Recovery Part 3

PART 3: Recovery limbo and the Choices that define us

(**Now for this phase of recovery I DO have photos! I began to take them more often after starting an instagram account)

Enter a short moment of post recovery sunshine! For about 2-3months I actually felt like my old self again, eating pretty well, and eating a good variety, but like I said; quitting treatment cold turkey was going to come back to haunt me.

I entered my junior year and passed through it without much trouble, for the next roughly two years things seemed to return to normal. This enters the stage I call “quasi recover” or “recovery limbo” I was free from treatment, I was barley touching the minimum weight for my height and in my parents eyes I was eating. Everything is fine right? Wrong! If you are reading this and get nothing else from this post please at least take this: recovery is not just “eating”, recovery is NOT still trying to keep your body as small as possible, recovery is NOT reverting to eating only healthy foods in order to prevent any chance of weight gain. You may be a healthy weight but you may not be recovered. That was me. I was still terrified of food. I would only eat between 1500-1800 cals a day + exercise because I was still so terrified of weight gain. I thought that as long as I kept my cals low, and stayed skinny life would be good. As long as I never ate my fill I would never gain. I reverted to skipping lunch and breakfast all during my junior and senior year. I found a teachers room I could sit in during lunch instead of having to endure the cafeteria. Do you see how disordered I still was? I hope so because if this relates to you please stop now. I was not living, I was fooling myself into thinking I had beat anorexia while the entire time she had escaped the purge and lived on in a new disguise. A disguise called “clean eating” probably orthorexia (Which IS a problem people. It is an extremely restrictive diet that leads to weight loss, health problems and loss of quality in life. Just because you eat clean doesn’t mean you are orthorexic, if you restrict your quality of life and damage your body in the process then yes, you might have orthorexia) I refused to eat chicken I didn’t think was organic. I refused to eat food my mom made because it wasn’t completely unprocessed. I would work out for 2-4hrs every single day in fear of gaining weight. Eventually this began to take a toll on my body. It couldn’t keep up with this punishing regime forever.

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( Here I was the minimum weight for my height and age. I was 18 years old with the body of a 12 year old from my destructive eating habits. Ana was holding on.)

 

February of my senior year in high school I could not hide the slow progression of relapse beginning to grip my body. My mom cornered me about my size and weight. I returned to the doctor. ( if you follow my Instagram strong_steady you can actually see this part of the journey and my food 180. At the very beginning of my feed there is a video of my mom and I sharing a brownie sundae, that was the weekend after this doctor appointment.) I was given an ultimatum for probably the 5^th time while in recovery: Get better or get treatment. Gain weight or no college. Now remember how earlier I made the decision to recover? Well here comes the second more scary crucial decision making step in recovery; the decision to break from your disorder for good. Forever. No more skimping on food. No more obsessive exercise and NO more of living in a state of constantly being underweight. I was scared shitless. Even during treatment I had no intention of completely leaving anorexia because I had the notion that in keeping her around I was ensuring I never became overweight. To hear that I needed to end this toxic relationship, leave my coping mechanism behind once and for all. It was the scariest journey of my entire life. I felt as if I was facing a mountain with no summit in sight (it’s the cliiiiimb… ok sry XD)

If you have not made this step in recovery yet you have not “truly” began recovery. You may be gaining weight but are you fighting the real enemy? Are you really making an effort to purge this disease from your mind or are you desperately trying to cling on to your disorder? Because until this moment I had neglected the mental side of recovery and now I was facing what should have been conquered years ago. This is where the real fear set in, purposefully making bigger more calorie dense meals ON MY OWN. No one told me out-right to, this recovery was going to be different. I was accepting the fact that only I could help myself, only I could make this work. It was time to stop hiding behind my parent’s ignorance and start taking my life in my own hands. I got a therapist (probably the best one I’ve ever had), I stepped back into the arms of God and I began to eat REAL food! Sandwiches with full calorie bread! Avocado, hummus, peanut butter bananas! All those higher calorie nourishing foods I had started to avoid! Every time I ate it was my choice: make your calories for the day or face relapse. It was terrifying, it was hard but it was necessary. Some days I would cry others Ii felt invigorated! This was the hardest mental recovery yet and it was the most “real” recovery out of them all. I began to pray and do bible studies again. I had stopped out of guilt for a while, guilt at my constant sin, but not anymore! God knew I was ready to recover; he welcomed me back with open arms and gradually gave me the strength to heal my mind.

( My “gun show” for the instagram competition fitfamuary in February 2014 vs about 15lbs more on the right 2015 )

Slowly my weight began to climb. I monitored it and with each jump I fought the thoughts and carried on. I carried on because I had too. Because I wanted to finally, finally, have a life, And because I discovered one of my greatest passions! Weightlifting. I began to eat for muscles, eat to fuel, and break down my rules around “clean foods”. I started following lifters on Instagram with balanced approaches towards food (specifically gals who ate poptarts haha) and used their strength to empower my own challenges!!

By December of my freshman year of college I had gained 15-20lbs, eaten a poptart, and was eating well over 2000cals a day!! Personally this slow steady weight gain and allowing my mind to open up on its own was the best way to recover for ME. Could I have recovered faster? Could I have recovered on a higher meal plan? Maybe, maybe not. This was my journey and ultimately the slow convoluted story was the best way for me. I discovered more about myself through this 5 year process than I could have ever imagined. I discovered hidden fears, unknown weakness and un-realized strength. I found I WAS stronger than Ana, that I did NOT need an eating disorder to have an identity, that I was, am, and always have been the most perfect and beautiful form of Jordan. No eating disorder would EVER make me a better or worse person. Am I changed? Of course. I cannot deny that this journey has made me a completely different person than the girl I was 5 years ago, but I also can’t deny that I wouldn’t change any part of the journey to who I have become. I am a strong independent young woman and with every passing day I am continuing to grow. My recovery is not yet over and I am realizing that with each passing week, how much farther I can go, the fears still needing to be faced; but overall life is opening up! I am more free mentally than ever before and I am actually feeling alive again ❤

Thank you for reading

Recovery Part 2

Part 2 Entering Recovery; The battle for freedom

(pretty much the ONLY photo I have from during my time in treatment. This was my face on the left about 10lbs away from my lowest vs my face on the right; 2yrs post treatment)

Around November of my sophomore year my monster was a heavy burden to bear, having to hide it from the world and please it’s every whim became a crippling chore. I do not know when or if my parents noticed my behavior, all I know is that one day my will cracked. Snapping in half like a brittle pencil. My monster was so effective it essentially crumbled itself. I remember the moment pretty precisely, I was sitting at the table late at night and my mother was demanding I eat one tablespoon of peanut butter. I sat there staring at the spoon, something so simple, and I could not force myself to take a mere lick. Panic began bubbling up through my chest at the thought of destroying the days “progress” and the tears began to flow, uncontrollably, over a tablespoon of peanut butter. My parents, who like many turned a blind eye refusing to believe there precious daughter could attempt something so heinous, finally accepted truth. I fell into their arms gratefully, the weight of my dark controller slipping from my shoulders as I collapsed into the blissful refuge of others.

My mother forced me to go in to see my doctor and of course the test results were not good. (Enter the beginning of doctor after doctor after doctor…) It took them over four hours to draw blood from me due to how small my veins had become from starvation. After two needle holes in the crook of each arm, three nurses, four hours in a freezing doctor’s office and two needles in my right hand, they were finally able to draw blood. It would be two hours later that we learned my blood glucose was so low they normally hospitalized people for it. That night was one of the first my mom slept in my bed with me for fear my heart would stop in the night. This stark event stands out in my memory as the turning point from growing my disorder to being forced to fight it. The long drawn out battle for recovery. I visited a heart specialist and found out my heart was not effectively pumping blood, it was too weak. I could have told them as much due to all the irregular heart palpitations I could feel on a daily basis. (Ironically no one told me to stop exercising, they merely suggested it.)

My mother and doctor encouraged treatment; my doctor seriously encouraged inpatient treatment. She could see the danger my mother could not.( at this point my weight was low but not immediately life threatening) My disorder went haywire at the thought of treatment, a place with no room for restriction. I pleaded and wheedled until I got my way, digging my heels in like a stubborn child. It was so contradictory because for a moment I truly wanted to heal, and then all hell broke loose. I agreed to see a dietician and therapist weekly. The dietician drew up fun plans with things called “exchanges” and weighed me blind when I came in, (at this point I did not know my weight, I was a different breed of eating disorder who tracked my weight loss simply through mirrors. It is ironic to look back and realize it was treatment itself that got me addicted to the scale.) I took the meal plan in my hand, and something about having orders to eat made it that much harder to do so. That week I restricted even worse than before, eating maybe 5 fig newtons the whole week (don’t ask me why, I have no idea why I chose them).I began making peanut butter sandwiches in the kitchen in front of my parents and then proceeded to rip pieces off and hide them in my pockets. I would make any excuse not to eat with them because I had no intention of actually eating. I continued to attend Taekwondo practice and took runs whenever possible. No one had ordered me to stop and I wasn’t about to do so. Meals prepared by my mother began to slip from my thin fingers into the toilet and I watched as her ignorance was flushed away. Protein shakes mysteriously poured out their contents into the sink drain and I began the awful habit of accepting or making food and then sneaking back to my room to hide it in a massive ziplock bag.

Within a week my weight had plummeted. My dieticians face might have been comical if not for the situation, she sat on her couch, eyebrows furrowed, trying to connect my weight loss with my food diary for the week. I remember walking out of the appointment, with every intention of continuing on in my charade, when I saw my mom and my resolve just cracked. I began to cry and tell her how I had lost weight, holding out the waist of my 00size jeans a good 6inch of my waist to emphasize the point. We stood in that parking lot, scrabbling to hold it together, as hopelessness threatened to engulf us. The next week I entered Renfrew’s outpatient program in Dallas. A day program with therapy form 9am to 2pm.

Things only continued to get worse from there. The therapy was great however meals outside of treatment were not very strict. We only received breakfast, snack and lunch. I would eat there and it was the typical supervised-no-nonsense meal strictness as most other centers. I ate at the center without much fuss but inside I was still vehemently exploring any way possible to keep my eating disorder. The answer appeared to me at home. I conceived ways to avoid food when not in day program. I would tell my mom I couldn’t eat that night. That program today was to stressful and I couldn’t handle dinner. Bless my mother’s heart she knew not what she was doing, but she agreed. And for four weeks I attended Renfrew, ate in the morning and starved at night. That bag of hidden food I mentioned earlier? Well I continued to hide and stash food in it at home. I continued to exercise if I could manage it but by this time my parents were well aware I was forbidden. Possibly out of extreme frustration and spite I also tried my hardest to refuse water. Water. Because I was afraid of the weight it added to my body. I literally tried to see how long I could make it without water.

Friday of the fourth week they called my mom and I in, intending to go over my treatment. Renfrew was technically a post-intensive treatment program and was not equipped to handle cases like mine. During my stay with them my weight had continued to plummet and it was now somewhere dangerously below 80lbs. It was almost as if with every new attempt at treatment my disorder dug its heals in that much harder. They gave my mother and I an ultimatum. Send me away to Florida for intensive inpatient facility or leave Renfrew. That day was again, another moment spent body to body with my mother the tears flowing freely from both of our faces, a moment of complete and utter brokenness that I have never experienced before or since in my entire life. Seeing the tears streaming uncontrollably from my own mothers heart shattered me.

My dad reacted differently. He was adamant that Renfrew’s solution could not be the only way. He would not accept that there were no other facilities offering treatment. He was right, the answer was not Florida as Renfrew suggested, but children’s medical center. (I was 16 at the time and too young to qualify for a lot of other programs.) Children’s agreed to take me on as a full day patient even though they originally demanded I be full time due to my current state. (I still have no idea what my weight was and don’t even have photos but I know I was somewhere below 80lbs )

The first day I wore a long skirt and an oversized sweater, as if I wanted to shield myself from the new surroundings. They were the only source of comfort throughout that day. I had no control over food upon entering and comically my portions were much too small. I found myself starving after each meal and thoroughly dissatisfied. The food predictably was pretty foul but I had no choice. Refusing would get me nowhere. I ploughed through mechanically until dinner. They set down, in front of me, a FULL chicken fried steak, mashed potatoes, and gravy dinner. I HAD NEVER (and haven’t since) touched a chicken fried steak with a 10ft pole. I ate it. And then proceeded to have a meltdown so extreme in my mom’s car that she later admitted she did not want to drive home for fear I would throw myself out of the moving car. It was a full-fledged hyperventilating, snot crying, session of pure panic and it would not be the last. But it did not kill me and surprisingly, I actually continued to attend treatment.

Thankfully the next days until I received the privilege of making my own menu was devoid of such atrocities. (In an eating disorder unit, there are no foods you simply “don’t like”, its either you eat it or you are exhibiting disordered behavior.)

Now here is the first turning point in my recovery, possibly the light in this dark story you have been waiting for, I decided to recover. Me. I made the decision. Even though countless doctors, therapists and family members had decided long ago I needed to get better, it wasn’t going to happen until I also made the decision to help myself. I don’t know what brought it about; it could have been anger at all the endless hours in program and at doctors. Maybe I just wanted out and the fastest way was to follow the rules. Looking back it doesn’t matter though, whether I made the decision for the wrong or right reasons, choosing to help myself is the only thing that brought me out of a life condemned to anorexia. I unconsciously started helping tear down my disorder simply by making the decision to get out of treatment. The mind is a curiously powerful tool; and with eating disorder it Can be used for good or evil, you just have to learn how to flip the switch. I pushed hard to get out of children’s. It was a whole different me compared to Renfrew, I ate my meals without complaint (mostly, it was hospital food and I’m only human) and even though I stepped on the scale and saw the number inch higher daily I did not attempt to sabotage my progress. I wanted to, oh my goodness, yes! I would take walks with my mom (first exercise allowance in a while as my weight gain had finally begun to normalize) but to no avail, the scale still crept up. Even after deciding to recover I still had mainly huge mental battle like gaining and food to overcome, they did not just disappear. One of the worst was having to sit still from 8am till 9pm. I felt like a pile of lard just growing bigger with every passing day. But I endured, waiting for my freedom to return, and I was beginning to notice changes. I had more energy, I was not constantly cold, and I could behave like a normal human being most nights. I could smile genuinely again, small smiles but REAL. I could hold conversations with my family. Honestly Children’s kind of flew by in a blur; I showed up, I ate, I repeated. I just went through the motions so I could return to life. Hindsight is twenty twenty. My mind wasn’t where it needed to be yet, but in the scope of my recovery Children’s was a vital mental step (NOT because of them, their therapy was absolutely awful. T.T I didn’t ever honestly talk to any doctor or therapist there)

I began to feel happy again. At first in small increments, but then more and more often,things began to hold more weight in my mind once again. I was getting antsy being in Children’s. My weight was barely ebbing up towards the minimum but I felt done. For someone with good insurance I practically flew through Children’s, making it out in about 4-6weeks. And this is where I made one of the biggest mistakes in my recovery; I quite treatment cold turkey after being released from Children’s.

I visited one or two therapists in an attempt to appease my mom and doctor but in the end was able to wriggle out yet again. Why is this such a bad thing? Because like a cancer or another illness unless you have follow up treatment to help completely eradicate it you never know if it is truly gone and relapse is always lurking just around the corner.

( Continued in Part 3, recovery limbo & the choices that define us)

Recovery, My Story Part 1

Prolog: I’ve decided it’s time I share my journey through anorexia. I’ve held back out of shame and just general shyness, but now it’s time to let go. Eating disorders need to be recognized and understood by the general population so that less people have to endure them. That, and helping others through their struggles, is why I am finally writing this. I have no photos of my journey from healthy to sick to where I am know, so if you are a visual person sorry, taking photos of myself just wasn’t on my mind during these times. My recovery was anything but perfect, in fact I believe there are a hundred and one better ways to recover, but it is my journey. I encourage anyone currently struggling to learn from the mistakes I made so that anorexia cannot steal so much time from them.

Recovery Part 1 : Falling Into its Grasp

I can’t remember a specific turning point in my life, a day where everything changed, where I decided point blank to lose weight. The illness was gradual, like a slowly creeping cancer seeping across my body. I wove together A three yearlong sick masterpiece; laboring against Human nature to tame my basic cravings for food. There really is no obvious reason for it. I had never been over weight in my entire life and really nothing traumatic had occurred. Before this all began I was an extremely active child and loved food! My mother and father loved my sibling and I very much and by all accounts, I lived an average and very blessed childhood. However, I have always been an anxious and self-conscious person. Even in elementary school I could not fall asleep till 2am every night because I could not just shut my brain off. I always felt inadequate and insecure. If I had to try to explain why I had an eating disorder I think it would stem from a multitude of sources and not just one single factor ( even though many therapists tried to pinpoint varying specific occasions >.>). Depression and mental illness run in my family, I had very low self-esteem and I attended an extremely large and demanding school district. It was almost as if as I grew so did the disordered side of my brain. I lived in an environment where an eating disorder could flourish.

It began small, almost unintelligible, so small it took me a while looking back to realize it was the beginning of it all. I had forgotten to bring my lunch one day in 8^th grade (13 or 14 at this time). I realized that I really didn’t “need” the lunch, That I could make it till 4 without dying of starvation. I made a habit of skipping lunch, simply stating “I wasn’t hungry”. Don’t bring your lunch, you can’t get food. Easy right? Nothing traumatic was going on in my life, I just felt I was eating too much and needed to cut back. At first I snacked on my friend’s lunches out of extreme hunger, but soon that slacked off and I was able to make it till the end of the school day. I was still not fully in the clutches of an eating disorder; I can’t even tell you why I stopped eating breakfast and lunch, it just felt right. I continued to eat after school and live a relatively normal pre-teen life aside form lunch and breakfast. I was not underweight, the weight loss didn’t really set in till my freshman year of high school.

( here is a photo taken the summer before Freshman year at close to my heaviest and healthiest weight.)

Entering high school I got stuck in a kind of disordered limbo, I wanted to restrict and be “thin” but I also wanted to eat and be fit. I specifically remember watching a film on anorexia in health class and thinking “that’s never going to be me, I love food to much” how very very wrong I was. I was trying my best to avoid food but having loved it my WHOLE life I was finding it a difficult and confusing internal conflict. I told myself horrible lies for eating, food was loss of control, I was not worthy of such a delicacy I did not deserve to eat. In the beginning of freshman year I was caught in the continual cycle of fasting, eating (not necessarily binges), and self-harassment. If I ate I had to work out and if I ate “too much” I couldn’t eat the next day. After only a few months I realized something magical; my period had gone away. How fantastic! No more bleeding or bloating! Little did I know the implications of this occurrence. In my mind that is where I mark the start of entering anorexia and not just having disorders eating habits. I would restrict all day at school and come home so exhausted I would just sleep to avoid having to eat further. My schedule, unfortunately, made it tremendously easy to keep my illness a secret. I practiced taekwondo most nights of the week and taught classes or attended cardio classes at the gym on off days. Of course, every session suspiciously took place around dinner time. Practices ranged from 5pm-8:30pm, right smack dab on top of dinner. I ended up never eating dinner with my family sooo when I came home it was quite easy to piddle around in the kitchen and pretend to eat or just skip it all together. My parents were too trusting and naïve about eating disorders to give my behavior a second thought. It didn’t even cross their minds to see if I had eaten dinner because by then I had made my “healthy” eating habits quite clear and stopped eating anything my mom cooked.

By the end of my freshman year I was far from being able to pull out of this myself, as I found out that summer. I was totally wrapped around anorexia’s twisted pinky finger. The summer was a brief flash of sunlight, hiding the storm brewing for the coming year. It deluded me into thinking nothing was wrong. I attended a mission trip to Ecuador and for a moment, life was bliss! I surrendered myself to Christ! Ate with reckless full-fledged abandon and generally lived life. I fully expected to see a monthly friend make a reappearance, I mean I was eating so much! I resigned myself to the fact that it would return. But as the 3^rd week of my trip rolled around with no return of Mother Nature, I began to forget about it all together. (I did not realize how serious things were getting; even just minor weight loss can be devastating to your body) I returned from my trip and had an average/ if not too restrictive summer. It is odd how things can seem to hide from the world, slip into remission, just waiting for the opportunity to suck every ounce of life away. Not totally gone, but out of sight and forgotten.

( this was me (the left) on the Ecuador trip. It is amazing to realize that even at that weight I had no period and was still very unhealthy.)

That opportunity happened to be my sophomore year of high school. School began to become my biggest stressor. I had an extremely unhappy high school experience and it drove me further into the clutches of the only thing that made sense, anorexia. In the beginning it may have been just a way to lose weight, but now it became my constant companion. My escape, like razor blades to a cutter, starvation was my drug and I was the addict. It became my soul focus my one and only way of coping with the mounting stress and depression raging inside. If I wasn’t in a constant mode of hunger I was uncomfortable. I had finally beat my basic nature into submission. I had achieved my goal and become a hollow, deprived, husk in exchange. School was a daily struggle to just make it through one more hour of class. Every moment was spent trembling, every thought was of the night were I could escape from this daily struggle we call “life” in blessed ignorance of sleep. For sleep, no matter how short, was the only moment of complete and utter ignorance. No hunger no comparison, just a black empty comforting abyss. The torture was having to wake and begin the waiting game again in the morning. The weight began to shed off my body like water, and the sickest part was people would COMPLIMENT ME. I was a walking skeleton and girls would constantly ooze, ”You are so skinny!” in a twisted form of adoration. If only they knew the monster they were fueling.

The world became cold and sharp, devoid of all joy. The things that once brought me such happiness faded away into oblivion. Taekwondo became just going through the motions, I could not expend any energy on my practice. I could not think, I could not sleep, I could not love. All I could do was survive, inch by inch, moment by moment controlled by the monster in my mind I forged from fire and darkness. This is where I lived. This is where my vain desire brought me. I remember the nights waking up from nightmares of being stabbed in the stomach only to find out it was the persistent hunger pangs. I remember the cold showers, a way to punish myself further, standing in the cascade of freezing water chanting abuse to myself. I remember car rides, and the cushioned seats seemed to be made of sharp jagged stone against my frail body. I remember being huddled, unmoving, against the door, as my mother who did not truly comprehend the situation blasted cold air. I remember the blue nails, my constant companion, and wrists so thin I was scared of them. I would hide my depression through an outward façade of happiness, for a time I shifted my focus to fashion as a distraction and of course exercise was always there to waste time and calories. It was a black time in my life that writing about now I don’t know if I can do it justice. There is only so much pain the mind is willing to hold on too.

(Continued in part 2, entering Recovery; The battle for freedom)

Brownie Batter Pancakes

It’s Sunday which means more time for breakfasts!!! 😀 I was in the mood for brownies so I set out to make the best brownie pancake recipe! Not to toot my own horn or anything but these where, kinda, sorta, slightly, perfect! The latest where thick and fluffy with a decadent chocolate fudge flavor! Seriously if I didn’t see the ingredients myself I wouldn’t believe they were gluten free, refined sugar free and just all around healthy 🙂

Next time your craving chocolate put down the cake and pick up a spatula!!! Pancakes are king now!

Brownie pancakes

 6tbs (92g) egg whites

3tbs liquid sweetener (I highly recommend Jordan’s skinny syrup flavorings; I used salted caramel)

3tbs (more if needed) almond milk

2tbs (30g) applesauce

2tbs (10g) coco powder

1/4c +1tbs (30g) oat flour

1tbs (7g) coconut flour

1/2tsp psyllium powder

1/4tsp baking soda

1/4tsp baking powder

1-2tbs granulated stevia

Opt: kale powder 1tsp

Method:

Whisk all ingredients together until well combined. Batter will be thick but should be spreadable. Let sat and for roughly 5min. Plop 4 4inch diameter batter dollops (spreading with spatula if necessary) onto a pre-heated and greased griddle. Cook like a normal pancake till tall and fluffy!👌

Nutrition for 1 serving(recipe makes 1 serving of 4 cakes): 260 Calories 17g Protein, 37g Carb, 5g Fat

***Recipe notes:

If you do not have Jordan’s skinny syrups a substitute would be sugar free coffee syrups, coffee syrups, maple syrup, sugar free maple syrup.

The only flour I have found that can be substituted is the oat flour for either Kamut, white flour, white whole wheat, or possibly a gluten free mix

***note that substitutions will change the nutrition info and possible rising power of cakes 😊

Simple Banana Muffins

Last weekend I had an explosion of baking madness in preparation for my first week of summer classes, they are pretty fast paced due to the reduced time so I knew I really needed to plan ahead to avoid massive hunger crashes! One of the most neglected of my recipes was these Healthy Banana muffins, I did not think they would be anything special; I just wanted a quick easy snack. Boy was I wrong!! Each muffin is only around 60calroeies and I have been eating two each day before hitting the gym because they are just that good!

These Muffins are packed with subtle banana flavor, they are extremely satisfying and they are simple. They do not have to dress up under a thousand different flavor combinations to be special; they are perfectly fine stripped down to the bare minimum. In this recipe I was reminded that less is more and that sometimes the most unassuming recipes turn out to be the most successful.

Simple Banana Muffins

1 50cal container unsweetened applesauce (1/4C)

1/4C (80g) banana (for slicing and topping)

6tbs (92g) egg whites

1/2C Maple water or Almond milk*

1/4C (28g) coconut flour *(do not recommend substituting)

1/3c (30g) Kamut flour*

¼ scoop (8g) peanut butter protein powder*

1/3 scoop (15g) peanut butter banana protein powder*

1 ¼ tsp baking powder

1/2tsp baking soda

1/2tsp banana cream flavoring *(optional but highly recommended)

Method: Mix together all the wet ingredients. Add the dry and mix until everything is incorporated.

Pour into 9 muffin holders lined with cupcake liners (or sprayed WELL with nonstick spray). Top each “muffin” with one sliced banana portion.

Bake at 350deg for 25-30min *you want the tops to get golden brown!

Nutrition for 1 out of 9 muffins: 55.5 Calories .7g Fat, 8.3g Carb, 4g Protein

**Recipe Notes:

For the liquid in this recipe I used male water because I was out of almond milk and it worked quite well! Since this is not a very common drink I would recommend subbing unsweetened almond milk or 1/2c water+ 1tsp maple extract for the flavor

I used Kamut flour for its versatility and mild flavor. Good substitution choices for this flour are: Oat flour, white whole wheat flour, white flour, or possible spelt flour. Just remember too keep the grams the same (1/3c) and that this will change the nutrition!

In this recipe I used a combo of Metabolic nutrition peanut butter and Forza pro peanut butter banana protein which worked beautifully in the flavor profile so I highly recommend the same if possible! The peanut butter protein does not add peanut flavor but instead imparts a buttery taste J If unavailable try using the same amount of really any other available protein (except for an unsweetened type) Vanilla, banana, and even chocolate would all work well in this flavor profile. As always keep the grams the same and expect nutrition changes.