I have been sooo busy raising littles, you know how it is, right? Really, after the baby was born on April 26th, I didn’t actually finish a post until just this past week. He (Yitzy) is 18 months old now! Let me explain what happened… First, that pregnancy was tough, and after the baby came it was still tough. I was very tired all the time, and I started drinking a lot of coffee to get through the days. I tried making videos of the coffee making, but most of them were flops – and I was making a lot of sugary – milky drinks that were making me fat. After working hard the first 3 months after baby, I was feeling fit and my weight was a reasonable number, but something wasn’t right with one of my feet, I thought I injured it during labor. It was like a tendon was over stretched. I just had to be careful with it. Then, we went to Idaho in July for a family reunion, and I had a blast dancing with my adult siblings around a bon fire… but ended up re-injuring my poor foot. This time was worse than before, and it hurt for months. In fact, it was still hurting in February of 2019 (this year). It wasn’t healing, no matter how I treated it. I also was having a lot of eczema on my hands, my hands were falling asleep at night and I was experiencing a lot of super tiredness and brain fog. I decided something had to change. I heard about the ketogenic diet and in one day, I gave up my fancy latte’s and started keto. Sadly, 2 weeks into it my Dad passed away. It was a very difficult time for me, but one of our last conversations was about keto and he told me he thought it was a great diet and it would really help me. I really miss him, he was always so encouraging. After losing him, I was determined to get healthier, and stayed keto for 5 months. I wasn’t perfect at it, but I lost 23 lbs, my foot pain completely healed, my hands stopped falling asleep and my brain fog lifted. My eczema improved a lot, but didn’t completely disappear. I had energy, for the first time since before the girls were born. It was incredible! When I noticed the scale had stopped moving downward, I discovered I was pregnant with baby #5. I stopped keto due to food aversions, but have continued feeling well and energized. I am trying to take a Nourishing Traditions sort of approach to health right now, eating for nourishment, healthy fats and whole foods prepared in traditional ways. I am just trying to be healthy, feel good and make a healthy baby. I’ll talk more about my approach in further posts, but for now I just wanted to say how big of a difference keto made for my health. I am 5 months pregnant now, and I weigh less than I weighed a year ago. I have tons of videos I tried to record before my diet where I look more pregnant than I do now (and I wasn’t). Anyway, I did try to start back blogging, but one thing was really missing. I didn’t have a vision of what I was really trying to accomplish. Since I started feeling better, I began to organize my life; learning new time management skills, and really just putting together so many things. For me, Keto was like giving me a brain transplant. Like I finally can sort and categorize things and move through my day without feeling like it’s a dream. Also, Dad really inspired me in so many things and as the months have passed, I can hear his voice in my head, echoing the things I know about myself. I want to help Moms feel inspired. I want to help Moms cope with a growing household, little kids and laundry mountains. I want to share my unique kitchen systems, meal prep, meal planning and shopping strategies, and for once I feel like I know what I am doing and where I am going. I have about 8-10 hours in a week that I have carved out for this endeavor. It’s going to be me, a camera, a blog and lots of menu planning. You may or may not see my mess, my kids screaming or smearing things on furniture and walls or catch me spilling brownie batter on the floor, but I have things to share and I think it’s time I started sharing.
You will be able to follow me on Pinterest and Youtube (TradMama) and download my free weekly Kosher meal plans and recipes here on my blog. I’ll set up an email list soon, but for now I want to focus on making the downloads and videos. I want to make it easy for you to interact with me, and I want to inspire you to be you, so please leave me a comment somewhere if you have a moment to just say you are following or watching me moving forward.