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How A Hangry Grouchy Chunkamunk Survived Whole30

Last month, my husband and I completed the Whole30 (for the second time since October 2017). I did this for a variety of health reasons, with the primary one being that I was recently diagnosed with lupus and looking to reduce inflammation within my body. 30 days no sugar, no gluten, no dairy, no grains, no legumes. Which also means: no honey, no maple syrup, no fake sweeteners, no preservatives, no alcohol, no rice, no oatmeal. Which therefore means: every pseudo-healthy recipe people have ever given you is pretty much off the table.  I was terrified. I cried a lot. I made a journal that reads like a prelude to a serial killer's log of kills and body locations.  But we survived! And I lost 14 lbs and looked and felt better than I had in years.  Here's some advice and ideas for how to effectively survive and thrive on the Whole30: 1. Eat the same things as much as you possibly can.  This eliminates the need to be creative and cook 3-5x per day. My first go-round,
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The Not Funny Stuff

It brings me so much joy to know I can make some of you smile with my motherhood disaster stories. I promise that I laugh every single day in spite of the craziness that is two kids one year apart. But I've also been given a teeny tiny platform and an even smaller soapbox to climb on occasionally and speak my truth from. I'm grateful for that opportunity because as scary as honesty may be, I want to share the not funny stuff. From NBC and onward, I learned that living openly had the power to touch more lives than slapping a smile on my face and answering "I'm doing great!" whenever people ask how I'm surviving.   The truth is, as every parenting/mothering/toddlering/newborning blog will tell you, this time is not easy . It is really hard and lonely. It's squats and lunges for your character.  People say unsolicited things to mothers with complete abandon and total disregard for how they might make a very fragile person feel. I'm guilty of this, t
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Happy Birthday, Thanksgiving Girl!

One year ago, I was clinging to the hope that I would become the mother I so desperately knew I already was.  I didn't know what it felt like to have my arms ache so badly after a mere trip around the grocery store. I had never gone without sleep for longer than a few all-nighters during finals.  I still held onto the notion that I could never love anyone the way I loved my dog. I was praying for strength for myself and my family. And at this time last year,  I was also praying fervently for the first mother my daughter had. Then and now, I believed wholeheartedly in her ability to parent and raise this daughter of ours. I would step in and do my best if she called me, but I had hope for her, too. If she changed her mind, it wouldn't be a tragedy for that little girl. 48 hours after her birth, Amelia's first mother, who wrote OUR last name on the birth certificate, signed a paper saying we were her parents. Forever. She made the bravest choice and a loving decision for her
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Food Fighters Recipes

As most of you already know (because I posted a lot and because I am loud), I was featured on the episode of Food Fighters on NBC last night. It was an incredible experience, and I owe a tremendous amount of gratitude to the wonderful crew, casting, and production teams at NBC. Below are the recipes I cooked on the show. For info on how to take a cooking class on these recipes, send me an email at mama@mamasgottaeat.com! Thanks for watching! check out my Food Fighters recipes here!
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Six Months

When I think about the fact that, as of today, I've been a mother for six months, I feel surprised. Such a short period of time, and yet it contains a lengthy list of changes. I was a mom long before I ever had a child that shared my last name. So is every other woman who longs for a child but cannot or has not been able to have one. It seems as if there is no way someone that was so recently a teeny tiny bundle of cells could change my life so completely in only half a year. But she did.  And now, here we are, preparing for another baby to arrive by Christmas. I know the general opinion on a pregnancy after adoption is that we should be overjoyed at such a miracle. Don't get me wrong- WE ARE. But, I made peace with my infertility diagnosis. When Millie was born, my need to conceive a child of my own evaporated. I saw her as my own daughter, no different than if I had given birth to her myself, and it didn't matter that she didn't share mine or Eric's physical fe
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Only One

Millie's birth mother and I have recently been commiserating over how much Kanye West's song "Only One" makes us both cry. I suspect she cries because it's written from the perspective of Kanye's mother, who won't be there for every  moment with his daughter, so he's picturing her telling him to tell his daughter about her. We tell Millie about her every day, and the part about God sending him two angels instead of one? That's how I feel about her birth mother and Millie. For me, I cry because this little baby is my whole world, she's my only child, and I waited and prayed for her for so long. And I cry because, open adoption or not, there is a big "what if" in our lives. What if she's our only one? What if God has given us just this one opportunity to be parents? I've mentioned before that I am an only child. I remember being asked if I had siblings as a child, and when I said no, the response was always, always, ALWAYS a
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7 Things I'm So Glad I Ignored About Parenting Lists

For two years before our daughter Amelia was born and we adopted her, I scoured Pinterest and the internet for articles about parenthood. I wanted the cold hard truth, the whole story, as told by other women who were just as excited and terrified of becoming mothers as I was. I gravitated towards the buzzfeed generation's style of writing; seeing things written out as a concise list gives me an inexplicable sense of organized excitement. "20 Things No One Tells You About Motherhood" "35 Dads Who Have Totally Nailed This Parenting Thing" "42 People Who Might Be Parents or Might Be Stock Photos" "19 Reasons to Have a Kid for the Tax Deduction" "How Infertility Changed Me- a Story By a Slice of Pizza". Most of those article names are things I made up but in my two year stretch of trying to conceive obsession, I honestly would've clicked on every single link. But out of all those articles and lists that I actually read, I don
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