noelle's ~healthy eating escapades
May. 4th, 2013 09:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
naushikaFor about the past two months I've been trying to eat healthy and good and all that jazz. Behind the cut is pretty much a tl;dr about the changes I've made to my diet (and some of my feelings about "dieting"). Also pictures of food!
My eating plan
Paleo/Low-carb.
Essentially.
To break it down a little: Paleo (from paleolithic) is a way of eating that is meant to emulate how our paleolithic ancestors would have eaten. Back then it was a lot of protein and vegetables, and not much of anything else, ESPECIALLY grains. Now, the paleo movement is not something I really align with 100%. Because it's not just that they think grains shouldn't be in the human diet, it's that they think wheat is literally a poison to the human body. lol. I think they just take it TOO far. They also have some strange views, imo, about dairy and fats. But I agree with the broad strokes of paleo: proteins and vegetables, fruits, and some fats. No-processed-foods whatsoever is the ideological goal but this is a modern world and unless you're living in the mountains and grow your own food 100% you probably won't achieve this objective.
Dovetailing into paleo is low-carb. Paleo itself is NOT a low-carb way of eating; it CAN be, but it doesn't have to. I've married it with low-carb, which for me means, 100 grams of carbs or less per day. (50grams of carbs or less per day and you start getting into a keto diet (ketogenic) which puts the body into ketosis.)
Why low-carb? Well I could write a huge essay about the subject and also it's a very controversial subject at the moment. After reviewing evidence and listening to arguments from all sides of the nutritional dialogue, I've come to the conclusion that the most likely correct one is that a diet of low-carb, low-grain foods is most nutritionally sound for humans.
I have some links with more information because I'm not an expert and I can't explain this stuff better than where I got my info.
To find out more about low-carb eating in general, and also for some information about the scams and corruption that gave us such ineffectual and incorrect ideals like the food pyramid (which even science has admitted was incorrect and gotten rid of), watch the documentary Fat Head with Tom Naughton. Watch it on Hulu here or YouTube here. Now, I don't take every word in this documentary as gospel but a lot of it is on point, and I first saw this documentary like 3 years ago and its content has stewed in the back of my mind ever since then. But new studies and ways of thought pop up every now and again that seem to reinforce quite a lot of what Tom Naughton has to say. This documentary is not my be-all end-all source of information or opinions, but it started it for me and got me thinking about a lot of things.
A good overall FAQ on what paleo is, and a slightly more detailed FAQ. These pages include some of the stuff about how grains hurt the human body. No comment from me, read it yourself and decide if you agree with that or not. Also note, no dairy at all is "allowed." Again a place where I part ways with paleo.
Here's a fairly objective article from WebMD about low-carb. I find it interesting to note that they reference the Institute of Medicine recommends a daily carb amount of 130grams, only a little above what I am doing. The article also repeats the same-old same-old argument from nutritionists that the only thing that matters is calories. I agree calories have an impact but I think the carbs are the key factor vs calories. (See: the Fat Head documentary for more on that.)
(And if you're curious about keto, here is info on that.)
Already tl;dr. So break it down, what does your diet actually look like?
Things I have cut out:
- Almost all processed foods. Nothing from boxes, packets, cans, mixes, etc. Ideally, I'd cut out ALL processed foods but I am only human and I still rely on a) convenience and b) sometimes eating the foods I've grown up loving to eat.
- Nearly all grains. Things like bread/pasta/biscuits/cookies/pancakes etc are all rare treats. I save them for if I'm going out to eat, am having a special meal, or am eating at someone else's house and am not gonna be like I DEMAND A CARB-FREE MEAL. lol. So I'm having these things a handful of times a month. And when I do, I try to keep it reasonable and within my personal guideline of 100g of carbs per day. Sometimes I buy low-carb wraps for mexican foods or sandwich wraps.
- Nearly all sugar. Even before I decided to do this new lifestyle I didn't have a ton of sugar. E.g., I've been drinking diet-only sodas for years now. But I've also cut out a lot of candy and cookies and so on that I used to eat. I've been using sucralose (brand names Splenda or EZ-Sweetz) for sweetening which is a sugar substitute. However I am mildly allergic to sucralose (or something that is mixed in with the sucralose products) because I get rashes when I eat too much. So really I don't eat many sweet things at all.
- Empty starches. Mostly this encompasses potatoes and corn. Potato is actually VERY nutritionally dense, however, it's processed by the body SO quickly because it is a simple starch that it spikes your blood sugar worse than pure sugar. Corn is not nearly as nutritionally dense as potato and is high in sugar so I've just cut it out entirely. Plus it's boring, I'm not a fan of corn anyway.
So what's left?
- Almost every vegetable on the planet. I eat a lot of brussels sprouts, spinach, salads, sweet potatoes, asparagus, squash, greens, peppers, carrots, celery, avocado, broccoli, etc etc.
- Proteinsssss. Beef, pork, chicken, and so on. Sometimes I try to get some fish and stuff in there. Which you should do anyway, I hear they got omega 3 or whatever. I really don't know. But I live in the desert so I always kind of look with suspect at the fish at the market. Sometimes I get shrimp.
- Fruit. Of course! I don't eat that much because they are SUPER sugar-carby. But fruits have nutrients and are delicious and often are a good way to get a sweet fix. Basically any fruit goes though I've become addicted to Fuji apples lately. I eat several a week. I also get frozen fruits (strawberries, peaches, blueberries) and mix it in yogurt.
- Fat. Fats are good for you. Moderation in all things, of course, and that's where something like Atkins can possibly be harmful (where Atkins insinuates you can eat a pound of bacon every day and you're healthy and great.. I wouldn't go that far). I don't fear fats. Because I've cut out so much processed stuff and most of my meals are protein + veggies, which I think is pretty frigging healthy even if you think all the paleo/low-carb stuff is nonsense, I have no qualms about slathering butter on my veggies or frying my egg in bacon fat or whatever.
- Occasional treats. A lot of the low-carb community is hell-bent on making analogs for now-off-limits high-carbs foods. If you need that to make the eating style work for you, ok, but for me personally, by eating an analog of a high-carb food, it puts me way too close to the real thing. Like a lot of people use coconut or almond flour to make simulated baked goods; they have like half the carbs of stuff made with all-purpose flour but are very similar in taste/texture. I find that that's just way too close to the real thing for me. Instead of a hop, skip, and jump back on the high-carb eating train, eating a lot of coconut-flour-foods puts me merely a hop away from the high-carb eating train. That's different for everyone. But I DO indulge occasionally. I found a great recipe for low-carb, sugar-free cheesecake that I do now and again. Oh god it's delicious. And so when I DO make it, it tastes like some amazing treat I've given myself, and not something I'm used to having all the time.
You've been using the word "diet." Is that what this is to you?
No. Because diets never ever ever eveR EVERRRRRRRRR ever work.
Okay maybe there's a small handful of people that can stick to a diet with their iron willpower and make it work. But honestly speaking about myself, I can't. My willpower fails me every time. And having been a member of the human race for 30 years now, I can say with confidence that I am FAR from alone.
This is a lifestyle to me. Eating healthy is not a way to get to some lower-weight endgame or something. Eating healthy IS the endgame.
I "limit" myself to 100g of carbs or less a day, but I do not keep track. I am not writing down the carb counts of all my food. However, I DID do that at first. Just to get an idea of how many carbs were in the foods I ate, what a healthy meal with a reasonable number of carbs looked like, etc. After a couple weeks of that, I had a good idea of what good-carb foods were and what bad-carb foods were. And I also discovered that by featuring vegetables heavily and cutting out processed foods, my diet basically naturally went to a low-carb place.
With that in mind, I also do not deny myself foods I want. Since starting this a couple months ago, I've had pizza. I've had a burger from a burger place (tho I opted out of fries). That shit is DELICIOUS and sometimes I WANT IT. You know? If I have to live a life of FORBIDDEN FOODS and DENIAL OF CRAVINGS I will slowly go crazy until I break eating healthy altogether. If you've ever dieted you know that's how it goes. You can't deny urges and you can't go hungry. I have a rule that I try to enact for every dinner we make, which is it must have at least two vegetables. This ensures not only a good variety, but also plenty of matter in my stomach for my body to digest. After eating a pound of vegetables plus the protein, it's hard for my body to be like ALL THE ICE CREAM NOW, PLEASE.
Also, if I have pizza one day and I end up eating 150 carbs or whatever that day, I don't deduct it from the next day's food, you know what I mean? I'm not like "well I had pizza yesterday so I have to be double-healthy today" because that just sets you up for a rolling ball of shame and guilt from day to day as you continually fail to make up for it. Each day is a new day, and I take each day on its own merits.
Besides, if I tried to "make up" for bad eating I'm fucked, because most of my 30 years on this Earth I haven't given two shits. lol That's way too much to make up for.
Aren't there weird side-effects?
Mostly, no, except for the first week I transitioned. I had headaches (because your brain is learning to switch from carbs-turned-to-glucose as its main fuel, to fat as the primary fuel), and brain fog (I was forgetting a lot of words, losing my train of thought. It was a big change for my body). After that first week I was back to normal. And in fact, better. I feel really good all the time now. I used to randomly get stomachaches or just feel ucky. That hasn't happened yet so far.
And it's worth it to note that when I do give in to a craving and eat, say, pizza, the next day my body rebels. I won't get too TMI but I'm sure you can imagine. Which, btw, also becomes its own natural willpower against eating high-carb things. Knowing that you will suffer for it.
A lot of people lose weight doing low-carb/paleo. I have no idea if I've lost weight because that's not my goal. (I won't lie, it'd be nice, but if I make that my focus this will never work because I will undoubtedly get frustrated.) I haven't weighed myself at all. My clothes seem like they fit slightly differently, but I'm not sure if anything's really changed or my brain is making it up. I'm just trying not to think about it, because the goal, really, is just to eat healthy and be healthy.
ENOUGH WORDS I WAS PROMISED PICTURES.
:D Here is a selection of pictures from some meals I've had over the past couple months, and also a couple random things food-related. (Right-click open image in new tab if you want to see it full-sized.)
Scrambled eggs w/ spinach & colby jack cheese (btw adding a dollop of sour cream into scrambled eggs makes them fluffy and delicious THANK ME LATER), bacon, hot buttered low-carb tortilla.
Stuffed green peppers (inside is a ground beef and onion mix, possibly something else in there but I forget), above that is baked mexican squash sprinkled with herbs, below is cucumber drizzled with a homemade blueberry vinaigrette.
The aforementioned blueberry vinaigrette, shaken and unshaken. Red wine vinegar, 50/50 mix of canola and olive oil, some various herbs, and some frozen blueberries mostly mushed into juice. Also a couple drops of sweetener.
Food experiment: kale chips. This is one of those things that a lot of the community is like "it totally replaces regular chips!" No, no it doesn't. Lol. But they ARE good. To me, they simulate popcorn more - only vaguely crunchy, a bit more melt in your mouth. Certainly not anything you can dip into stuff. Mostly just sit with a bowl and pop into mouth.
Leftover ham (from a whole ham) fried on the stove, sweet potato, small salad (romaine, peppers, green onion).
Hodgepodge of mexican-seasoned strips of beef, spinach, mexican squash, cheese.
Bacon, sweet potato, tomato with herbs.
Sugar-free cheesecakes from this recipe. (Toppings are strawberry on one, strawberry/blueberry mixture on the other.) The crust is made of crushed almonds and is way better than I imagined it would be. We improved on it the second time by adding in a couple drops of sweetener and some spices (cinnamon, nutmeg) with the crushed almond to made it come out more "crust-like." This is probably gonna end up being about a once-a-month treat because it's so tasty. (Pro tip: this cheesecake will taste 37493% better after sitting in the fridge for a night/day.)
Roast chicken thigh, aparagus, sweet potato.
Scrambled eggs with red pepper and green onion, some sausage, on low-carb wraps.
Salad (romaine, spinach, carrot, bacon, avocado) with some sliced roasted chicken breast on top, italian dressing.
"Cheeseburger" soup. Beef, cheesy soup base, spinach (we like our spinach lol), celery, onions.
Fried eggs, asparagus, bacon. I will say that incorporating vegetables into my breakfast has actually been the hardest mental hurdle. A typical American breakfast doesn't include anything remotely resembling vegetables. To me, it's just NOT a breakfast food. Vegetables taste good and I love them but it just felt.. WRONG to eat them with eggs and bacon or whatever. I'm starting to overcome that, though, and embrace vegetables first thing in the morning, lol.
Ground beef and sweet potato hash (w/ onions and tomato), small salad (lettuce, spinach, tomato).
Steak (I forget what kind, that might even be pork *squints at it*), brussels sprouts, sweet potato.
Cross rib steak, mashed cauliflower, brussels sprouts.
My go-to sweet tooth fix. Plain yogurt (I like Lala brand), a packet of splenda, and a handful of frozen fruit (strawberry in this pic, though blueberry is my fave).
Boiled shrimp, salad (romaine, tomato, carrot, green onion).
That's just a selection of some of the meals I've been having. Like every other household we have lots of repeat meals and lots of boring meals so I don't take a picture of everything, lol. You'll notice in general, proteins are about 30% of the plate, with vegetables taking up the rest. (Breakfasts are more of the inverse because I love eggs and eat them a lot but I'm working on it!) VEGETABLES ARE THE ORDER OF THE DAY. :D
I think that's the end of my spiel. I probably forgot stuff. A slice of sugar-free cheesecake for you if you made it this far.
My eating plan
Paleo/Low-carb.
Essentially.
To break it down a little: Paleo (from paleolithic) is a way of eating that is meant to emulate how our paleolithic ancestors would have eaten. Back then it was a lot of protein and vegetables, and not much of anything else, ESPECIALLY grains. Now, the paleo movement is not something I really align with 100%. Because it's not just that they think grains shouldn't be in the human diet, it's that they think wheat is literally a poison to the human body. lol. I think they just take it TOO far. They also have some strange views, imo, about dairy and fats. But I agree with the broad strokes of paleo: proteins and vegetables, fruits, and some fats. No-processed-foods whatsoever is the ideological goal but this is a modern world and unless you're living in the mountains and grow your own food 100% you probably won't achieve this objective.
Dovetailing into paleo is low-carb. Paleo itself is NOT a low-carb way of eating; it CAN be, but it doesn't have to. I've married it with low-carb, which for me means, 100 grams of carbs or less per day. (50grams of carbs or less per day and you start getting into a keto diet (ketogenic) which puts the body into ketosis.)
Why low-carb? Well I could write a huge essay about the subject and also it's a very controversial subject at the moment. After reviewing evidence and listening to arguments from all sides of the nutritional dialogue, I've come to the conclusion that the most likely correct one is that a diet of low-carb, low-grain foods is most nutritionally sound for humans.
I have some links with more information because I'm not an expert and I can't explain this stuff better than where I got my info.
To find out more about low-carb eating in general, and also for some information about the scams and corruption that gave us such ineffectual and incorrect ideals like the food pyramid (which even science has admitted was incorrect and gotten rid of), watch the documentary Fat Head with Tom Naughton. Watch it on Hulu here or YouTube here. Now, I don't take every word in this documentary as gospel but a lot of it is on point, and I first saw this documentary like 3 years ago and its content has stewed in the back of my mind ever since then. But new studies and ways of thought pop up every now and again that seem to reinforce quite a lot of what Tom Naughton has to say. This documentary is not my be-all end-all source of information or opinions, but it started it for me and got me thinking about a lot of things.
A good overall FAQ on what paleo is, and a slightly more detailed FAQ. These pages include some of the stuff about how grains hurt the human body. No comment from me, read it yourself and decide if you agree with that or not. Also note, no dairy at all is "allowed." Again a place where I part ways with paleo.
Here's a fairly objective article from WebMD about low-carb. I find it interesting to note that they reference the Institute of Medicine recommends a daily carb amount of 130grams, only a little above what I am doing. The article also repeats the same-old same-old argument from nutritionists that the only thing that matters is calories. I agree calories have an impact but I think the carbs are the key factor vs calories. (See: the Fat Head documentary for more on that.)
(And if you're curious about keto, here is info on that.)
Already tl;dr. So break it down, what does your diet actually look like?
Things I have cut out:
- Almost all processed foods. Nothing from boxes, packets, cans, mixes, etc. Ideally, I'd cut out ALL processed foods but I am only human and I still rely on a) convenience and b) sometimes eating the foods I've grown up loving to eat.
- Nearly all grains. Things like bread/pasta/biscuits/cookies/pancakes etc are all rare treats. I save them for if I'm going out to eat, am having a special meal, or am eating at someone else's house and am not gonna be like I DEMAND A CARB-FREE MEAL. lol. So I'm having these things a handful of times a month. And when I do, I try to keep it reasonable and within my personal guideline of 100g of carbs per day. Sometimes I buy low-carb wraps for mexican foods or sandwich wraps.
- Nearly all sugar. Even before I decided to do this new lifestyle I didn't have a ton of sugar. E.g., I've been drinking diet-only sodas for years now. But I've also cut out a lot of candy and cookies and so on that I used to eat. I've been using sucralose (brand names Splenda or EZ-Sweetz) for sweetening which is a sugar substitute. However I am mildly allergic to sucralose (or something that is mixed in with the sucralose products) because I get rashes when I eat too much. So really I don't eat many sweet things at all.
- Empty starches. Mostly this encompasses potatoes and corn. Potato is actually VERY nutritionally dense, however, it's processed by the body SO quickly because it is a simple starch that it spikes your blood sugar worse than pure sugar. Corn is not nearly as nutritionally dense as potato and is high in sugar so I've just cut it out entirely. Plus it's boring, I'm not a fan of corn anyway.
So what's left?
- Almost every vegetable on the planet. I eat a lot of brussels sprouts, spinach, salads, sweet potatoes, asparagus, squash, greens, peppers, carrots, celery, avocado, broccoli, etc etc.
- Proteinsssss. Beef, pork, chicken, and so on. Sometimes I try to get some fish and stuff in there. Which you should do anyway, I hear they got omega 3 or whatever. I really don't know. But I live in the desert so I always kind of look with suspect at the fish at the market. Sometimes I get shrimp.
- Fruit. Of course! I don't eat that much because they are SUPER sugar-carby. But fruits have nutrients and are delicious and often are a good way to get a sweet fix. Basically any fruit goes though I've become addicted to Fuji apples lately. I eat several a week. I also get frozen fruits (strawberries, peaches, blueberries) and mix it in yogurt.
- Fat. Fats are good for you. Moderation in all things, of course, and that's where something like Atkins can possibly be harmful (where Atkins insinuates you can eat a pound of bacon every day and you're healthy and great.. I wouldn't go that far). I don't fear fats. Because I've cut out so much processed stuff and most of my meals are protein + veggies, which I think is pretty frigging healthy even if you think all the paleo/low-carb stuff is nonsense, I have no qualms about slathering butter on my veggies or frying my egg in bacon fat or whatever.
- Occasional treats. A lot of the low-carb community is hell-bent on making analogs for now-off-limits high-carbs foods. If you need that to make the eating style work for you, ok, but for me personally, by eating an analog of a high-carb food, it puts me way too close to the real thing. Like a lot of people use coconut or almond flour to make simulated baked goods; they have like half the carbs of stuff made with all-purpose flour but are very similar in taste/texture. I find that that's just way too close to the real thing for me. Instead of a hop, skip, and jump back on the high-carb eating train, eating a lot of coconut-flour-foods puts me merely a hop away from the high-carb eating train. That's different for everyone. But I DO indulge occasionally. I found a great recipe for low-carb, sugar-free cheesecake that I do now and again. Oh god it's delicious. And so when I DO make it, it tastes like some amazing treat I've given myself, and not something I'm used to having all the time.
You've been using the word "diet." Is that what this is to you?
No. Because diets never ever ever eveR EVERRRRRRRRR ever work.
Okay maybe there's a small handful of people that can stick to a diet with their iron willpower and make it work. But honestly speaking about myself, I can't. My willpower fails me every time. And having been a member of the human race for 30 years now, I can say with confidence that I am FAR from alone.
This is a lifestyle to me. Eating healthy is not a way to get to some lower-weight endgame or something. Eating healthy IS the endgame.
I "limit" myself to 100g of carbs or less a day, but I do not keep track. I am not writing down the carb counts of all my food. However, I DID do that at first. Just to get an idea of how many carbs were in the foods I ate, what a healthy meal with a reasonable number of carbs looked like, etc. After a couple weeks of that, I had a good idea of what good-carb foods were and what bad-carb foods were. And I also discovered that by featuring vegetables heavily and cutting out processed foods, my diet basically naturally went to a low-carb place.
With that in mind, I also do not deny myself foods I want. Since starting this a couple months ago, I've had pizza. I've had a burger from a burger place (tho I opted out of fries). That shit is DELICIOUS and sometimes I WANT IT. You know? If I have to live a life of FORBIDDEN FOODS and DENIAL OF CRAVINGS I will slowly go crazy until I break eating healthy altogether. If you've ever dieted you know that's how it goes. You can't deny urges and you can't go hungry. I have a rule that I try to enact for every dinner we make, which is it must have at least two vegetables. This ensures not only a good variety, but also plenty of matter in my stomach for my body to digest. After eating a pound of vegetables plus the protein, it's hard for my body to be like ALL THE ICE CREAM NOW, PLEASE.
Also, if I have pizza one day and I end up eating 150 carbs or whatever that day, I don't deduct it from the next day's food, you know what I mean? I'm not like "well I had pizza yesterday so I have to be double-healthy today" because that just sets you up for a rolling ball of shame and guilt from day to day as you continually fail to make up for it. Each day is a new day, and I take each day on its own merits.
Besides, if I tried to "make up" for bad eating I'm fucked, because most of my 30 years on this Earth I haven't given two shits. lol That's way too much to make up for.
Aren't there weird side-effects?
Mostly, no, except for the first week I transitioned. I had headaches (because your brain is learning to switch from carbs-turned-to-glucose as its main fuel, to fat as the primary fuel), and brain fog (I was forgetting a lot of words, losing my train of thought. It was a big change for my body). After that first week I was back to normal. And in fact, better. I feel really good all the time now. I used to randomly get stomachaches or just feel ucky. That hasn't happened yet so far.
And it's worth it to note that when I do give in to a craving and eat, say, pizza, the next day my body rebels. I won't get too TMI but I'm sure you can imagine. Which, btw, also becomes its own natural willpower against eating high-carb things. Knowing that you will suffer for it.
A lot of people lose weight doing low-carb/paleo. I have no idea if I've lost weight because that's not my goal. (I won't lie, it'd be nice, but if I make that my focus this will never work because I will undoubtedly get frustrated.) I haven't weighed myself at all. My clothes seem like they fit slightly differently, but I'm not sure if anything's really changed or my brain is making it up. I'm just trying not to think about it, because the goal, really, is just to eat healthy and be healthy.
ENOUGH WORDS I WAS PROMISED PICTURES.
:D Here is a selection of pictures from some meals I've had over the past couple months, and also a couple random things food-related. (Right-click open image in new tab if you want to see it full-sized.)
Scrambled eggs w/ spinach & colby jack cheese (btw adding a dollop of sour cream into scrambled eggs makes them fluffy and delicious THANK ME LATER), bacon, hot buttered low-carb tortilla.
Stuffed green peppers (inside is a ground beef and onion mix, possibly something else in there but I forget), above that is baked mexican squash sprinkled with herbs, below is cucumber drizzled with a homemade blueberry vinaigrette.
The aforementioned blueberry vinaigrette, shaken and unshaken. Red wine vinegar, 50/50 mix of canola and olive oil, some various herbs, and some frozen blueberries mostly mushed into juice. Also a couple drops of sweetener.
Food experiment: kale chips. This is one of those things that a lot of the community is like "it totally replaces regular chips!" No, no it doesn't. Lol. But they ARE good. To me, they simulate popcorn more - only vaguely crunchy, a bit more melt in your mouth. Certainly not anything you can dip into stuff. Mostly just sit with a bowl and pop into mouth.
Leftover ham (from a whole ham) fried on the stove, sweet potato, small salad (romaine, peppers, green onion).
Hodgepodge of mexican-seasoned strips of beef, spinach, mexican squash, cheese.
Bacon, sweet potato, tomato with herbs.
Sugar-free cheesecakes from this recipe. (Toppings are strawberry on one, strawberry/blueberry mixture on the other.) The crust is made of crushed almonds and is way better than I imagined it would be. We improved on it the second time by adding in a couple drops of sweetener and some spices (cinnamon, nutmeg) with the crushed almond to made it come out more "crust-like." This is probably gonna end up being about a once-a-month treat because it's so tasty. (Pro tip: this cheesecake will taste 37493% better after sitting in the fridge for a night/day.)
Roast chicken thigh, aparagus, sweet potato.
Scrambled eggs with red pepper and green onion, some sausage, on low-carb wraps.
Salad (romaine, spinach, carrot, bacon, avocado) with some sliced roasted chicken breast on top, italian dressing.
"Cheeseburger" soup. Beef, cheesy soup base, spinach (we like our spinach lol), celery, onions.
Fried eggs, asparagus, bacon. I will say that incorporating vegetables into my breakfast has actually been the hardest mental hurdle. A typical American breakfast doesn't include anything remotely resembling vegetables. To me, it's just NOT a breakfast food. Vegetables taste good and I love them but it just felt.. WRONG to eat them with eggs and bacon or whatever. I'm starting to overcome that, though, and embrace vegetables first thing in the morning, lol.
Ground beef and sweet potato hash (w/ onions and tomato), small salad (lettuce, spinach, tomato).
Steak (I forget what kind, that might even be pork *squints at it*), brussels sprouts, sweet potato.
Cross rib steak, mashed cauliflower, brussels sprouts.
My go-to sweet tooth fix. Plain yogurt (I like Lala brand), a packet of splenda, and a handful of frozen fruit (strawberry in this pic, though blueberry is my fave).
Boiled shrimp, salad (romaine, tomato, carrot, green onion).
That's just a selection of some of the meals I've been having. Like every other household we have lots of repeat meals and lots of boring meals so I don't take a picture of everything, lol. You'll notice in general, proteins are about 30% of the plate, with vegetables taking up the rest. (Breakfasts are more of the inverse because I love eggs and eat them a lot but I'm working on it!) VEGETABLES ARE THE ORDER OF THE DAY. :D
I think that's the end of my spiel. I probably forgot stuff. A slice of sugar-free cheesecake for you if you made it this far.
no subject
Date: 2013-05-05 05:49 am (UTC)i'm pretty much doing the same. i actually don't add artificial sweetners or extra butter (lol i want too) but i'm tryingggg.
things that make it difficult
*tumblr food porn (goddamn)
*eating for one, and also having a variety of fresh veges
breakfasts are still a huge issue for me because i don't really like eggs :( i don't really like breakfast foods at all cept the bad ones. lol
so you'll have to keep my abreast of any cool recipes you get!
plus A+++ for your guilt and willpower thoughts. i'm just too old for that shit
no subject
Date: 2013-05-06 02:15 am (UTC)I love butter, I'm not sure I could ever give it up, lol. I'm trying to use sweeteners sparingly though.
TUMBLR FOOD PORN IS THE WORST. Also facebook. My dad's girlfriend shares like 5 recipes a day, and they're almost sweets, gooey-looking baked goods or cakes or whatever. It drives me crazy lol.
Aww eating for one is always harder. And so is keeping fresh veggies around; we go through ours pretty quick but I'd say we still throw out like 20% of the veggies we buy sigh.
Don't.. like.. eggs? WOWwwww. That would make things difficult haha. I know, breakfast to me has always been like croissants and bagels and hash browns and pancakes and that's ALL OUT so i basically eat eggs every day. I feel bad for you, you don't even have eggs! D: I'll let you know if I come across any good ideas. I surf around the paleo blogs every now and again for inspiration.
:D
no subject
Date: 2013-05-06 05:57 am (UTC)so many delicious thingsssss i even when to a paleo website and its all bacon and dessert lol. i sideeye it a little
hashbrownsssssssss i would eat hashbrowns everyday lol!
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Date: 2013-05-05 05:32 pm (UTC)A+ - especially the processed food thing. If someone can only pay attention and only make one small change to their diet - I think they should pick that one.
I've removed like 85% of the processed foods I used to eat. I still eat peanut butter, the occasional frozen things (I try to choose Amy's burritos or Kashi's stuff - more expensive but made with better ingredients) and I do eat pizza although make my own dough.
And I buy BBQ sauce, I've made it from scratch but I'm addicted to Sweet Baby Ray. And the low sugar variety of instant oatmeal isn't a very good choice, but I still eat that sometimes.
I don't like artificial sweeteners AT ALL so I use sugar or honey or nothing (usually nothing, I drink coffee and tea both black, hot or iced)
I LOVE ALL THE SWEET POTATOES IN YOUR POST
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Date: 2013-05-06 02:20 am (UTC)Yessss exactly. Just cutting out processed foods has done a lot. I never really realized how easily my body digests & breaks that stuff down, and how hungry all the time I was before. Now that it's like all vegetables I go a lot longer before getting hungry.
I think a person would just need a willpower of solid titanium to go completely processed-foods-free, lol. I LOVEEEEEE Sweet Baby Ray and there is always a bottle of that in my fridge so I totally understand LOL.
Black coffee! Damn! haha I couldn't do that but I don't like coffee anyway.
YES I LOVE SWEET POTATOS! TOTALLY NEW ADDICTION! I never really ate them before going paleo and then I was like OMG THESE THINGS ARE AMAZING. I don't miss regular potatoes at ALL.