How My Husband & I Lost a Total of 50 Pounds Without Giving Up Dessert (or pancakes)!

Not too long ago I shared in a blog post about marriage advice that my husband had lost 40 pounds in the 10 years that we’ve been a couple. While I got a lot of feedback about the actual marriage advice I was giving- I was surprised to receive so many texts, private messages and emails asking how he lost the weight being married to me since I make desert all the time. I also didn’t mention that I am 10 pounds smaller today  (after having two children) than I was when I met Errol 10 years ago!

While I’m no health or fitness expert- I am our family’s meal planner and chef! I love the guys in my home with my whole heart and I take very seriously ensuring that everyone is fed well! I believe healthy food can & should taste amazing! No one should have to suffer for the cause of eating healthy! I also will emphasize that dessert is small portion of our meal plan. My philosophy is that if 90% of our diet is healthy food then we can have a thin slice of cake, or a small cookie a few nights out the week.

With all that being said I will share with you 9 principles I use in our family that has contributed to my & my husband’s weight loss as well as just having a more healthy lifestyle.

1. Start each day with a high protein breakfast or whole oats.
   

   Toppings going into steel cut oatmeal

   When Errol & I met he didn’t eat breakfast. Instead he ate “protein bars” when he was starving that were high in sugar and all kinds of processed ingredients. These bars were labeled as, “healthy”. Yeah right! I on the other hand go to bed thinking about eating breakfast the next day! It’s my favorite meal! I love starting my family’s day off with a hot breakfast -I feel like it just sets the day with the right tone and expresses my love for them. Here are a few ideas for hot healthy breakfasts that you can plan ahead….MAKE A VEGETABLE OMLETTE CASSEREOLE. They’re filled with vegetables and protein and can be reheated easily throughout the week. You could also MAKE STEEL CUT OATS in your crockpot overnight. I grease my crockpot with cooking spray and add 8 cups of water and 2 cups of steel cut oats with a little butter and cook them on low for 4 hours when I go to bed. When I wake up the oats are cooked perfectly and I add berries and cinnamon. There will be enough to reheat for the days to come.

2. Reduce bad carbs. I know I know says the dessert and pancake lady! Maybe a better way of saying it is be highly selective with your bad carbs. Like I said, 5 days out the week I eat eggs and bacon or a turkey patty for breakfast. My lunch is typically a green smoothie. And dinner… most nights I will make some kind of fish or chicken with vegetables. I don’t eat rice and potatoes except on special occasions. I love turkey burgers- but when I make them I’ll only use one piece of bread or instead of bread I’ll wrap my burger in crunchy iceberg lettuce. Instead of French fries- I make my family baked sweet potato fries and I’ll just have a few. Instead of pasta- often times I’ll make zoodles out of zucchini and squash. Since I have eliminated carbs all day long- I don’t feel bad when I have a small cookie or baked apples for dessert. Like I said- selective bad carbs!
   

   Pancakes on the weekends

3. Substitute one meal for a green smoothie. I like a hot breakfast so I tend to make smoothies for lunch. My favorite green smoothie consists of half an apple, half a banana, one cup of mixed berries, 2 celery sticks, and handful of baby carrots, a pinch of ginger, 2 cups of spinach, 1 half teaspoon of turmeric powder, 3 tablespoons of cinnamon with 2 cups of reduced milk. It makes about 5 servings so you can feed your family or save the rest for later.
4. Use your food processor to put spinach in your meals with ground beef or ground turkey. Lets face it! Getting your toddler to eat vegetables is tricky business. One way to do it is to pulse spinach in your food processor and add it to all your ground beef/turkey meals. Your picky eater will never know there’s tons of spinach in his or her taco, spaghetti, meatloaf or turkey burger. You will notice in my pictures that everything I make with ground turkey is green- well now you know why.
   

   Green Low-Carb Turkey Burger

5. Try not to eat dinner later than 7pm. 
   

   Crabbed stuffed & seared salmon ready to go in the oven for dinner.

6. Don’t eat processed snacks and food. I regularly have a bowl of cut watermelon in the refrigerator for the kids and my husband to snack on. Other snacks available in our home are cut apples and tangerines from off our tree. I don’t allow potato chips, bars and other processed snacks in our pantry. You are going to eat whatever you have so simply don’t buy them. Instead prepare healthy whole foods as snacks and have them on hand. The exception to this rule is pretzels. I use them as rewards in our home for potty-training motivation and other jobs well done!
7. Modest dessert portions. Let’s be clear. A big reason I make desserts is because they’re beautiful. It’s really an outlet for me to express myself in a sweet way pun intended LOL. But after I make the dessert and take the pictures I’ll have a small slice. If it’s cake, I take half the icing off my piece. I take all the icing off the kid’s slice. After a few days, it’s time to share the dessert with others. So I take it to my MOPS group- or send it with Errol to work. We just get it out of our house LOL. I consider pancakes dessert for breakfast and eat them on the weekends. So if I have pancakes for breakfast then I won’t have dessert that night. Finally make “healthy desserts,” like baked apples if you have a serious sweet tooth like me!I bake apples and drizzle a little butter on them, add a dash of sugar and season them with tons of cinnamon and nutmeg.
8. Avoid sodas and sugary drinks. Drink plenty of water.
9. Exercise. So I’ll just be honest here. This is right now a goal of mine- not something I actually do regularly.  However I found that when I run 30 minutes a day 3-4 times a week and do light strength training my scale goes down and my body is noticeably more toned.

As a bachelor, my husband had gotten into a bad habit of skipping breakfast, eating lots of bars and processed snacks and eating out several times a week. When I started making his meals regularly he began to see a big difference in his weight even though he was still eating dessert. Again these are just some principles that we live by that have helped us to lose weight down through the years. Try them out and see if they can help you with your fitness goals!