My second week of Trim Healthy Mama has passed and I have to say – it went much better for me than last week! I found my groove, took a break from baked goods, and added in S Helpers to prevent low blood sugar. These changes made quite a difference in my quality of life.

The Good

I picked up a few useful products this past week – Laughing Cow light cheese, low carb wraps, and sprouted whole grain bread – that made my life a bit easier. The cheese helped me create more savory E options, which I had struggled with during my first week on THM.

I’m not ready to say that I give up on baked goods (in fact I have an almond flour pumpkin chip cake in the oven – fingers crossed it’s edible!), but I kind of took a break from them this week. I really wanted to take this three weeks to play around with grain-free baking since THM requires it and doing so would bulk up my recipe stash for my gluten-free clients, but boy my first week was a crash and burn. I tried a couple of different almond flour recipes that were really flavorless, but powered through eating them so I wouldn’t waste anything. That burned me out a bit on my almond flour experimentation and I didn’t even bother with any of that this week. It made life easier. I have picked out a couple of recipes for my last week (armed with tips from THM groups online!) and I’m ready to try again.

S Helpers make me happy! I felt much better and had no trouble returning to my usual workouts and energy levels once I got just a teensy bit of carb added in to my S meals. It also made me much happier just to have the option to pick even one little portion of carb. Yay for fewer restrictions!

A very unexpected plus was that after I bought all of the expensive extra stuff the first week, my grocery budget actually dipped down a few dollars this week. Who would have thought?

The Bad

Honestly, with the exception of still needing a solution to grain-free baked bads (I’ve had more bads than goods so far), I don’t have too many problems to report this week. I have found ways to navigate some of the roadblocks I met with in the beginning, and my S Helpers have fixed my hanger (as in hangry) problem. Can’t complain too much!

The Numbers

S meals were definitely the favorite this week because S meal + S helper = happy me. I ended up eating mostly E snacks in between to keep my energy up. My average carb intake was higher (but not by a lot) and my average fat intake was lower (but not by a lot). Interestingly, I was much more satisfied with fewer calories this way, because carbohydrates addressed my blood sugar fluctuations and are also lower in calories than fat.

I gained half a pound this week – could be nothing at all (weight fluctuation is totally normal and need not cause frustration) – but it’s most likely increased water retention in my muscles. Last week I know my glycogen (glucose storage in my muscles) was low because my blood sugar was running low and I could feel the drag in my workouts. Glycogen and water are friends, so whenever your glycogen stores are full the glucose is often hanging out with a bit of water. Since my waist circumference decreased and body fat stayed the same this week, that is the most likely cause of that change.

What I learned

• Protein is key for satisfaction (especially with E meals) – Do any of you ever know something, then for some reason knowing doesn’t help you actually put that knowledge into practice? No? Just me? Okay. See, I know very well that protein is satisfying, but I was really reminded of that when I ate an E meal without a sufficient amount of protein. My stomach was a-rumblin’ much sooner. This is exacerbated on Trim Healthy Mama because fat is also a satisfier, but E meals are low fat, so ya gotta have that protein.
• For me, the “personal choice” products from the book are necessary – In the Trim Healthy Mama Plan book, the authors provide options for products that can make your life easier. They acknowledge that some food purists (those who like to make ev-er-y-thing from scratch) are not likely to want to use the products. I am not one of those people. I like to cook and I make a lot of things from scratch, but I’m in the middle of that spectrum, baby. I’ll take efficiency if you’ve got it.
• I prefer to have my meals be S (with S helpers) and snacks be E – This combo keeps my energy (in the form of blood sugar) up throughout the day and gives me the greatest feeling of flexibility and choice.
• Use spices, extracts, and zests to improve the flavor of baked goods – This was a tip from the THM boards I surveyed for help with my baked goods. I haven’t had the chance to test it yet but I’ll let you know after I pull that pumpkin cake out and sample it!

Disclaimer: This is not a sponsored post and I have no affiliation with the producers or manufacturers of this product; however, as an Amazon Associate, I receive compensation for any purchases of products through the links on this post.

One week of trying out Trim Healthy Mama is in the books! If you’re not familiar with the plan, check out my intro post here to get to know the basics. Here’s how it went:

What I Did

For the first week, I aimed to eat a mixture of primarily S and E meals and snacks, since most of my clients considering THM would use the plan to lose weight. I suspected that I might personally need a crossover here and there and perhaps S Helpers (small amounts of carb eaten with S meals) because of my tendency for hypoglycemia, but to honor the authors’ spirits of trial and error, I tried it for a week. I still have a few pounds of what I affectionately refer to as “holiday fluff,” so I’m not concerned about following a plan designed for weight loss for three weeks. If I lose a couple of pounds, I still won’t be under my normal body weight.

I also sought to test the authors’ claim that you can follow THM without specialty ingredients. For this reason (and to limit costs), I decided to purchase only a few things that I thought might be most useful (almond milk, almond flour, and pressed peanut flour). I already had THM-approved Stevia at home, so I didn’t need to buy that. Pinterest was a big help for finding THM-approved recipes, as the condensed version of the Trim Healthy Mama Plan book does not include any.

Read on for the good, the bad, the numbers, and what I learned this week.

The Good

Finding something to eat at restaurants was not hard at all. Besides fast food my first day, I also found an option at a Korean restaurant with some gal pals last weekend. They had a vegetable and chicken dish made with sweet potato noodles, so I ordered that and made an E meal out of it. I’m sure it wasn’t cooked in a plan-approved oil and I have no way of knowing exactly how much oil they use to cook it, but I figured it was pretty close.

The other really great thing this past week was that several of the S meals were really tasty. One of my favorites was this curry soup. It was creamy, delicious, and loaded with vegetables.

Other hall-of-famers from this week include the lettuce-wrapped burger,

this roast chicken thigh and cottage/bleu cheese salad,

and a pizza topping and Caesar salad low-carb wrap.

I was pleasantly surprised how satisfying the S meals were, though I noticed for me there is a delay of  about 15-20 minutes after eating an S meal before I feel satisfied. After that, the S meals held me over for several hours and I rarely needed a snack before my next meal.

The Bad

Baking. Baking has been so bad.  I tried making these almond flour strawberry S muffins (I added vanilla too) and they smelled and looked SOOOOOO good.

Unfortunately, they tasted awful. My family was as eager to try them as I was but theirs went in the garbage after a bite or two. I slogged through the rest of them so as not to waste the ingredients but they were a huge flavorless disappointment. At least the plan allowed me to put butter on them.

Along the same lines (though not actually baked), I tried an S snack recipe I found for peanut butter cookie dough bites. Sounded delish! It was a very simple recipe – basically almond flour, fresh ground natural peanut butter, and a few chocolate chips. So good looking, yet so bland. I added some Stevia and that helped, but I still had to chew quickly and wash them down with almond milk.

In the past, I’ve had quite a few baked goods made with almond flour (but with real sugar) that were quite tasty. I’ve also had a lot of sugar-free or low-sugar baked goods (but with grain-based flours) for carb control that were delicious. This combo of grain-free flour and sugar-free sweeteners is proving much more difficult to swallow than I anticipated.

Any of my experienced THM readers (or gluten-free, paleo, etc) have any suggestions for edible almond flour baked goods sweetened with Stevia? I need help!

The Numbers

What I Learned

There’s a lot in this category (reference the learning curve I mentioned above), so I thought a list might be easiest.

• In the text of the chapter on grains, the Trim Healthy Mama Plan says “[our] approach to grain-based breads is not to put a big X over it…We simply make sure that grain-based bread flours are sprouted or a sourdough variety.” I wrote in my notes that sprouted-grain or sourdough breads were okay, so last week I bought a loaf of sourdough. What I failed to do was read more closely in the list at the end of the chapter where they more specifically noted that E-approved grains include only whole grain sourdough. Whoops. So in the spirit of full disclosure, I ate several slices of sourdough that’s not allowed on the plan before a more experienced Trim Healthy Mama follower corrected my mistake.
• I’m not really willing to eat egg whites on their own – I just don’t like them – so savory E breakfasts were a challenge. I ended up finding that for me, S breakfasts work well if I want something savory and E breakfasts (I loved this banana split oatmeal!) for something sweet.
• Stevia (or some other plan-approved sweetener like erythritol, xylitol, chicory root, or monkfruit extract) was an absolute must for me to make E meals like yogurt or oatmeal tasty. I would not recommend following this plan without one of these options on hand!
• As you can see, I’m way overshooting my fat recommendations and low on my carbohydrate needs. Even on days when I ate two E meals and an E snack, the carbs only added up to about 75% of my daily needs. This wasn’t really a problem at first and I felt fine for the first few days, but by day 5 I started getting tired and my normal workouts felt harder than normal. On day 7 I had my first blood sugar low which (full disclosure) I had to fix with a slice of not-plan-approved non-sprouted whole grain bread for lack of other nearby options. So clearly, as suspected, I discovered that I am someone who needs S Helpers. 

I started that this morning by adding half of a spiced peach with my egg and the final two almond flour muffins this morning.

Overall, this plan was a little frustrating this first week, since I didn’t have more of the specialty ingredients that would make it easier. It did feel like I frequently ran into the issue of coming up with meal ideas that I then realized I wasn’t “allowed” to have. I plan on purchasing a few more specialty ingredients, as well an approved kind of bread, this week and continuing my search for edible baked goods. I do think this is a plan that will get much easier as I  get more into the groove.

Stay posted for more updates, research, and recipes!

Disclaimer: This is not a sponsored post and I have no affiliation with the producers or manufacturers of this product; however, as an Amazon Associate, I receive compensation for any purchases of products through the links on this post.

Alright, that title was a bit much. Sorry.

The Paleo (or Paleolithic) diet is really trendy right now. It is based on the idea that eating the kinds of foods eaten by our ancestors from the Paleolithic era will help to prevent common chronic diseases that have sprung up in our populations over time. Ultimately, the diet ends up including meats, seafood, nuts, seeds, fruits, vegetables, and oils. The diet eliminates two of the food groups: dairy and grains. Which, if you recall, are major sources of the carbohydrate we eat. It is starting to look as though our study of carbohydrate intake shall continue. The official Paleo diet website touts that this eating pattern will increase fiber, fat, protein, vitamin, and mineral intakes while decreasing dietary carbohydrate and sodium. The website builds in an 85:15 rule, allowing for three non-Paleo meals to be eaten each week.

I will be spending this coming week prepping to start my 3 weeks on the Paleo diet (start date February 24th). In the meantime, I will have to eat up all of the pasta, bread, and dairy I have lying around. Excuse me, I think there are some tortilla chips calling my name…