 10 minutes (if you don’t they will fall apart when you try to pick them up!). 
14. Carefully lift the soft cookies onto a plate. They will set hard


Happy Friday Y’all!!


Love Jess

Over a month ago,  I received an email from a lady who reads my blog, asking me to help her with quitting sugar.
The email read that she had struggled with her weight her whole life and this was her last shot at the whole weight loss thing. If she couldn't lose weight from quitting sugar, she was giving up altogether!! (No pressure)


Well actually a lot of pressure… I wrote back telling her that I was honoured she thought I could help her reach her goals but I don't think I am the best one for the job, if this was the be all and end all of her journey.  Even though I spend pretty  much the majority of my life at the drs with sick kids, that does not make me qualified to give advice to someone who sounds like they really need help. Nor am I a nutritionist, just someone who seems to learn from making mistakes.
I told her I  would be happy to help her as much as I can, but maybe  she  would be better looking at one of the sugar gurus like David Gillespie and starting with the real professionals and using me as a support crew. 

I fully believe that knowledge is power and I gave her a long list of websites and books that I found beneficial. I really believe if you start to understand the foundation of the whole quitting sugar thing, then it sets you up for the long haul.

She replied back that she had been following my journey for quite some time now and felt that she could relate to my lifestyle and my stories seemed pretty similar to hers. She didn’t want to know the ins and outs, she just wanted the results.

I could completely understand where she was coming from because I have spent enough money on diet programs and meal supplements that I probably could have went to Thailand and got a whole new body for half the price. I didn't care about the science behind it, just the number on the scales.


We corresponded back and forth for a couple of days and the more I read, the more I thought that there was something a little bit deeper then just a bad diet. There was such sadness and so little self worth in her stories, that it made me depressed just reading it.


We all have stories that make us who we are. We all have good days and bad days which shape our attitudes and our belief system.  Some days I want to go hard and other days I want to give up and eat Nutella out of the jar and binge eat until I spew. 


I won’t lie and say that I am the golden child of healthy eating or being sugar free. I wish I was, but i’m not.  When my husband is home I am seriously on point 110 percent because I hate being judged. I know that if he sees me eating something I shouldn’t be, then he will totally call me out on it. This will lead to some epic argument because I already feel guilty and even though he thinks he is supporting my diet, his comments make me want to punch him in the d*ck.


When the husband is away at work, thats when things really get hard. Its my willpower versus my stomach and my stomach is a very worthy component.  When its just me and the kids, the only person I am accountable to is myself. These are the days where it is much harder to stay on track because lets be honest wrangling kids is hard work, going to work is hard work and trying to look like you are being an awesome mum to those watching from the outside is bloody hard work. When all your energies are consumed with looking like you are succeeding in being an adult and a super mum, other things seem to slip. Case point: Your diet.


Without sounding like I have it all together (I don't). What I have going for me, is that mentally I am strong. I know that I can do whatever the hell I put my mind too. I know that my choices are mine to own and that ultimately I got this 100 percent. My mind is my greatest weapon. I contribute this to my Dad. Growing up, giving up was never an option. Every sport I started up, I was never the best. I was shy and hung back but my Dad pushed me to be better without the crazy sports parent attitude. He would take me to the oval and time me sprinting. What I thought was a fun game was him training me. He would encourage me endlessly.  Soon enough, I was dominating the sports field and the shy girl who hung back was given the name "terrier" because I was always on the ball like some demon dog. He would say to me,"You got this". When I would say "I can't" he would say "Show me that you can" and somehow I could always find that little bit extra deep down.  His motto was "the tougher it is, the better we like it" and that soon became my motto. Thats why I excelled at distance running, the harder it got, the better I got. When everyone started to slow down the pace, that was my mental push to really start going hard. For this, I am forever grateful to my Dad.


From 7 short emails with this lady, I knew that mentally she was not ok. I don’t mean this in a rude way at all, but in a way where it was obvious she needed help. Her thoughts were very dark and her self hate was extremely evident. Her stories were sad and in one word she seemed very depressed. 


I asked her if she suffered anxiety and she didn’t even know what that meant. I asked her if she had ever seen a doctor about how she was feeling and she replied that there was nothing a doctor could do.


I told her that if she went and saw a doctor and talked to them about everything that she had told me, that it would be a good first step in her weight loss journey and worst case the doctor might be hot…. I wasn’t thinking she needed to be medicated, but was hoping they might refer her to someone who could help her deal with her demons. I honestly didn’t think she would go because lets face it, why the hell would she listen to anything some complete random stranger says anyway.

I sent her all of the recipes I had used for my first month of quitting sugar and some links to some articles that had inspired and helped me when I first started. I hadn’t heard from her until this morning, when I received this message.

Hi Jess,


I just want to say thank you from the bottom of my heart. I went to a doctor who referred me to a specialist/therapist and in the last two weeks my life has changed. I didn’t know that I was suffering from acute anxiety and apparently Bipolar tendencies. I have started some medication which will be reviewed shortly to see if it is doing what it needs to do.


For the first time in a long time I finally feel like my mind isn’t filled with bad thoughts and I don’t feel so foggy. I haven’t started my plan you gave me yet but for the first time  I feel positive that I can lose weight and that I deserve to be skinny.


Thank you for taking the time to reply to my emails and thank you for actually caring about the words that I was writing. You are the first person to actually take interest in my wellbeing and for that I am so grateful. I hope that one day in the future we can meet and I can thank you in person. 


x


The reason I am posting this is not because I want people to go "Gees how amazing is Jess, not to mention hot and intelligent”. I am writing this because yesterday was national “R U OK Day” and this just seems so fitting. All this lady needed was for someone to acknowledge her stories and realise that she wasn’t ok and I feel so blessed and happy that I was able to help. 


I am not a qualified doctor, nor am I a qualified therapist but how hard is it to actually listen to another human being and actually care about the words that come out of their mouth. 


Weight loss is such an asshole of a issue. So many people (me included) define their worth around a number on a scale and when you say it out loud it is such a stupid donkey doodle thing to even care about, but that is what society has led us to believe. To be successful, loved and appreciated you have to be a certain image and I hate that this is how it should be. 


Mentally you have to be strong to think that this doesn’t have to be the case. You have to have a huge amount of self worth and self love to be able to believe that a number on a scale means just that, a number. You have to radiate that worth from within and believe in it fully. You can fake it on the outside but you will always be fighting those demons on the inside.


Since starting this 12 week challenge with Griffin Personal Training, my mind has shifted from weight loss to fitness. Yes having lost weight has probably mentally helped me, as I am proud of how I am looking, but it is more my fitness goals that are making me even happier. Being able to run an absolute muck with my kids and not needing to have a rest feels so good. Being able to go for a jog with the dog and not have the dog pulling me along like a dead weight because I literally am dying feels like I am some type of super athlete. Also being able to sprint when being attacked by a stupid bastard of a magpie and get to safety, rates highly on my things to be grateful for now my fitness is returning scale.


Life feels good at the moment!!


I hope your Friday is amazing and 3 cheers for the weekend
YEWwwwwwwwww!!

Today I thought I might blog about how my little turds are doing on this sugar free journey. Before you start to vomit in your mouth thinking I’m about to post about my bowel movements, I’m actually talking about my kids.


To say I am proud of how far the 8 year old has come in an understatement. That kid flies the fructose free flag loud and proud. Not only does he make his own choices now that reflect this lifestyle, he also likes to give advice to other kids. Nine times out of ten, this advice is met with eye rolls but none the less the kid has made it.


I still remember how the first 7 months of his journey consisted of him complaining on how sh*t his life was because he couldn’t be the same as the other kids. It wasn’t even about the actual sugar, it was just about the fact I was making him different to his peers.


Back then I could completely understand where he was coming from because no one wants to be the d*ck at the party not being able to have the same thing as their friends, because their mum is a sugar wh*re. 
However by giving him what I guess you would call “cheat meals” and allowing him to have it if he really wanted it for a special occasion, he felt like he was more in control and he wasn’t being made to miss out on anything. It was now completely up to him. It was easier for him to say “I don’t want it” then to say “Mum said I can’t have it”. 


The only downfall with putting the control in his hands was knowing he doesn’t like to disappoint people. I would watch him at parties saying “yes” to things I knew he didn’t want because he felt he had to. I would watch him nod like a zombie when offered say some chocolate cake and then watch him try and do a sneaky hide the cake back on the table and leg it out of there. 


He has a pretty big heart my 8 year old. I would say to him “if you don’t want cake, then just say no” and he would then go into some dramatic story about how that would be inconsiderate and mean because the poor mum had tried really hard to make that cake (umm, that cake is from a cake maker, that mum wasn’t stupid enough to attempt to make a pikatu cake herself.)


Don’t get me wrong, my kid isn’t perfect. He still has the occasional treat here and there and his weakness is still flavoured milk and lemonade. He just can’t drink as much as he used too. It gives him a headache apparently.


The 2 year old is still requiring some type of sugar exorcism. If anything sweet is in her line of sight then she needs it in her life stat. If there is nothing sweet available, then she merrily goes about her life.


Going shopping is still a pain in my a$$ and those dam kinder surprise eggs can burn in the pits of hell.


I just need to remind myself constantly that I am the adult and therefore I am the one to blame for what goes in her mouth. However when she is convulsing on the shop floor, screaming loud enough to shatter glass, I look for some other type of adult to intervene, because I clearly can’t handle that sh*t.


When she is in the confines of our little house her diet is perfect, once we leave these walls it is like she is some explorer out to conquer the world of all things sugar. 


The only big positive is that she will happily have some fruit as her sweet fix and that will keep her happy. I pretty much have a fruit salad sitting in my bag every time we go out. I should also point out that if you don’t get a good sealing container, you will have fruit salad juice in your bag for days… Ohh and if you leave it in your bag for say a week… heaven help you.. that smell will haunt you for the rest of your life.


Reflecting back, when I started this journey it was never meant to be a permanent thing. How could it? Who goes without sweets, honestly? However to think of my life as anything but how it is now, is impossible.


I would be lying if I said every day is perfect and we are the epitome of the fructose free lifestyle… pfft I wish. But I take great pride in the fact that we have come so bloody far and that the choices we now naturally make without hesitation are a reflection of this.


Some days I would kill for a chocolate bar and you know what, sometimes it takes buying a chocolate bar and having a bite to realise that it truely isn’t as good as you remember and that is a good feelings. Sometimes that chocolate bar tastes bloody good and it fills that little hole for the next month or so.


Life is about learning and living. One step at a time.


I hope your week is amazing!!!

It has been ages since I last blogged and trust me, if all that blogging required was to plug a USB cord into your head then I would have entries for days.

I literally sit in the shower and talk through an entry in my head and they are always hilarious and witty and I sit there laughing out loud thinking how I really should be a comedian/model/race-car driver.

Then I realise that I am not alone in the bath and the 2 year old is trying to suck on the faucet and the 8 year old who was meant to be in his room doing his homework is on his iPad watching something that I think just dropped an f-bomb on youtube…. yep no blog entry for you!!


The reality is that my life for the last month has seriously been nothing to write about. If I was to write about my life, it was going to come across as some internet meme about waking up early to exercise, eating healthy, exercising in the afternoon and not killing my kids. OR the kids being sick and me being sick.... (BORING)


Literally my life has been like this
4:15am - alarm goes off for bootcamp
4:35am - walk out the door for bootcamp
5:00am - bootcamp
5:40am - finish bootcamp
6:00am - get home
6:10am - shower
6:30 am - 7:00am do all those jobs I should have done the night before like iron uniforms, pack lunches and get bags ready.
7:00am - attempt to wake the a$$hole children up who fought me so badly the night before because it was way too early to go to sleep and I am the most evil son of a bastard out there for even thinking they should be in bed BUT obviously now they are just so tired because they didn’t get enough sleep and what sort of a mother am I for letting them stay up fighting with me
7:50am - walk out the door for work and school
4:00pm - All school pick ups done and we are home and had a snack
4:30/5pm - Go to circuit (weights)
6:00pm - Get home
6:30pm - start satans fav time of the day, homework, chores, bath time, cooking dinner, spending time with animals, fighting with my kids
7:30pm - eat dinner
8:30pm - start fighting with everyone to go to bed
9:30pm - tell myself I should really go to bed…..
11pm - go to bed.


Then it starts all over again…. alllll day errrrrryday!!! Add in there some taking kids to sports and me training some sporting teams early in the morning but its pretty much the same thing every day.

Therefore blogging that today I spent my whole day looking forward to going to bed early because Im so bloody shattered doesn’t  seem like the most exciting blog topic.

I also didn’t want to be that person who blogs about their work out..
LEG DAY TODAY B*TCHES…. 
I hate those people.

I also need to point out that in the last month my husband has been home with us for maybe 2 days max, so if you have kids then you will know that sitting at a computer uninterrupted has the same odds as winning the bloody lottery.

I did start one blog entry on the 13/8 which i will post as a little  bonus somethin somethin on the end of this entry. Im not sure why it ended mid blog entry but I’m putting money that there was some type of emergency in the household like the 2 year old seeing an ant on the ground and losing her absolute sh*t because no joke ants are the most horrifying creature… I mean she has no fear patting and jumping on a random dog at the park that looks like it eats 2 year olds for breakfast but an ant…. hell no!

I am now into week 8 of my bootcamp challenge and I have to say I am smashing the goals that I have set for myself.
Man it is such a good feeling when you can see the effort paying off.

Can I just say I am 200gms off being the same weight I was before I fell pregnant with my first child.  SAY WHAAAAAA!!!!
I can not wait to see what the next 4 weeks bring. I also can’t wait to share the before and after photos.

My diet these last 8 weeks has been on point and completely fructose free. The only difference is, that I have cut out Dairy and breads and no it hasn’t got any easier. I have learnt to hold my nose in the morning when making the kids toast because it smells what I think heaven should smell like. The temptation to eat the whole loaf is very high. The reality is I wouldn’t give bread a second look when I could have it but man that toast smells so bloody good when you can’t have it.  

So good it seems, that all of my cheat meals are entered around some type of toasted sandwich or burger and it gets me through to another cheat meal… just.

I have smashed my sugar cravings though the door in the last 3 weeks. Even when I have my cheat meal, I don’t have the urge to get something full of sugar and it feels dam good.

The biggest difference from last time I got some big loses and this time around is the exercise. I have to say, that the exercising is def getting quicker results combined with the fructose free lifestyle. 

When I first quit sugar I loved the fact that I was seeing such good results without exercising. For someone who had spent their life on a diet pushing themselves to breaking point at the gym it was a welcome change and felt good. That was until I realised my fitness level had gone from high to low and I started to lose any tone in my arms, legs and butt. I was pretty much on my way to getting bingo wings BUT my stomach, hips and belly were where the results lay and I could live with that.

This time by adding exercise the results are even better and happening quicker. I feel like a different person mentally and physically and I am loving this new me.

The only problem I have is that my kids are fussy little jerks who don’t do meat and veggies and I am having to cook two meals.
From the year of quitting sugar they pretty much have been used to a high fat diet with lots of creams and dairy. They like their vegetables hidden in pasta bakes or creamy sauces. The exact same amount of vegetables they would eat if they had my meal, but just in a sauce or in pasta.
I can live with this though because I can get about two nights out of making them their own meal and also frozen leftovers.

Im also going to be honest and say there have also been some nights of them having take away or toast because I couldn’t be assed cooking something seperate…. sorry not sorry but thats just the truth.

This has been my life in the last month and a bit. I haven’t run off with anyone looking for a sugar mumma, nor did I find myself in a sugar coma after some epic binge fest. 

On that note, I also want to say a huge Happy Fathers day to all those amazing Dads out there.
I hope you get spoilt with sticky kisses and big squeeze cuddles.


Love Jess


OH AND HERES THE ENTRY I DIDN’T GET AROUND TO POSTING


13th of August 

Todays post is sponsored by the letter “C” and no that is not for c-bomb, although quite a few of them have been on the tip of my tongue this week.

The C word I am thinking about is “commitment”. 

Have you ever had one of those weeks where everything seems to be out of your control and you have that moment when you think “feck it, I’m out, I’m just going to go sit over here and eat my body weight in chocolate and then stalk Facebook to see how much better everyone else lives are then mine”.

This week I have not only been sick myself and had sinus, but my kids have both been really sick as well. Add to that no husband around to help out. Then make sure you add in that volunteering to try and organise 16 touch football teams yourself and realising that this is not an easy job for one person and that you being sick or your kids being sick doesn’t stop the fact it still needs to be done. And eating junk food till you vomit sounds like a pretty good plan.

Literally everything this week seemed to out of my control but I needed to snap myself out of that way of thinking and focus on what I could control.

I completely could control what I put in my mouth
I completely could control if I choose to exercise or not

When everything seems to be one gigantic donkey doodle there are still things that I can’t make excuses for.

So this week even when I had literally had no sleep because the kids were coughing and vomiting and tag teaming each other between being asleep and awake, I would have been completely forgiven for not going to bootcamp but something inside me told me that it might be the only time of the day that I get that hour to myself and that no one at bootcamp should spew on me or put snot on me or sneeze directly into my mouth…. well I hope they wouldn’t.

I was on the cusp of getting better from my dirty head cold I had suffered from the week before and woke up Monday morning with a toothache. I booked myself into the dentist only to find that it was not a toothache I was suffering from but Sinus… So glad I paid the dentist 112 dollars for him to tell me that. I have never had sinus in my life and I thought sinus was something you got if you had allergies.  So after a course of antibiotics and sinus tablets I felt like my teeth weren’t painfully rattling in my head every time I took a step. Just as I got better the kids got sick. It was as if the gods were saying, “Not so fast, your not getting a good night sleep just yet”.

I hate my kids being sick. Especially the 2 year old because they desperately want you to make them better. Watching her cough all night until she vomits breaks your heart. The 8 year old decided that he didn’t want to miss out on the attention and threw in a bit of a vomitting virus and a belly ache for good measure. Good times for all.

I was lucky that I had meal prepped on the Sunday and didn’t have to cook anything for the week. The kids couldn’t keep anything down so were living off toast and vegemite and freshly squeezed orange juice. We also had McDonalds nuggets and chips quite a few times this week because they needed food with their antibiotics and were refusing to eat. Im not sure why I bothered spending money on takeaway anyway because after eating 1 single chip and 1 bite of a nugget they refused to eat any more. Do you realise how much willpower it takes to not eat your kids nugget and chips leftovers… A lot!! 


AND THAT WILL DO PIG, THAT WILL DO.


SOUNDS LIKE I NEEDED SOME TLC FROM THIS ENTRY AND I HOPE YOU READ THIS WITH VIOLINS PLAYING THE TUNE FROM TITANIC IN THE BACKGROUND.


XX
​

So today I officially felt like an adult.  I do realise that according to society that I have been an adult for quite some time  but 99.9 percent of that time, I just feel like a big kid who is winging it. If anything ever starts to look like it requires someone mature to deal with the situation, I look to my mum and dad, the real adults.

However today was that .1 percent when I went “pfft look at me adult, you go gurllll”.


I started off my day in a very adult like way. I went to the markets to buy some fresh fruit and vegetables. I even sniffed a pineapple, which really made me feel grown up. The only problem being that I have a rotten head cold and can’t smell a thing but to everyone else I looked like an amazing grownup sniffing the fruit like a pro.


I then came home and did the folding and whilst folding the clothes, I even watched the olympics on TV. This is another adult tick, not because I did the folding, but because I did the folding without feeling the need to watch some trashy sitcom like Geordie Shore or Keeping Up with the Kardashians.. Double tick.


However the real adult trump card which made me feel like a fully fledged adult, was when I totally winged a recipe and wait for it, I tasted my cooking and decided that I needed to make changes. Then I completely adjusted the recipe and changed the seasonings to make it taste better. WHAT THE ACTUAL FECK? 


Lordy, I will be winning Master Chef at this rate. Tasting my cooking and then going completely off the rails and changing it, is not something I do. I usually follow the directions 110 percent because thats what they are there for. If I stuff up I can then blame the recipe because I did exactly what it told me to do. I never taste test half way through because thats for people who know what they are doing and today that was me!!!


So there you go, acting all adult and sh*t, I think I deserve a trophy for reaching such an achievement in my life.


Im about to start week 4 of my 12 week challenge and I’m feeling really good about where my head is at the moment. I have been having some intense sugar cravings and really wanting chocolate but I’m pushing through it. I have literally been sick as a dog this week and still made myself go to bootcamp and work out.


I didn’t drop the number I was hoping for on the scales. I wanted to lose 1kg a week and managed 1kg for the two weeks. This is where I would usually have a massive binge and declare the whole process an absolute failure. I won’t lie, I did text my husband saying how disappointed I was, but I also felt motivated to keep going. I need to keep reminding myself that the scales aren’t the only thing I need to judge my journey on. The fact I no longer have multiple chins is one big tick and I am not looking as pregnant in my workout clothes is also an added bonus. I did however notice that when I was doing a circuit class, my pants may be a tad tight on my guts because when I did a squat, it looked like it cut my guts in half and I had two bulges going… saaahhhhhh attractive.


I surprised even myself by still going to bootcamp this week when I was not feeling 100 percent. I am sure I made people want to vomit, when I blew my nose on my towel and used my towel as a giant hankie, but I’m classy like that. For the record, I did not use the towel to lay on or anything, that was what my mat was for. 
Meh, better then using my shirt I guess.


My husband started to lecture me about rest and not pushing myself but I can’t help but having this drive and wanting to reach my goals I have set for myself. I turned up knowing that I wasn’t going to be able to go hard but doing something little was better then doing nothing at all.


My diet has been on bloody point. I have been doing a lot of meal prepping for the week and freezing dinners because its pretty bloody hectic around here at the moment.


For breakfast I have pretty much lived on bananas this week. Well half a banana anyway. Since I work out at 5am I don’t eat before I work out and then I just have my half a banana on the drive home with my protein drink which fills me up big time. Yes I know bananas are high in the fructose area but they are my fruit serving for the day and I can live with this since I am having pretty much zero fructose since I have cut out dairy.


Lunches have been salads that consist of lettuce, carrot, capsicum, cucumber, avocado, egg with apple cider vinegar dressing. I have been crumbling up the following turkey patty recipe or just adding bits of chicken breast.


Turkey Burgers
500gm ground turkey (i used chicken mince)
1 medium zucchini, grated
1 medium carrot, grated
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
3/4 teaspoon dried thyme
3/4 teaspoon kosher salt
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
1 large egg


In a large bowl, combine the turkey, zucchini (drain extra moisture) carrot, garlic, thyme, salt, pepper, and egg. Form the mixture into 4 patties.

Heat 1 tablespoon of the oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Cook the patties, turning once, until no trace of pink remains, 4 to 5 minutes per side.


For dinners I have been having:

Turkey Burger Patties and Salad
Chicken breast with steamed veggies of broccoli, carrot, capsicum, cauliflower and beans
Beef stirfry which is basically strips of beef with max chopped up veggies. I use tamari soy sauce mixed with balsamic vinegar for my sauce on top.
Omelettes with whatever I have in the fridge, tomato, avocado, onion, capsicum
Pumpkin and Carrot Soup (my mum actually made this and I raided her freezer). It has pumpkin, carrot, garlic, chicken stock only and it is great.


For todays food Prep I have made
-Pork with a balsamic dressing with steamed veggies and noodles
-Chicken stirfry with a lemon and balsamic sauce on top.
I will have these as my lunches and dinners for the week and will throw in a salad if I get over the veggies.



I also made this cauliflower rice which accounted for my adult moment when I changed the recipe and went all Jason Bourne and off the radar.


Jess’s Adult Cauliflower Rice


1 head of cauliflower
2 carrots
1 onion
1/2 capsicum
1 corn cob large
3 cloves garlic
10 cherry tomatoes halved
2 Schallot’s 
tamari soy sauce


1 - Grate the cauliflower with a hand grater as it keeps the moisture down. Place in a bowl.
2 - Grate carrots, cut all the corn from the cob, dice the capsicum and add altogether in a seperate bowl.
3 - Spread the cauliflower rice out into a wok/frypan on high heat and flip continuously until it starts to brown
4 - Dice onion and garlic and add to the rice once it has started to brown.
5 - Take the cauliflower, garlic and onion mixture from the frypan and back into a bowl
6 - Cook the carrot, capsicum and corn mix in the saucepan. Spread it out so it cooks quicker.
7 - Once the carrot, capsicum and corn is cooked place the cauliflower, onion and garlic mix back int the frypan.
8 - Add the cherry tomatoes and shallot’s and mix until tomatoes start to wilt.
9 - Pour to taste some tamari soy sauce


EAT


My snacks for the week are boiled eggs, choc protein slice (recipe in previous blog entry) and mandarines.


The kids are not too impressed with this new diet. Multiple times during the week the 8 year old has begged for McDonalds and the 2 year old has flat out refused to even taste what I put in front of her. They are apparently starving to death and this is the worst time of their poor little lives.


The husband says the fridge has never looked so good, as obviously him being a part time vegetarian it is really appealing to his man-gina.


So there we are. I need to get off the computer and start adulating again so the 8 year old actually has a nice ironed uniform for his school photos tomorrow and that lunches are packed and ports ready for a brand new week. 


I hope this week is amazing for you all xx

One word sore!

I am sore in places I didn’t even know could get sore.
Did you know that your belly button can get sore... apparently it can.
Seriously, everything at the moment hurts. I feel like a 90 year old woman who fought for the last seat at Bingo and came off second best.

BUT its a good type of sore, if there is such a thing.
Not the "i’m so sore because Ive been lifting my arm to my mouth continuously feeding myself wine kinda sore."

The 2 year old is not enjoying my soreness either. This is because the 2 year old likes to be carried and thrown around. She likes to jump on me and wrestle me and play this game where she is the  mum cat and I am apparently the “baby cat” who gets attacked by the mum cat and has to lift her off me with her legs and kick her onto the bed. I insisted that a so called "baby cat" could not do this and that I should be the “mum cat” but she just hissed at me and scratched me on the shoulder for getting out of character.

Yesterday, the 2 year old demanded that I carry her across the wet dewy grass  because she didn’t want to get her shoes wet. This is because they are her princess shoes (they are pink joggers). Usually this is not a problem because I know dem feels when you don’t want to get your princess shoes dirty. So I squatted down to pick her up and it was as if she had put on 20kg over night. I half dragged her/carried her across the grass to her screaming “higher, higher”. Baby girls these arms have been pumping 5kg weights (yep I’m a beef cake) and apparently they don’t feel the need to work any more!!


I am going to put it out there, that I literally have no upper body strength. That is not a comment so someone says “oh yes you do and your incredibley good looking too”… No this is a fact.I can’t even do 1 push up on my toes properly like chest to ground. I think I can do 5 in a row on my knees, but then I need to stop because my arms are about to give way so my face can meet the ground and get to know it better.

I also have no core strength. You would think that those fat rolls would want to go bad enough, to get their sh*t together and make me smash out some sit ups but NO they insist on making me look like an intoxicated drunk man trying to roll his way off the ground.

The only thing I have going for me fitness wise, is I do have some strength in my legs and I can run (well when Im fit enough). My legs have to continuously take one for the team and try and get me through my work outs… All I need if for my lungs to get their act together and I might be able to run harder.


At the moment I also have a terrible head cold and sore throat and actually sound like a transexual. 100 percent serious. 
If I was too put an add in the paper tomorrow for some phone loving and advertise as a 21 year old man, I would be raking in the cash.

I have answered the phone on 2 occasions, where people have rung ME (so they would be expecting me on the other end) and the caller is like “who is this” “I think I have the wrong number”. I honestly sound like a husky man and my husband is slightly terrified, especially when I start whispering sweet nothings in his ear.


The 8 year old thinks its fantastic and he is slightly to blame for this man-voice due to his behaviour in the last week being way off.  Apparently he lost his hearing because speaking to him in a normal voice wasn’t working and I think I spent my whole week yelling. 


The 2 year old doesn’t know what to think. She has insisted I play the role of the mean dragon, the mean doctor, the mean cat, the mean baby chicken and the mean police in our games… so I’m assuming she thinks my voice sounds delightful.


As well as training my ring off I have also been really strict on my diet.


This was pretty hard in the first week when I was detoxing because my head was pounding, I was so irritable and drained, I was having trouble sleeping and I was craving sugar badly.


However today I start week 3 and all my detox symptoms are gone and I am feeling fantastic.
Last time I started this journey I did it without exercise which was a huge learning curve for me. I will be the first to admit the thought of being able to eat without exercising really appealed to me, especially when I started to lose weight. However when I  went through my original eating plan from when I first started this,  I think I was eating barely anything. When I started to try and start over about 2 months ago after having a break from the sugar thing, I was getting no results and was actually putting on weight. I couldn't figure out why but I think it was due to me eating less when I first got into the fructose free lifestyle.


I know that eating fructose free is often associated with limited exercise, but the results I am seeing and its only been two weeks in phemonimal!!


My husband hugged me yesterday and his exact words were “holy sh*t” you already feel smaller” lets not forget the last time my husband hugged me his words were “your skin feels really tight like your too big for it”… (thanks a-hole).


I am not going to lie, I do train hard and push myself hard and as mentioned in my last post, I am doing it with a group of people and am participating in a 12 week challenge. 


I needed this to motivate myself because I was at that crossroad stage where I was feeling depressed, un-motivated and telling myself I was going to start Monday or tomorrow was just not working.


I am really excited to see where I end up at the end of the 12 weeks because my weight was at pretty much the same (maybe a kg more) as to when I first started my journey a year ago.


Typically for breakfast I have been having the following
1/2 a banana, banana muffin, eggs.


This was a bit hard for me with the fructose mindset to go for that banana because it is on the higher scale but I had to convince myself that it was half and it was my fruit serving. Having it in the morning, meant I was able to use the energy to burn off for the rest of the day. No fruit after 1pm is the rule in this challenge.


My lunches have typically been leftovers from the night before or salads with roast chicken or boiled egg. 


My dinners are steamed vegetables, roast chicken, pork, lamb etc. I have been meal prepping ahead of time because one word “KIDS” those loveable little bastards who suck the time out from under you. One minute you feel like you have a thousand hours left in the day to cook dinners and the next its midnight and you're a bad parent cause your kids are eating a cookie they found under the fridge.


My go to snack and pick my up is:


No-Bake Chocolate Protein Bars
Ingredients

1 square = 1 serve
2 cups of nuts (almonds, macadamia, cashews) c
2 big handfuls of shredded coconut
1/2 cup raw cacao powder
2 tbsp chia seeds
1/3 cup nut butter
1/2 cup coconut oil


Optional extras:
1/2 cup vegan protein powder (I use prana)
2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp vanilla essence
1-2 tbsp rice malt syrup or liquid sweetener of your choice (I use rice syrup as it’s fructose-free)


Method -
Blend the nuts in a small food processor or blender until finely chopped – as opposed to ‘roughly’ chopped. See below for a pic. I find if the pieces are too big the bars won’t stick together. But don’t blend for too long otherwise you’ll end up with nut meal. And if you blend even longer it will turn into nut butter, which is delicious, but not quite what we’re aiming for here…
Pop the blended nuts into a mixing bowl, add the rest of the dry ingredients and mix until combined
Melt the coconut oil and syrup (if using) in a small bowl in the microwave
Add to the dry ingredients, and mix around until everything is combined. Have a little taste, and add stevia and/or extra sweetener to reach your desired sweetness levels. If the mixture is really wet, add some extra chia seeds (or almond meal, psyllium husks etc) to thicken it up. If it’s too dry, add some extra coconut oil.
Line a small square (about 21 x 21cm) baking pan with baking paper (no need to grease it). Tip the mixture in, press it down and smooth out with the back of a spoon. Pop in the fridge for 30 minutes or so to set.
When set and hard enough to cut, lift the whole lot out on to a chopping board. Cut into 6cm x 6cm squares.


Recipe Credit to Griffin Personal Training


Seriously these are the bomb!! So much so that I have had to make them twice. Apparently the kids feel that they need this in their life constantly and then when people have been visiting, they also feel the need to go back for second and thirds when I put a plate on the table. I adore the hell out of them because they feel naughty but they aren’t. 

If you are not a cacao fan then swap to cocoa but I’m cacao all the way baby!!


I hope you all have a fantastic week and that your Monday is better than your weekend… 


Love Jess

Sometimes I forget that when I put all my thoughts and feelings out there for the world to read, that there will be people who know me and start to worry… people like my mum. 

Now my mum, bless her soul, is one of those mums who has tried really hard to master technology, especially social media. However she has more fails in this area then successes and it is always brings my brother and I great enjoyment.

Due to the way she scrolls down her newsfeed on Facebook, she will often like random things or friend request people by accident. 

I remember one morning I woke up to see that mum was apparently attending a rave on the Gold Coast and nek minute she was now Facebook friends with a guy that looked like he was in some type of prison gang. 


She has no idea how she does this, but frequently we will ring her up and go, “Do you know you just liked a page about some sex cult” or “Why is your friends list now half African American Males (we suspect this might be some type of fetish) and she always goes into absolute panic because she has no idea how the bloody hell she did it.


Her Facebook status is usually something like this : asdkj2;l3


So I often forget that she is able to read my blog, because according to Facebook, she is too busy attending Full Moon Parties in Bali.


Last night, I went over to her house and she told me that she read my latest blog entry and that she felt really sad. She felt sad that I struggled so much with my weight and she feels bad for this. 


You see the thing is, when I write an entry, its like ok, I can put this out there, but I don’t WANT to explain myself to anyone. Which is why I can be quite honest. When confronted with what I have written, I feel embarrassed and as though I shouldn’t be putting these things out there. However where is the truth in that. 


I know I’m not alone, I know people have the same struggles and I know that worrying about my weight is extremely petty in the larger scheme of things, when there are so many things in the world that people have to deal with. 


I love that fact that my mum cares for me and that reading my blog made her feel sad. I can relate to this fully. As a mother myself, I know that whatever your kids feel, will come back and hit you straight in the heart. 


So I want to write this to my Mum.


Dear Mum,


Thank you. 


Thank you for letting me be that chubby little girl with the smile that went right up to her eyes. 


Growing up you placed absolutely no emphasis on weight. Never did you make me feel that I was nothing more then beautiful. 


Thank you for letting me wear your clothes to my 10th birthday party because I couldn’t find a dress in my size. I thought I looked so stunning that night.


Thank you for encouraging me to be free spirited, funny and full of laughter. I have made so many friends because of this. Friends that love me for me and not the weight I am currently sitting at.


Without a doubt, you gave me the best opportunity to be the person I was meant to be, a person not defined by societies expectations.


I always thought I was beautiful and perfect as a child. When I looked in the mirror I saw nothing but a happy girl looking back at me, double chins and all.


When I reached high school I realised that being cool and popular unfortunately was connected to a number on the scale. I remember coming home one day and saying “Why did you let me get fat” and you said “ You have always been happy. Why would I jeopardise your happiness and your self esteem.” You then told me you thought I was perfect.At the time I didn’t understand and thought you should be handed over to the child abuse agencies.


Boys, discos and puppy love soon followed and I started cross country training. Soon I was a mere skeleton of the girl I once was. I was happy, but it was exhausting trying to keep such a figure. I remember when a boy at school was trying to pick a fight with me, after I used my awesome wit to destroy him in front of his friends for making fun of another student and he yelled “whatever anorexic” and I thought that was a compliment.


Through it all, you always made sure I was happy and would ask me  this constantly. Im sure you wanted to tell me to eat some bloody food, but you didn’t want to put that pressure on me. My happiness meant more to you then my weight.


As an adult I have made so many friends based on the true me. The me that was allowed to grow in my younger years because I was so carefree. 


I love my life, I love my family and I love you for bringing me up so that I would think nothing less.


My battle with my weight is something that I am happy to carry. It motivates me, it gives me clarity and it makes me want to be the best I can be for my kids, my husband and to get fit enough so I can wheel your big ass around when you get old. 


Don’t feel sad for me mum, feel thankful that you raised a daughter who can admit her faults and work bloody hard to make them successes.

I love you
Love Jess


*** The funny thing is, there is a huge chance that she will never read this, because no doubt instead of clicking on my blog link, she will end up clicking that she is attending the next Donald Trump march.


Happy Monday everyone! I have the day off and I intend to spend every second of it playing with the 2 year old.