Tag: Eating Healthy

Snack Attack

I have been eating pretty healthy for a while now and have hit a 40 day streak tracking my food intake on My Fitness Pal. I was reviewing my data today and realized I eat about the same amount of calories in snacks as I do for each meal! I wasn’t sure if I should be horrified but decided to just take it in stride. My overall caloric intake is fine and I am happy thrilled with my current weight! I have been using the My Fitness Pal App on and off for a few years but have never been so consistent with it.  In addition to getting a glimpse at my calories, protein, carbohydrate, fat, fiber and sugar intake, I find it helps me to see how the food I eat affects my body. There is a section at the end of each day for notes and I use that to jot down any symptoms I feel during the day; allowing me to recognize patterns of eating and how I feel. 

Eating healthy takes a bit of planning but it can be fun and oh so good for you. When I work less than 6 hours at the Nursing Home, I don’t bring lunch but I always bring a couple of snacks. In the refrigerator at work, they put in leftover employee lunches all individually wrapped and free for the taking. It isn’t usually good or food I would typically eat. When I forget to bring my snacks, I start foraging for something to eat and end up wolfing down something I would not have even considered putting in my mouth if I had just brought something decent from home!

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A Match Made in Heaven

I grew up in the 1970’s and 1980’s when processed food, T.V. dinners and fast food were the norm.

Nobody told Mother Fran though! She was ahead of her time when it came to ensuring her family ate healthy meals.

Not in Mother Fran’s House!

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My Salad is Prettier Than Your’s

If I ask you to close your eyes and picture a salad – what do you see?

Some of you are picturing a simple wedge of iceberg lettuce with dressing poured over it. Some of you are picturing lettuce topped with a few vegetables like tomatoes and carrots. In my house growing up, salad was some type of green leafy vegetable topped with tomato, carrot, cucumbers and onion. Everybody knows salad is healthy and good for you. But it doesn’t have to be boring.

Salad doesn’t have to be boring

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Hit the Reset Button

I completed my first Whole30 in 2017 and since that time have continued to eat in the manner the program taught me most of the last year. Since that time, I primarily eat lots of fresh and frozen vegetables along with some fruit. I eat plenty of eggs, avocados, nuts and seeds. I eat fish, chicken and some meat. I use coconut oil, coconut milk, avocado oil and vinegar along with spices. I rarely eat bread, pasta, rice or dairy. Don’t get me wrong, a few foods and beverages did creep back into my meal planning that are not compliant including beer, wine and dark chocolate. Yes, these are a few of my favorite things!

Beer, wine, and dark chocolate are the 3 foods I have trouble eliminating from my diet for more than 30 days. For the entire month of January and for 1 month last year, I did it. Mission accomplished.

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The Struggle is Real

With the exception of eating out on occasion, we cook and eat pretty much all meals from scratch. Needless to say, there is a lot of chopping, dicing, peeling, and mixing going on in my kitchen. Once the prep work is done I am sauteing, roasting, baking and frying my food until it is ready to devour. I read plenty of articles that say that it is expensive to eat real food. That one reason people eat prepared foods, fast food and junk food is because it is cheaper than healthy food.

I can’t quite wrap my head around that argument.

Prepared food, fast food and junk food are not in the same category as real food. They contain copious amounts of sugar, salt, hydrogenated oils and refined flour. Folks who subsist on this “food” are often overfed but undernourished. They take in too many calories but don’t get adequate nutrition. Did you know you can be morbidly obese and malnourished at the same time? When we eat like this we are gaining weight but starving for the vitamins, minerals, phytonutrients that our bodies require for health. Over 60% of us are considered overweight in this country.

The struggle for health is real

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I’m Clucking Like a Chicken!

When I did my first Whole30 back in January 2016, I found breakfast a pretty easy meal to plan. Eggs were allowed and encouraged and you can eat as many as you want. So, I ate eggs pretty much every single day with a variety of vegetables and some healthy avocado.

I continue to eat plenty of eggs  and am concerned that I will get tired of them as I gear up for my next Whole30 that begins January 1st! Mother Fran told me I was going to start clucking like a chicken if I don’t figure out other breakfast foods!

I don’t want to cluck

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Are You Ready?

Any change in eating habits can be easily derailed by a stressful day, bad news, hunger pangs or brownies that keep calling you from the cabinet.  It is time to do some preparation in order to get ready for our Whole30 that begins on January 1st.  Are you ready to get healthy? In my last post, I asked you to join me in choosing health!  My first recommendation is to remove all food from your refrigerator and kitchen cabinets that you will be eliminating on the Whole30 eating plan.

You would think this would be easy but you will need to read the ingredient label on every box, can and bag of food in the house! Watch out for sugar in your spaghetti sauce, soy in your canned tuna fish and sulfites in your vinegar. In this post I wrote about unexpected places you might find sugar lurking in your kitchen.

Box up the brownie mix, flour, sugar, cereal, oatmeal along with the 10 boxes of pasta that were on sale 5 for $5 bucks. No sugar and grains for the month of January! Give away the mayonnaise made with canola oil, the crackers with soybean oil, half and half as well as the blocks of cheddar.  We won’t be eating vegetable oils or dairy.

I thought eliminating pasta would be tough… No big deal!

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