What do Weight Watchers and Mason Jars Salads Have in Common?

Photo courtesy of linked article

After trying on some clothes this weekend and not having ANY of them fit right, I have decided to go on a diet. My diet will be based on Weight Watchers. I really believe Weight Watcher teaches me how to size my portions and also vary my foods away from TOO MANY breads & pastas.

I will be primarily using the WW App on my phone to accomplish this goal. My long term goal is to lose a total of 50 pounds. Right now I will be thrilled to lose 20 pounds. I do not go to the WW meetings and such is for lots of reasons.

1. I don't have the time to go. I am going to need that extra hour a week to plan my personal diet. 

2. I don't like getting on scales in front of people and having them record my misery or reward me for losing 1 pound. My reward IS LOSING 1 pound.

3. AND most importantly, I get into arguments with people at these meetings because I REFUSE to eat low, reduced, fat free or light foods and condiments. Why? Here is a great article to help me explain my bullets below. 

• Taste gets taken out with the "fat"!!!
• They take out the good fat and you are left with chemicals laden products instead of real food.
• They are over processed with artificial ingredients to cover up the bad taste and aren't even nutritious anymore.

4. I cannot buy their chemically laden foods they sell there or use their recipe ideas cause of my real food stance, so going to the meetings is pretty pointless to me. I stay accountable to my dear friend back home and that is enough for me. No offense to WW or those who use their products and low fat foods. You do what you have to do, but I cannot eat them and they literally make me sick to my stomach due to other diet changes in our family. That is a whole other post that I will have to write up.

 

I do not cook with vegetable or Olive oil because they have low flash points. These low flash points turn the oils into carcinogens when heated to their max (which is "low" on a gas stove and about medium high on an electric stove). This is the temperature which I typically cook my meats. I use Raw Organic Grapeseed Oil. I get my oil from Wildtree. Coconut Oil also has a lower flash point but that would defeat the efforts of me doing WW.


Ok, so back to Weight Watchers. I have to plan my meals with the "full fat" of the foods we eat and still stay in my points. This may sound hard, but I found it quite easy because when you eat REAL food that you prepare yourself, you are eating good nutrient rich food which fills you up. I stay in my points because I eat better food, instead of larger anounts of Fat free food. 

In walking through the store looking for lunch the other day, I thought of some really great salad ideas. I made one at my mom-in-laws house this weekend and she even said that my lunch looked yummy, but she doesn't have the kind of time it takes to make salads each day. Then I realized, neither do I. AHHH.

Over the last year I remember these salads in mason jars posts on FB and they seemed to be a pretty good idea in theory, but not one link on Facebook or Pinterest showed you HOW to make them. So, I looked up the How to and this is what I found.

I found an article that shows the How and Why to make Mason Jar Salads. It even has ratios & recipes for you to try. I have my own recipes and such but I loved the article. I thought I would share this article with you guys who read my blog. 

Whether you are wanting some new ideas for making regular salads or how to make it work for lunches at work, Enjoy! I also linked a page on Pinterest that I am going to try some ideas from. 

My experiment is to see how many different yummy salads I can make to stay within my WW points. Then I will post my findings here for you. If you decide to take this challenge, let me know in the comments section below and leave me a link to your blog / Facebook page so I can follow you. Good Luck!

Denielle

Welcome to Confessions of a Homestead Family!

We are so glad that you have joined us here. We are excited to see what God has in store for our family on this journey in our lives. Let me get you up-to-date on the happenings in our family.

Our family started our Homeschooling Adventure/Roller coaster in February 2006 when our eldest daughter was in 1st grade. Why. you ask? That is a future blog post and a very interesting story!

When our eldest daughter was about 10, and the other children were, 6, 5, and 3 we realized that there were some serious issues going on in our family. My kids were all OUT OF CONTROL! After prayer, paperwork, doctors and some really bad medication we realized that we had to change our diets to change our behaviors! So the search for real food begins.

After about a year of research and changing the diets of our family and a few friends as well, we realized that in order to make sure we were getting real food and fairly inexpensively, we needed to raise it. Gardening was already being done, but on a small scale. So we started raising a large garden, several laying hens and then meat rabbits.

Fast forward another year and we have 21 chickens and 3 meat rabbits with about 14 kits. We are up and moving about 3 hours away in search of some inexpensive farmland to buy for our new homestead. We rent a nice property about 2 cleared acres and a lot of woods. We continue our homesteading there with about 10 chickens and 3 rabbits. We had a great year and a half there homeschooling and exploring the area. Then we realized that this was only a temporary place for our family! God did some AMAZING things in our family and we are now in Indiana.

Currently we are living in the basement of my in-laws until the hubby finds a job and we can find a rental near his job. Around here that could be an hour in any direction from our current location. 

Now here we are homeschooling, gardening, cooking up some great food for the whole family & helping the in-laws with their hens and chicks until God moves us into our own place to pick up where we left off in Virginia.

We hope this gives you a little glimpse into our homesteading, homeschooling journey. We are excited to see what comes next for our family and hope you will join us for the ride, laughter, tears, accomplishments, and blessings. 

If you asked me 6 years ago if I would ever consider living on a homestead and raising my own food, I would have laughed so hard and said NO WAY! It is amazing how our perspective has changed. We went from a family just pushing through life with no real ambitions other than to keep our kids in a close relationship with Jesus & get them to graduation in one piece, to working on building a homestead that they can inherit and live on if they choose to when they are grown. We hope this will be a place where they can find real food that is fresh and grown with love! Then they too can share this with others in need!!! 

Blessings!
Denielle