I've been feeling a severe lack of healthy veggies lately.
Since starting this diet, I feel like I've had a love/hate relationship with leafy greens. Probably because I'm not really a huge fan of them. Go figure.
I started at the beginning of January by eating a lot of colorful vegetables, which is fine, because the more color your veggies have, the better they are for you (or so I read). But normally, the more brightly colored they are, the higher the calories and/or carbs. Obviously, if I was a Crossfit junkie this would be perfectly fine. Actually, if I even remotely worked out it might be okay. However, I've mostly been sitting on my ass because it's been so damn cold outside. Tough to get a good workout in. But I've been trying.
Dr. Oz has a great 9-minute workout he aired at the beginning of January. I don't know why it took me until today to decide to do it. And you watch and and you're all like "Psh, that looks easy, I can totally so that!" Ummmm, no. Just no. It's hard. Like really hard. Especially for someone like me who not only hates working out, but hasn't in a loooooooong time! So I'm predicting that I'll be sore tomorrow. I need to learn how to love to sweat. It just ain't happening any time soon.
When I woke up this morning, I had leftover chicken curry. Which, honestly, is amazing, but I won't be making again. Or I will be making again, but with modifications. The original recipe called for canned coconut milk, and holy fat-content, batman! I didn't realize exactly how much fat there really is! So perhaps next time I make it I'll use the icky carton coconut milk, which is severely watered down. I'm sure it won't make much of a difference taste-wise.
Then I played around with recipes for the rest of the day. I tried an awesome Bacon and Egg Cup thingy from Health-Bent.com, but I either need smaller eggs, or bigger slices of Canadian Bacon, because it ended up a mess. A delicious mess, but a mess nonetheless.
Then I had a boring spinach salad. Just spinach, vinegar, some spices and garlic. And it was huge. Like you know those bowls you put salads in to bring to barbeques. I had one of those just full of spinach!
And after eating so much meat over the past 23 days, I was meat-ed out. All I wanted for dinner was veggies. Specifically asparagus. Grilled asparagus. Enter the George Foreman grill! Halle-freaking-lujah! I rolled them in olive oil, salt & pepper, and some garlic, grilled up those babies and ate ALL of them. So you know when you go to the supermarket, and you buy a bundle of asparagus... I ate the whole bundle. By myself. I had a wee-little bit of chicken as well. But, damn, that asparagus hit the spot.
I also had a glass of red wine. Well, about a half glass of wine. And thankfully I did. I can officially say that I take after my sister in that my feet get about 10 degrees warmer after about 2 sips of wine. And my feet are always cold, even in the middle of the summer. So this made me happy!
And that's about it. I didn't have any crazy cravings today. In fact, I saw a Pop-Eye's commercial with deep fried chicken (my old fave) and wasn't even remotely interested.
How 'bout that!
Friday, January 25, 2013
Thursday, January 24, 2013
Day 21 & 22: Complete Opposites
So yeah... I kinda binge ate yesterday. It was all paleo foods, but definitely more than I needed. Like, a lot more.
But it stopped around 2PM, after which I wasn't hungry at all. All I had after that was a huge spinach salad, with only spinach and balsamic vinegar. I honestly didn't need to eat anything, but I was lacking veggies. And spinach is awesome, so that's why I ate it!
Today was productive, unlike yesterday. Today, I started out eating light. Only one slice of Canadian bacon and another large spinach salad.
And I made coconut chicken curry! Woot! Honestly, I've never used the crock pot before and I'm pretty confident it's my new favorite thing. Super easy. Although cleaning the damn thing is a hassle afterwards.
The chicken came out really good. I got the recipe from PaleOMG.com. I'm definitely going to be cooking more often.
I know this was a crappy update, but I have to go and continue scrubbing the crock pot clean, lol!
Goodnight, all!
But it stopped around 2PM, after which I wasn't hungry at all. All I had after that was a huge spinach salad, with only spinach and balsamic vinegar. I honestly didn't need to eat anything, but I was lacking veggies. And spinach is awesome, so that's why I ate it!
Today was productive, unlike yesterday. Today, I started out eating light. Only one slice of Canadian bacon and another large spinach salad.
And I made coconut chicken curry! Woot! Honestly, I've never used the crock pot before and I'm pretty confident it's my new favorite thing. Super easy. Although cleaning the damn thing is a hassle afterwards.
The chicken came out really good. I got the recipe from PaleOMG.com. I'm definitely going to be cooking more often.
I know this was a crappy update, but I have to go and continue scrubbing the crock pot clean, lol!
Goodnight, all!
Tuesday, January 22, 2013
Day 20: Thank God for Paleo Blogs!
Honestly, I'm so thankful for all the paleo blogs out there on the interwebs (I'm cool). There's Civilized Caveman Cooking, Elana's Pantry, and Everyday Paleo. But my favorite site so far on my Paleo journey is PaleOMG.
PaleOMG.com is run by a girl named Juli, who is all about CrossFit and is crazy in shape! Her blogs are funny and her recipes are divine! She even has recipes for people who are doing the 21 Day Sugar Detox, which I plan on doing once I'm done with the first 30 days of the Paleo diet. She's amazing!
Anyway, today has been pretty normal aside from the fact that I didn't have any crazy cravings. Hurray! Finally I think I'm over the sugar and bread hump!
Also, I know I said on day 20 I was going to make a paleo version of chocolate pudding, but I opted not to. It wasn't because I was feeling lazy today. No not at all. I just lied. Instead I just ate a square of dark chocolate. 85% cacao chocolate. Pretty bitter, but good. Plus, it was on sale. Score! Paleo purists are against eating chocolate unless it's cacao nibs, or something that tastes like ass, but most say it's okay as long as it's 70% cacao or higher. And organic. Which mine was.
Currently making a paleo version of breaded chicken in the oven. Super easy and yummy! If anyone is interested in the recipe, let me know and I'll post it. There's a ton of different variations out there, but mine's probably the simplest, lol. Just cause I'm pretty simple! :P
Tomorrow I will be making chicken curry! Wish me luck on that one!
PaleOMG.com is run by a girl named Juli, who is all about CrossFit and is crazy in shape! Her blogs are funny and her recipes are divine! She even has recipes for people who are doing the 21 Day Sugar Detox, which I plan on doing once I'm done with the first 30 days of the Paleo diet. She's amazing!
Anyway, today has been pretty normal aside from the fact that I didn't have any crazy cravings. Hurray! Finally I think I'm over the sugar and bread hump!
Also, I know I said on day 20 I was going to make a paleo version of chocolate pudding, but I opted not to. It wasn't because I was feeling lazy today. No not at all. I just lied. Instead I just ate a square of dark chocolate. 85% cacao chocolate. Pretty bitter, but good. Plus, it was on sale. Score! Paleo purists are against eating chocolate unless it's cacao nibs, or something that tastes like ass, but most say it's okay as long as it's 70% cacao or higher. And organic. Which mine was.
Currently making a paleo version of breaded chicken in the oven. Super easy and yummy! If anyone is interested in the recipe, let me know and I'll post it. There's a ton of different variations out there, but mine's probably the simplest, lol. Just cause I'm pretty simple! :P
Tomorrow I will be making chicken curry! Wish me luck on that one!
Monday, January 21, 2013
Day 19: And cue the cravings
Ok, so the moral of today is to stay busy. When I have lazy days like today, I find it's harder to stay on track.
I had a typical breakfast of eggs and Canadian bacon. Since it's so much protein, I wasn't hungry for at least 4 hours.
Then I started to snack. I have a snacking problem. This is important for you to know. Before I started this new way of eating, I went days without having an actual meal. I just snacked. Bad Sara, bad!
So the things I ate were almost laughable. I cut up some stalks of celery and seasoned it with salt and some spices. Yeah, I'm that cliche... I ate celery. I also ate, like, 10 pine nuts, some banana chips, a couple slices of bacon, and drank lots and lots of water. I feel like I was eating all day, but in reality I just kept walking in and out of the kitchen, lol.
For a super early dinner I had leftover salmon and green beans. So good!
I have to admit though, that it wasn't easy putting down the banana chips. Those things are amazing! I def need to cut back, cause like I said, they're crazy high in sugar! Like crazy!!!
That's it!
I had a typical breakfast of eggs and Canadian bacon. Since it's so much protein, I wasn't hungry for at least 4 hours.
Then I started to snack. I have a snacking problem. This is important for you to know. Before I started this new way of eating, I went days without having an actual meal. I just snacked. Bad Sara, bad!
So the things I ate were almost laughable. I cut up some stalks of celery and seasoned it with salt and some spices. Yeah, I'm that cliche... I ate celery. I also ate, like, 10 pine nuts, some banana chips, a couple slices of bacon, and drank lots and lots of water. I feel like I was eating all day, but in reality I just kept walking in and out of the kitchen, lol.
For a super early dinner I had leftover salmon and green beans. So good!
I have to admit though, that it wasn't easy putting down the banana chips. Those things are amazing! I def need to cut back, cause like I said, they're crazy high in sugar! Like crazy!!!
That's it!
Day 18: Best day so far
Success! Day 18 was marvelous and busy!
I ended up having three eggs for breakfast since I was out of bacon and running severely low on any paleo goodies. Also, I've been waking up super early lately, like at 3 or 4AM. So by the time the grocery stores were open I was a starving monster. And I mean a monster. I was about to eat anything. But I somehow resisted.
At around 11, my mom and I headed out to the grocery store, but we were so hungry at that point. Obviously, most restaurants that are open at 11AM are breakfast places, and it's really hard to find a completely paleo meal. And there is no way that I would be able to resist a pile of pancakes next to bacon and sausage! So we stopped at Petco and Target first.
Amazingly, at Target I found unsweetened freeze-dried banana slices. No longer will I be picking up a bag of potato chips and having an inner struggle! They're crunchy and super sweet. They have tons of sugar in them (I'm guessing they freeze-dried them when they were very ripe, as the sugar content in a banana is at it's highest then). So they're a very rare treat, but they crunch just like potato chips! Which is amaze-balls!
After Target, we were both so hungry we decided to get a bite to eat before going to the grocery store. We all know that you should never go food shopping when you're hungry! We ended up going to Outback Steakhouse. Luckily, Outback is an awesome place to get a meal while on this diet, since they have a lot of great meals with not a whole lot of carbs. I ordered some sort of surf and turk dish. A 6 oz sirloin (medium rare, cause I eat like a man) with shrimp and scallops. It came with green beans and a mango salsa, which was amazing. No butter obviously, since I can't eat diary. I ate the entire thing! I felt amazing after eating it because I was so hungry beforehand. I hadn't eaten for about 8 hours before that! No bueno!
Then we went to Costco and Stop & Shop. Got lots of good food!
I actually didn't end up eating dinner. Lunch filled me up so much that I wasn't even remotely hungry by the time dinner rolled around. I ended up going to bed at about 8PM, because that's how fun-filled my life is! lol
Luckily, since cutting out starchy veggies I've lost one more pound. Looks like I'm back on track!
Tootles!
I ended up having three eggs for breakfast since I was out of bacon and running severely low on any paleo goodies. Also, I've been waking up super early lately, like at 3 or 4AM. So by the time the grocery stores were open I was a starving monster. And I mean a monster. I was about to eat anything. But I somehow resisted.
At around 11, my mom and I headed out to the grocery store, but we were so hungry at that point. Obviously, most restaurants that are open at 11AM are breakfast places, and it's really hard to find a completely paleo meal. And there is no way that I would be able to resist a pile of pancakes next to bacon and sausage! So we stopped at Petco and Target first.
Amazingly, at Target I found unsweetened freeze-dried banana slices. No longer will I be picking up a bag of potato chips and having an inner struggle! They're crunchy and super sweet. They have tons of sugar in them (I'm guessing they freeze-dried them when they were very ripe, as the sugar content in a banana is at it's highest then). So they're a very rare treat, but they crunch just like potato chips! Which is amaze-balls!
After Target, we were both so hungry we decided to get a bite to eat before going to the grocery store. We all know that you should never go food shopping when you're hungry! We ended up going to Outback Steakhouse. Luckily, Outback is an awesome place to get a meal while on this diet, since they have a lot of great meals with not a whole lot of carbs. I ordered some sort of surf and turk dish. A 6 oz sirloin (medium rare, cause I eat like a man) with shrimp and scallops. It came with green beans and a mango salsa, which was amazing. No butter obviously, since I can't eat diary. I ate the entire thing! I felt amazing after eating it because I was so hungry beforehand. I hadn't eaten for about 8 hours before that! No bueno!
Then we went to Costco and Stop & Shop. Got lots of good food!
I actually didn't end up eating dinner. Lunch filled me up so much that I wasn't even remotely hungry by the time dinner rolled around. I ended up going to bed at about 8PM, because that's how fun-filled my life is! lol
Luckily, since cutting out starchy veggies I've lost one more pound. Looks like I'm back on track!
Tootles!
Sunday, January 20, 2013
Day 17: Time to switch it up
So enough of the sweet potatoes. As stated in my last blog, I've been eating too many starchy veggies. So I'm cutting those out completely.
For breakfast I had 1 egg and 3 slices of Canadian bacon. I've gotten to the point that I don't crave bagels or waffles in the morning anymore. But you bet your ass that I want them throughout the rest of the day. And cheese! And cereal.
The sad thing is that when I start to crave certain foods, I think about it as if I've already eaten them. And then I feel full. I can taste the bagel and pretend that I just ate it. And then I don't want it anymore. But damn, the hardest thing is watching TV and seeing all the commercials for food! None of it healthy, obviously. But I know that how I'm eating is healthy and I can ignore the cravings... for a little while.
And I also want to clear up a few things... Nobody has approached me about this, but I feel like it needs to be addressed. The main thing about the paleo diet is eating a lot of lean meats. But that also includes eating meats as natural as possible. This means pasture raised beef, and free-range chickens, etc. I definitely look to make sure I'm eating the meat of animals who have been treated right. If I have to, I'll even order meat online, which I find strange, but a lot of paleo "gurus" do it constantly and encourage it. Whole Foods is about an hour away from me, but when I can go, I'll be sure to stock up on humanely treated animal meat. Only in a money crunch will I buy store brand meat, and even then I have a hard time eating it.
For lunch yesterday, we went out to eat. I ordered a wedge salad with salmon, sprinkled with bacon and olives. I also splurged and got a bloody mary. It's just tomato juice, some spices, and vodka, so it's a pretty paleo friendly drink, although you're really only supposed to drink water. That being said, my salad was delicious. When I got home I googled "Are olives paleo?" And apparently they aren't. Simply because all but one type of olives need to be cured. Also, it's controversial to eat foods that are pickled. So I'm at a loss, since I love olives, probably more than I love chocolate (don't worry, Chocolate! You're still my number 1). I have a lot of thinking to do about this one. What should I do?
After lunch, I had a cup of tea and then crashed on the couch. I didn't have anything else to eat for the rest of the day. I had been awake since 4AM and couldn't even keep my eyes open. I fell asleep watching Titanic. I woke up and that whale movie with John Krasinski was on, lol.
I've been hovering at the same weight for a couple days now, so I'm getting rid of the starchy veggies and eating more lean meat and... non-starchy veggies. Looking up recipes for the crock pot too!
Tah-tah for now!
For breakfast I had 1 egg and 3 slices of Canadian bacon. I've gotten to the point that I don't crave bagels or waffles in the morning anymore. But you bet your ass that I want them throughout the rest of the day. And cheese! And cereal.
The sad thing is that when I start to crave certain foods, I think about it as if I've already eaten them. And then I feel full. I can taste the bagel and pretend that I just ate it. And then I don't want it anymore. But damn, the hardest thing is watching TV and seeing all the commercials for food! None of it healthy, obviously. But I know that how I'm eating is healthy and I can ignore the cravings... for a little while.
And I also want to clear up a few things... Nobody has approached me about this, but I feel like it needs to be addressed. The main thing about the paleo diet is eating a lot of lean meats. But that also includes eating meats as natural as possible. This means pasture raised beef, and free-range chickens, etc. I definitely look to make sure I'm eating the meat of animals who have been treated right. If I have to, I'll even order meat online, which I find strange, but a lot of paleo "gurus" do it constantly and encourage it. Whole Foods is about an hour away from me, but when I can go, I'll be sure to stock up on humanely treated animal meat. Only in a money crunch will I buy store brand meat, and even then I have a hard time eating it.
For lunch yesterday, we went out to eat. I ordered a wedge salad with salmon, sprinkled with bacon and olives. I also splurged and got a bloody mary. It's just tomato juice, some spices, and vodka, so it's a pretty paleo friendly drink, although you're really only supposed to drink water. That being said, my salad was delicious. When I got home I googled "Are olives paleo?" And apparently they aren't. Simply because all but one type of olives need to be cured. Also, it's controversial to eat foods that are pickled. So I'm at a loss, since I love olives, probably more than I love chocolate (don't worry, Chocolate! You're still my number 1). I have a lot of thinking to do about this one. What should I do?
After lunch, I had a cup of tea and then crashed on the couch. I didn't have anything else to eat for the rest of the day. I had been awake since 4AM and couldn't even keep my eyes open. I fell asleep watching Titanic. I woke up and that whale movie with John Krasinski was on, lol.
I've been hovering at the same weight for a couple days now, so I'm getting rid of the starchy veggies and eating more lean meat and... non-starchy veggies. Looking up recipes for the crock pot too!
Tah-tah for now!
Saturday, January 19, 2013
Day 15 & 16: Too many carbs
Since starting this diet every morning I wake up craving eggs and meat. Occasionally, I'll have an apple as well, but as you can see I mostly have eggs and Canadian bacon. Well, on days 15 and 16, all I wanted was bread!
Now I know that I've complained before here about wanting carbs and bread and potato chips, but it's been worse than ever lately. I'm thinking that this is the hump that I need to get over.
So to compensate for my cravings, I've been eating a lot. It got me to wondering whether it's better to eat a lot of good food, or a little of bad food; thinking, "well, it won't kill me if I have, like, five potato chips!"
Somehow I resisted the potato chips, but instead have eaten about 4 sweet potatoes in the past couple days. Mostly, I've cooked them as fries, which technically isn't bad since they're baked, but there's a lot of oil and salt involved. While I make it with coconut oil (which is good for you), extra salt isn't really encouraged on this diet. So because of the extra carbs I've been eating, and all the salt, I've been hovering around the same weight. So it's time to get over the bread cravings and just eat like I'm supposed to!
Also, I've been under the weather lately, which is another reason why I've been eating more. Typically, when I'm sick I eat pasta and mashed potatoes; lots of comfort food. Of course, sweet potatoes are really good for you. So at least I have that going for me, lol.
Other than that, it's been business as usual.
Now I know that I've complained before here about wanting carbs and bread and potato chips, but it's been worse than ever lately. I'm thinking that this is the hump that I need to get over.
So to compensate for my cravings, I've been eating a lot. It got me to wondering whether it's better to eat a lot of good food, or a little of bad food; thinking, "well, it won't kill me if I have, like, five potato chips!"
Somehow I resisted the potato chips, but instead have eaten about 4 sweet potatoes in the past couple days. Mostly, I've cooked them as fries, which technically isn't bad since they're baked, but there's a lot of oil and salt involved. While I make it with coconut oil (which is good for you), extra salt isn't really encouraged on this diet. So because of the extra carbs I've been eating, and all the salt, I've been hovering around the same weight. So it's time to get over the bread cravings and just eat like I'm supposed to!
Also, I've been under the weather lately, which is another reason why I've been eating more. Typically, when I'm sick I eat pasta and mashed potatoes; lots of comfort food. Of course, sweet potatoes are really good for you. So at least I have that going for me, lol.
Other than that, it's been business as usual.
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