World's Healthiest Pumpkin Pie! (No, seriously...)

So, I wanted to play around with my Shakeology a little bit, and also give a healthy twist on a fall special: PUMPKIN PIE!!!

I recently made the sugar/fat-filled version of this for my eldest's birthday early this month, and I did it again but this time made it healthier than your HEALTHY morning cereal :)  He asked for some last night, and I served it with pumpkin granola sprinkled on top and a dallop of homemade greek yogurt. His words? "This is delicious! I can't even tell that it's healthy!"

Here is what you need:

1 can pumpkin

3/4 tsp ground ginger

1 1/2- 2tsp cinnamon

1 serving vanilla Shakeology

1/3 cup cashew milk (any milk would work, this is your healthiest option!)

1/4 tsp pink salt

1-2 tbsp coconut sugar (to your taste preferences, I used 1 tbsp)

1/2 cup egg whites

STEP ONE

Preheat oven to 425F.  Pour pumpkin into a saucepan, and on cook pumpkin with salt, cinnamon, ginger, and coconut sugar on low until it starts to bubble. Let cool down.

Step two:

Put pumpkin mixture in mixer, add shakeology, egg whites, and milk and mix until well blended.

Step three:

Pour finished pumpkin mixture into oiled pie pan or pie crust (I did mine crustless). Bake at 425 for 15 minutes, then turn down the oven to 350 and let bake for another 45 minutes.

Step four:

Make sure knife comes out of the center clean, and then let cool. Serve with greek yogurt and granola on top!

25-27 weeks pregnant

26 weeks

SO... 26 weeks came and went (and I'm now in the third trimester!!!). Gained 20 lbs so far. I can tell that about 5-7 of that is fat weight, which I hear is normal (past that is just excess!). So I'm not going to fret over that, and just enjoy the whole pregnancy process :) Here's the thing about being pregnant, or being a woman for that matter: you will be judged. Women will  always compare themselves with you and therefore put judgement on you. 

For example, a lot of women think I am small and have no belly. 1) this is false, my belly is measuring exactly the same as the week I should be (in cm)    AND 2) women exaggerate in their mind what they think their belly was OR are ashamed of the way they held a baby in their belly.

This is not healthy! In no way should we be comparing or judging others. I realize it's a way for people to make themselves feel better or put the blame on somebody else (i.e. "well SHE just works out too much..." etc) for the way they imagined they looked, but it is not a good mindset to indulge in. If I have learned anything, it's that all women handle pregnancy differently and uniquely. It is beautiful! OWN the way you do pregnancy! That doesn't mean you should own the fact that you just want to eat candy and sit the whole time, because this is not "owning" your pregnancy, it's letting pregnancy own you. But yes, let yourself have that craving every now and then, get physically active for the health of you and your baby, but let whatever happens to your body happen! You might carry your baby differently than someone else, or you might have non-elastic genes and get stretchmarks or have your belly button stretch out even though others don't. OWN IT. Those things you can't control! 

And I wanted to point out in a picture format why some people don't see me with a belly....it's called walking with a tight core. Ever since I started focusing on keeping my core tight while working out and walking, my abs naturally became tight. I didn't do any more ab exercises, I just let my normal routine all go through my core; and strong abs came as a result. I try to keep up this habit even while pregnant because I want to support my posture and keep my core strong without doing much abdominal work. So below you will see a picture of me tightening my core, and one of me letting it hang lose (at 26 weeks).

See the difference? Yes, I like for people to know I'm pregnant. And sometimes I feel pressured to look big and purposefully stick my belly out just to ease people's minds (people judge when they think you should be bigger than you are). But it's not an okay pressure, and I don't like to give up my posture just to put on a show for others. Womanhood is a hard process! We hurt ourselves by allowing our minds to compare or criticize. 

I'm finishing phase 1 of T25 this week and am moving on to phase 2 (beta) next week! I've added the weight routine from "How to Exercise When You're Expecting" on MWF because I modify much of my T25 moves and therefore need a little strength added to it. But I love T25 during pregnancy! It's great, and the modifications make it so I can do it any day throughout my whole pregnancy.

If you'd like to find out more about exercising while pregnant, you must get this book!

Pina Colada Shakeology

Up to week 24

This momma has had a rough summer! As commerical fishermen, we don't really know what our summer schedule will be like EXACTLY. Last year we were on call mid-June through the end of July, and only fished 12 days. We worked another 10 on top of that around our site. This year, we fished almost every day mid-June through August! It was crazy, and since my husband banned me from being on a boat, I was stuck in the kitchen as the camp cook. You know what this means for me? Constant eating. Let's face it. I gave up completely my normal eating routine. I was eating bread, and lots of it, on top of candy and all those baked goods I made for crew motivation. This is my struggle. I am not a person who can handle being around a kitchen and not constantly snacking. It was rough, and it really changed my eating habits for the bad. So I have gained an extra 5 fat lbs on top of the mid-range healthy pregnancy weight gain. YIKES! I am trying to get back on track by eating healthy and consistently, eliminating those extra carbs and sugars I ate. No, I wasn't eating out of pregnancy cravings or nutritional need. I was eating out of my bad binging and emotional habits, eating foods I actually wasn't craving at all but were just lying around. This is a problem. When people say "oh, it's for the baby!", I get mad. First of all, I know myself, and this is not healthy eating. It's a trap of going back to where I was before; an emotional binge eater. Secondly, if it IS for the baby, I sure as heck better stop feeding her candy! OH, did I mention she's a girl? :) So, I've started up with T25 and finished week one last week. I modified a lot of the moves and because of that I have also added the weight circuit from "How to Exercise When You're Expecting" by Lindsey Brin on Mon, Wed, and Sat. That brings three of my workouts to 50 minutes instead of 25, which is still not a whole lot of time to give! This week, I am adding in portion control containers (get yours here). My calorie intake will be 1800-2099 and I am ALSO going to allow myself a yellow container with whatever I want... you know, since I'm pregnant. That will be an extra 100-250 calories. Which is still within an appropriate amount for someone pregnant. Plus, this is a TRANSITION for me to get back to normal so I don't want to make the process extra hard. Portion control isn't dieting, I will be eating my normal healthy things (along with Shakeology! Getting everything momma and baby needs!), but I will just be reminded of how much is a good amount. I am just going to be doing it for the 21 days, hoping that this will reset me into my normal eating again. It's a very hard adjustment from letting yourself eat WHATEVER and HOWEVER much you want to trying to get back to normal. It's easier to never let yourself get to that point! I found myself very unhappy and self-conscious this summer, because I knew what I was doing to my body. I knew I was making bad choices, and those choices were not making me happy. This directly affected my relationship with those around me! I was not content in who I was and I was projecting that on to others. I want to be happy, healthy, and content for my baby! SO here it is... some photos that show that weight gain. Again, I realize this isn't an out of control weight gain, but I was NOT healthy and if I hadn't stopped myself sooner I would end up somewhere far worse. But those pants I wearing were loose around my thighs and butt during my first trimester...

All in all, I'm not worried about it. I AM going to do something about it, but most of that is going to be post-pregnancy. Right now, I just don't want to lose my eating habits and want to keep healthy for baby and me :)

Pregnancy weeks 15-17 1/2

Pregnancy weeks 15-17

You can see the difference!

As you can tell, week 17 is when I really started to show! I stepped on the scale this morning and was shocked to see I have gained 11 pounds! This is such a weird thing to get used to. That scale is NOT going to go down for another 5-6 months! It's a little bit nerve-wracking and takes a lot of reassurance to know that this is NORMAL. If you're adding the weight of a uterus big enough to hold a baby, of course weight is going to be gained. The scale no longer matters anymore. 

I have been eating normal and doing my workouts, modified still. I found out that my initial blood tests showed that I was low in iron, and I was shocked because I like to consider myself a very healthy, moderate person. I began to look at labels on food to find foods high in iron, and turns out that WHITE BREAD has the highest amount of iron in it! Being that I was gluten free up until getting pregnant, this low iron level makes sense. So, for all you avoiding wheat, remember to be eating other foods high in iron! 

We weren't able to see the baby's gender at our last ultrasound, being that it was sitting with criss-crossed legs... Come on baby! Open up for mama! We are going to wait another month until our next appointment to take a look. I expect things to finally start to feel real once I'm able to start imagining a little boy or girl! 

All in all, things seem to be going well. My sharp pains from the uterus stretching are still in full force, and I have found myself with random bouts of nausea early in the morning that wakes me up. But other than that, I'm feeling great! And I'm feeling like I need to capitalize on this energy while I have it.

That's it in the Nash world, can't wait to update with the baby gender :)

No, not even SHE is perfect.

It's funny how so often, so many people judge others who appear to them as slim or "skinny".  I know this, because I used to be like that. I was never skinny, but I also was never "HUGE". I was plump. But I was plump in disguise. My weight fluctuated so much, no one could ever label me as skinny OR plump. But I remember walking around the halls at school, so mad at the girls who were drinking red bull italian sodas or mocha freezes and yet were stick skinny, because in my mind that's why people were fat. I would think to myself "well I can't have that because it makes me fat, they're just lucky" (FYI those calories caught up with those girls). Yet the craziest part of my judgement is that I WOULD have those things, but because I was so conscious about it and telling myself "it's a splurge" every time, I acted like it was a special, once in a while thing.

When your mindset is one like this: "Today will be a day that I'm NOT going to have that" or "tonight I'm going to SKIP dessert" then you might have yourself a problem. When I thought was being "good", it was because I was able to deny myself something. This is not a healthy mindset!
The focus shouldn't be on when you will eat well and say NO to bad foods, but instead you should always eat well and decide when you say yes to those "bad" things. It's okay to do this! But the more you think of it as saying "NO", the harder it will be. Instead, focus on when you will say yes. It's a lot easier to remember when you said yes than to remember when you said no. This is the mindset that spurred my weight loss! I wasn't even trying, I thought I was in pretty decent shape, but I did change my mindset and the weight just seemed to follow suit.

I also became a beachbody coach and have Shakeology every day for breakfast, and this really saves me calories and starts my day off right every day. Whenever I'd have a huge craving for something I just KNEW I'd binge eat on, I would make myself have Shakeology first. Every time, without fail, I don't desire what I craved prior. Why? Because my body was lacking some nutritional element, and shakeology covers the nutrition basis. When your body is satisfied nutritionally, those cravings become less frequent. (go to my website shakeology.com/donicanash    or beachbodycoach.com/donicanash to learn more about shakeology!).


Now, it's great to splurge every once in awhile. My first couple months of pregnancy I definitely overdid it! I craved McDonalds and absolutely HAD to have it almost every day for a week or so... I was so nervous that this craving was going to keep up! It was getting so expensive and my pants weren't thanking me... But it eventually did. I went total reverse and McDonalds sounded like the most horrible thing on the planet (as it SHOULD sound!) and clean foods were calling my name.

The goal is to eat in a way that you maintain your ultimate desired weight on a 30 min 5 day a week exercise schedule. You shouldn't have to workout more than 30 minutes to be at your best body. If you are having to, then make sure you are eating clean and consistent, and figure out what is going on in your body that makes you either think you need to workout more or actually makes it so you have to work out more. Sometimes it's fun to do an hour long workout, I enjoy it! But you shouldn't have to live off of long workouts. Your life should be active and healthy enough that 30 min 5 days a week does the job! Choose the right foods and the right exercises and your body will thank you :)


For personal coaching sign up for a Team Beach Body membership at teambeachbody.com/donicanash

Vanilla Shakeology Frappachino! Best way to start a busy day :)

Yes, you live an extreme lifestyle.

I read an awesome book recently called "The Rockstar Remedy" which hit basically everything I believe in when it comes to health and fitness. In this day and age, our lives are extreme. We have much more to deal with than the average person back in the day. With technology, blended families on the rise, social media, cell phones, over stimulation, and working mothers and fathers: we juggle more than ever before.

We are no longer working just to keep food on the table. We have to maintain our electric bills, our phone bills, our gas, our children's school and extracurricular activities, insurance, student loans, etc; and still try to maintain a healthy family and life. We are more vulnerable to the outside world, can be reached any time at any moment, whether in bed or on a date, and we are mentally/physically over-committed. This is how life is! Not a lot of us get to opt out of this new way of life (although we are thinking of getting rid of our smartphones, bye bye facebook and endless hours of pinterest). Because we live such extreme lifestyles, we have to do everything we can to keep our bodies well maintained.

Detox DAILY. 

-Drink water. Lots of it. 

-Exercise DAILY. 30 minutes of exercise with 30 minutes of active movement throughout your day (laundry, painting, cleaning house, etc.)

-Eat clean. No matter how much you work out, you CANNOT cancel out an unclean diet. Yes, working out can allow yourself pizza on Friday night or ice cream with your kids, but you can't cancel out the daily usage of such foods. 

-Sleep! Aim for 8 hours a night.

-Give yourself at least 10 minutes of calm. Send the kids outside, have your husband do homework with them...just make sure you get this. Do a ten minute youtube yoga session, a mantra, relaxation techniques, etc. Make sure you are able to be calm! Never let yourself get to a point where you cannot just BE.

Eliminate stresses where you can, and live in the moment! Living such extreme lifestyles is draining to our mind and body; do not add any more stress to it by living an unhealthy lifestyle as well.

Grace and peace,

DNash