Both wearing MAC’s lipstick Heroine

Hello!!!  Its Jenny.   Another week has passed.  Still going strong!!!!!  Oh yeah and Sara is in NYC….. again.  This time I am genuinely jealous.   Walking around the city sounds like the perfect workout right now.  Instead I am stuck in gorgeouuuus NC. This time last year you could find Sara and I sharing a pitcher of margaritas. Ahhhhhhhhh That kind of sounds amazing.   It is so not paleo though!! So  right now I am dreaming about the beach.  In the past , New years day would come and like most people I would make the same resolution to get healthy and lose the weight I hated so much.  I would think, If I start now in January, by the time June would come I would be beach body ready.   In that moment I was so motivated when imagining how amazing the summer would be now that I was thinner.  Welllllllllllllllll……………June would come and nothing had changed.  How sad that sounds now.  To know I was so passionate about changing and then 6 months later realizing I changed nothing!!!!!  WTF!  Ok so anyway …nothing would change.   AT that point I would think about my birthday, October 2nd.  I would have 4 months to turn it around, and look and feel awesome on my birthday.  SIDE BAR………….I talked about this with Sara last week and we both do the same thing,  have these events in the year that would motivate us enough to change our sloppy eating ways.  Back to my birthday………….It would come and again nothing had changed.     The next event Sara and I would want to lose 20lbs by would be our Salon’s Holiday party “The BObbies” in January. Spoiler alart….We didn’t lose the weight.   This cycle of false weight loss hype went on for the past 6 years.  I have wanted to change so many times.  So much time has gone by, and the time has made me really comfortable at this weight.  Now we have decided to actually change, and it is really difficult!!!!  Now a days I am thinking beyond the beach,my birthday and the Bobbies.  The years ahead are going to be full of meaningful  events and I want all of them to be focused on having so much fun with my family and friends, and not a reminder of my weight loss failure.   Thank you for all of your support.  Love you!!!! <3Jenny and Sara

The Bobies this January

This was right around our Birthday’s. Looking exactly the same!!!!! having the most fun 🙂

So here is a yummy meatloaf recipe I made for the family!!! Courtesy of Livin Paleo

Meatloaf
Prep 15 min
Cooking 45 min
Serves 4

• 1lb lean ground beef
• 1 egg
• 1/2 cup almond flour
• 1 carrot, peeled and chopped
• 1/2 red bell pepper, chopped
• 1/4 onion, chopped
• 1/2 tbsp minced garlic
• 1 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp pepper
• 1/2 tsp thyme
• Tessemae’s bbq sauce

Wooooooof! Jk we love it!!!

Happy Fat Back Friday!!! Although some of these are for sure throw backs!
Yesterday morning my sweet friend Nikki picked me up to go to a Bootcamp….in a warehouse….at 5:50….AM!!!! I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned this buuuuut, I AM NOT A MORNING PERSON!!!!! But you have to change if you want to change so I got my ass up even though Jenny and I stayed up late the night before doing our first radio interview (there is a link on our Facebook page Two Meatballs Get Fit) and I thought of one hundred thousand million trillion really good excuses to call Nikki and cancel…even though I was already up. I guess I was a little intimidated by the idea of a boot camp and there is still some residual lazy trapped up in this piece. But this sweet Angel showed up with throw back Thursday music playing and a cup of delicious coffee with count oil in it (yum!!!) and we drove off to our doom!

We walked into Marvel Strength & Conditioning and it was awesome. Jonathan, our trainer for the morning greeted us at the door and taught me how to use the row machine to warm up. http://www.marvelstrengthconditioning.com

Then we did a whole bunch of other warm up stuff…lunges, pivot squats, high knee thingies and then came the really hard stuff! We did slam balls(I think that’s what he called them!!!!) We had to lift this medicine ball above our heads then slam it to the ground, quickly squat and catch it before it double bounced….ten of those…then hold this ball above the head lunges…ten of those then a run with the ball to the end of the building…this was a brisk walk for me and we did all of this as many rounds as we could in the time allotted!

This is not my best look but it’s going to get me to my best look! Ke$ha was bumpin from the speakers, Jonathan was so encouraging and the other two people working out were super nice…even though it was six am! This wasn’t my doom at all…Nor was it intimidating once I started. I was mos def slower than everyone else but I didn’t fall behind. I feel amazing and I loved trying something new!

I would highly recommend coming to this amazing place!!! If you are in Raleigh or the surrounding area…it was so fun and not at all what I thought! I imagined someone yelling in my face…which is such a turn off to me! Don’t tell me what to do unless we’re naked! I feel sore but really strong and empowered! A wise woman once said you can’t be powerful and pitiful at the same time so goodbye pitiful.
To set up an appointment email ashley@marvelstrengthconditioning.com you literally will never regret it…until two days later when you can move haha! They also have a Facebook page Marvel Strength & Conditioning so you should check it out and like them. Have a great weekend Xoxo!

This past Sunday we celebrated Grandma Apple’s 80th birthday. For those of you who haven’t had the pleasure of meeting this little treasure let me tell you…she is literally the living best. When you tell her how adorable she is she responds by saying…I know! She is an amazing woman who taught us all that family comes first no matter what.

I find her to be a total inspiration and I loved nothing more than when me, Kristina(the pregnant one) and Kelly(the one with the little blonde cutie attached to her) were little and we used to go spend time with her in little Washington, NC during the summers.

We would make mud pies with crab apples, build cities in the back yard, make a slip n slide with a tarp, walk through the cemeteries and visit haunted houses. We were also allowed to eat anything we wanted in any quantity that we wanted it! She worked in an elementary school cafeteria and would bring us home school pizza…this began the makings of a future chubster!
Having said that, I wanted to show up to this lovely party that my mom (who could give Martha Stewart a run for her money any day) prepared to stick to my new Paleo guns.
I signed up to bring three dishes so that my bases were more covered. And my awesome sister made avocado deviled eggs so that they were paleo friendly and my fantastic cousin (I ask her everyday if she is pregnant…I don’t know why but at nine months it cracks me up) made paleo lemon squares. I feel so lucky to be surrounded by such amazingly supportive people!

Any who…here are the recipes and pictures of the dishes we made. Overall the day was a total success. There was a great turn out…I love my family so much, Grandma had a great time and raked in on the gift cards and I managed to walk away unscathed food wise from a family gathering.

The beautiful dessert table which would have called to me like sirens in my former life!

Ok seriously here are the recipes!!!

Red Cabbage Paleo Coleslaw (recipe courtesy of The Real Food Guide via pinterest)

Bacon, avocado corn salad (recipe courtesy of Recipe Girl via pinterest)
(Note I avoided the cheese on this one)

Guacamole Deviled Eggs (recipe courtesy of Primal Bites via pinterest)

Lemon bars (paleo)(recipe is courtesy of Delighted Momma via pinterest)

Enjoy!!! They were all delish!!!!!!!!! Ps Jenny says hiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii! Don’t forget about Fat Back Friday tomorrow. We love y’all!!!!!

I have never gotten drunker and had more fun with anyone than Sara Beard!  We are the happiest drinkers you will ever meet!  If one shot is good then eight are better.  This is very indicative of our former life, everything was so over the top and we always wanted more more more…always chasing the fun.  We went from doing this every weekend to NOT DRINKING AT ALL!  But like everything else  it wasn’t as hard as we thought it would be! 

I was always just in it for a good time, but Sara has made some sober observations and realized just how problematic it was for her.

“I am such a consumptive person. I always just wanted more of everything, good or bad. But with drinking came smoking and late nights, which started to run me down and keep me in a perpetual state of sickness, which only fed into more poor eating and an excuse not to exercise…basically I had 99 problems and…they were all from drinking.”  

We’ve decided that drinking can now just be a celebratory thing instead of a reward for surviving the week…or the day! Now our weekends are spent working out, sharing recipes and desperately trying to figure out social media (Sara still begrudges Twitter), reading books together (book club party of two!), instead of being hungover and realizing we aren’t 21 anymore. I guess we are growing up????  Sara and I have fun doing everything together. This is a picture of us early voting for example…We are clearly having a blast!

So it looks like drinking has fallen off the top of the fun ladder.  Who knew? 

It has come to our attention that we mayyyyy….possibly have been mentally poisoned by all of our failed attempts to “diet” in the past! We are really committed to Paleo and working out…a new lifestyle one might say, but nagging rules of our former dieting ways creep in constantly and fuck our shit up. Jenny and I both have been beaten over the head with the idea of a 1200 calorie a day diet…regardless of how hard you work out. Jenny still thinks in weight watchers points and I become completely obsessed with what I can and can’t have. The other morning Jenny told me she had 5 pieces of bacon for breakfast after a hard workout and she was riddled with guilt. Bacon is such a no no on any conventional diet! But a great friend told me you have to eat some fat to lose fat! I have been housing pistachios like it’s my full time job!!! I know I can have them so I fucking HAVE them! We have both been feeling like we fell off the wagon…almost becoming obsessed with the quasi failure. But we aren’t striving for perfection. There will be some dark days but it’s so important that we really change our mind sets and our relationship with food in general. We both wanted to make a big change that could last forever which is why we chose the Paleo lifestyle. Now let us be clear…there is no one right way to get healthy so if Weight Watchers, My Fitness Pal, counting calories, low calorie, or low fat works for you, we certainly aren’t knocking it. However neither one of us felt like we could live the rest of our lives in that manner. For us…it became such an obsession keeping up with all the numbers and converting serious math equations based on food labels.

Math is hard you guys. Not to mention the anxiety that sets in once you’ve blown your points by lunch…we’ve all been there am I right ladies? This is the least complicated, most simple thing we’ve ever done. It’s so simple in fact we are constantly questioning whether it will work!!! But it has and will continue to work. We just need to completely embrace it for what it is…the rest of our lives! We both genuinely know that things are different this time and we’ve never been so secure that we will reach our goals.

This was the old way we used to celebrate at work together. Jenny and I would have Cupcake Tuesdays…there is possibly fifty bazillion calories in this mutha. Now we do Green Tea Wednesdays and it feels a million times better!

Everyone has been getting soooooo healthy at Samuel Cole Salon which has really helped us stay focused! Not smelling Chick-fil-a in the break room is so nice! We used to get store bought cakes for birthdays but everyone is on such a kick that for our co-workers birthday, Jenny made the most amazing Paleo dessert! It was delicious and here is the recipe.

Magic Coconut Bars (recipe courtesy of Simply Living Healthy via Pinterest)(photos courtesy of Jenny)

Be kind to yourself and others. Change is hard and sometimes you have to cut yourself some slack! Also people tell us all the time…you don’t need to drink to be fun…duh! We love you soooooooooooo much.

Hiiiiiiii!!!! Well, we had a really busy week! We got naked and revealed our weights, which we had no idea what a hit that would be! As of today over 6,000 people have viewed us in our skivies! We’ve had so many people who we think have smokin’ hot bodies tell us that they would never do what we did. I’m not sure if we are crazy brave or total idiots but we made a pact to be completely honest…and this is as full disclosure as you can get.

We just had no idea that this was going to take off like this. We thought our co-workers would think we were dumb but that it was funny and that’s about it…and our families of course! But our clients have reached out…even bringing in swag bags of healthy snacks!

People we haven’t had the pleasure to meet yet have started following us on instagram and pinterest…we were getting tons of messages about inspiring people and words of encouragement…we were starting to really feel like our message of empowerment and self acceptance and the path to healthy could possibly reach a really big audience. So…we decided to hit social media…HARD! I have never felt older and more unintelligent than trying to figure out fucking Twitter! But we got our groove pretty quickly. The plan was to tweet celebrities who we admire, who have struggled with weight issues or who support healthy body image and try to get them to support us. We instantly thought of Melissa McCarthy, Oprah, Jennifer Hudson, Jessica Simpson, Gabourey Sidibe, Demi Lovato (this list is literally 80 people long). And we actually got some responses which only fed the fire in us to keep going!

That sounds so totally innocent right???!! WRONG!!! That is when we received this message:

Followed by a very stern letter of warning that if we continued “spamming” our account would be permanently deleted! So we humbly apologized…we just didn’t know we couldn’t do that…I mean what the hell is Twitter then (by the way, follow us @meatballsgetfit)?!?

So they reinstated us and just in time because then this AMAZING thing happened. Right before we got suspend we reached out to Susan Sarandon!!!

And she fucking RESPONDED!!! What a lovely woman and how amazing for her to take the time to say something so lovely. #arewefamousyet?! Cloud nine feels amazing…it feels a lot like getting healthy with your super best buddy! We have a mission people!!!! We want to find every outlet that will have us so we can speak to the millions of people who feel like being healthy, happy, worthy, sexy, confident or courageous isn’t for them! If we can do this, anyone can do this!!! Ok so enough soap boxing here! In the haste of taking over the world of social media…I’ve made soooooo many autocorrect errors…which is making me sound like the dumbest dumb dumb of all time. Zoom in on the Gabourey post. I SAID WELL YOU HELP IS?! Ugh!!!!!!!! Lesson of the day…slow down, you can’t take it back once it’s on the interwebs! Once again everyone, thank you so much for your support. You honestly have no idea what it means to us. Please help us continue to get the word out by following us in our many endeavors on social media:
Two Meatballs :
On Facebook(please Like us!):
Two Meatballs Get Fit
Instagram: twomeatballsgetfit
Pinterest: meatballsgetfit
Twitter: @meatballsgetfit
Vine: @meatballsgetfit
And also remember how we had 6k views of that one post?! Well we only actually have 253 likes on Facebook and even sadder…we only have 21 followers on the blog! Wah wahhhhhh. So if you could please go to http://www.twomeatballsgetfit.com and click follow that would be amazing!!!! It will ask you for an email address so that you can be updated when we have a new post. Thank you again everyone and as always, these meatballs love you.

Let’s get this gem out of the way!  Happy Fat Back Friday!

Supporting Brandon’s open mic night…by drinking everything in site and yelling his songs louder than he was singing them! #woof

Maybe this should be drunk back Friday! Hello tacky Christmas sweater party!

wellll…..

it was in prep for Halloween!

Now….onto the recipes!!!!  So Pinterest is our savior when it comes to exciting new things to try for Paleo!  You can follow us @ meatballsgetfit, Sara @ sbiddy5 or Jenny @ Jenny Smith.  But here are some things that we’ve made that were super yummy!

This is what we made on St. Patty’s Day so that we didn’t feel deprived!  It was an awesome meal.  Here’s the step by step! Spoiler alert…I copped out and got the Alexa crinkle cut sweet potato fries bc I didn’t want to make one more thing!

Super Easy Wings

The best wings ever!

This wing recipe actually came from my dad

Ingredients:

1-2 lbs organic chicken wings (I would get the drumsticks…they are slightly more expensive but I butchered my own connected wings and nearly killed myself in the process)

Favorite Hot Sauce (I used Frank’s Wing Sauce but I think I’ll just do good ol’ Texas Pete next time)

Salt

Pepper Paprika

Directions: Preheat oven to 400

Salt, Pepper and paprika the wings to taste…for me this was copious amounts.

Lay wings out on a pan with a rim. Bake for 25 minutes, then take out and coat the wings with your choice of hot sauce. Put wings  back in the oven for 5 minutes, then take back out, flip wings over and coat the other side with the wing sauce! Pop them back in for the final 5 and you are all set.  I like my wings on the crispier side so I let them go under the broiler for a minute or two at the end,  but watch out!  This goes from yum to your house is on fire very quickly.

Paleo Crispy Baked Okra (this recipe and photo’s we got  courtesy of Nourished and Grounded via pinterest)

Ingredients:

• 1 lb Okra
• 2 TB coconut oil
• Salt, pepper, garlic powder to taste

[Did I mention this is SUPER simple?!?!]

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 450 degrees.  Wash and thoroughly dry the okra.  Once dried, roughly chop okra and toss with coconut oil and seasoning.  Spread out on a baking sheet and roast for 25 minutes, stirring the mix once about halfway through.  Serve immediately and enjoy!

Dairy-free Ranch (This recipe is courtesy of Grass Fed Girl via Pinterest)
Ingredients:

2 cups coconut milk (I like this one) (full fat, canned)
1 tsp sea salt
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
1 Tablespoon onion powder
1 teaspoon garlic powder
1 Tablespoon dried parsley
1/4 teaspoon celery salt
1/2 teaspoon dried dill
1 tbsp gluten free mustard
1 tsp paprika

Always use organic ingredients whenever possible.

Directions:

Add everything to a bowl and stir until well combined.

Serve with your favorite veggies or salad.

This dressing lasts one week in the fridge.

Please Note: Don’t worry about it tasting like coconut because the herbs will mask that flavor.

dairy free ranch for pinterest

Raw Strawberry Cheesecake Bites (Paleo) (This recipe is courtesy Delighted Momma via Pinterest)

This was hands down the most labor intensive TOTALLY worth it dessert!

This picture does not do this justice. They were fucking delicious!!!

What you will need for the crust:

• 2 cups of almonds
• 1 cup of pitted dates
• 1/2 cup of shredded unsweetened coconut
• Juice from 1/2 of a lemon

Two Meatballs: The Day After.

You guyyyyyyyyyyyyyys! We are so totally overwhelmed, humbled and appreciative of your support! Your comments and acceptance produced genuine tears of joy. Sometimes when you are used to doing for others, it is so hard to do things for yourself. So your support helps us stay soooooo committed and focused and worthy of making this huge life change. Now on to the panic attack we both shared yesterday morning right before we actually posted our numbers! We were both so pumped up with the spoiler alert the night before, but when it came right down to it…actually uploading these pictures of us scantily clad and with our WEIGHTS posted for the world to see. We had a full on WHAT WERE WE THINKING!?!#$%!? moment. But we jumped…both feet in and you guys made it totally worth it. This was one of the hardest things to do. Man up and show the world. But we want to do this and we want to go all the way. A life coach came into the salon at the beginning of the year and talked about the things that keep you from reaching your goal. She said, “What if you got in your car and drove all the way to the Grand Canyon. You’ve been in the car for 3 days and you are now just a few miles away from your destination. All of the sudden a huge boulder is in your path. Would you turn around and drive all the way back from the Grand Canyon!?” Holy shit you guys, this was a game changer. So right here, right now…we want the world to know…JENNY AND I ARE NOT DRIVING BACK FROM THE GRAND CANYON. ever. This is a fight and we are in. Please join us and tell us your stories. Tomorrow on the blog…GOALS and RECIPES!

We are committed to the fight for our lives!