Finding Johanna

I have a secret to share: I hated myself skinny. I am a self destructive perfectionist. I am constantly striving for flawlessness, setting high standards and then I am overly critical in my self evaluation.  I am constantly concerned with other peoples opinion of me.  I have been on some form of a diet since elementary school. The world tells us “You’re the reason a diet doesn’t work. You are flawed and not good enough or you’d be successful.”  So during a diet you develop perfectionism to control/fix yourself.  The problem is perfect doesn’t exist and we continue to beat ourselves up in the pursuit of it. The perfectionist mindset it falls into every aspect of our life -so that we don’t feel successful anywhere because... PERFECT DOESN’T EXIST    I attached my self worth to the success of my diet/exercise plan and I became hypercritical when I didn't achieve it! Instead of stepping back and saying “your perfectionist min...

It seems that once you begin to train for a serious race like a marathon- everyone wants to know your story. So how did I, Johanna Smith Eppley, decide to complete 26.2 miles?  In 2012, after being married for a year my husband and I decided it was time to start trying to plan for a family. I weighed about 285 pounds and knew that I had to change to have a healthy pregnancy. I started exercising and lost about 60 pounds, then decided to sign up for a 5k just to see what would happen. I was NOT a runner. I don't really even know why I decided to do it honestly - I had never really run before. I didn't really know how to train properly, but in December of 2012 I did my first ever 5k. I walked most of it. I finished in about 48 minutes.  One week later we found out we were pregnant. SO instead of continuing to run I let the stress and exhaustion take over and I quit working out and started indulging my food cravings. Fast forward to my daughters first birthday. I h...

I have noticed over the past couple of years doing Whole30 that my body seems to react when I eat too many almonds or a lot of almond butter. I used to eat those Justins almond butter packets with a banana or an apple and noticed my stomach would hurt super bad later in the day. I would have a big handful of almonds and some olives and an epic bar and again my stomach would hurt later. My diet is somewhat limited so eventually I was able to definitvely pin it down to the almonds. Almond butter and almond flour are used quite a bit in paleo recipes. A lot of the things we have been eating lately use almonds. But my stomach has been REALLY hurting lately. So I have decided that if I have issues digesting almonds I should probably just stop consuming them all together. A lot of pre made items we eat use almonds. RX bars, a lot of the larabars, simple mills products, mikeys products. A couple of days ago we made almond flour muffins. They were AMAZING. Way better than the recipe I shared...

I love broccoli salad. It is probably one of my favorite go to whole30/paleo meals  I picked up some apple juice sweetened cranberries at natural grocers  Chopped onion, sunflower seeds, cranberries, green apple, and broccoli  With mayo, mustard, and a touch of red wine vinegar  Almond butter and jelly tortilla wraps for the park  I found these at natural grocers and they are really cool. They made little square sheets and they taste just like fruit roll ups.  On Saturday I made pancakes. I mixed three bananas and 6 eggs with cinnamon and a little coconut flour.  Pour on a griddle and top with fresh blueberries  Emma loved them!  For dinner we had teriyaki pineapple pork  Top pork chops with onion, jalapeño, and fresh pineapple  I seasoned it with shichimi togarashi but you could use anyth...