Good Nutrition – Better Eating
Well here comes a new season which means it will be warmer soon (I hope) and time for shorts and bathing suits. I want to clean up my act in the nutrition department and go back to the meal plan that my chiropractor’s office made specifically for me. The focus on the plan is to increase your portions of proteins and veggies and get your carbs from foods like sweet potatoes and vegetables like carrots and corn rather than through white flour. It also limits the intake of sugar.
This plan has worked for me in the past and I want to commit to it again. But I have to admit, that I am not sure that I am ready mentally. I hope I can stick to it. With my stress from my job I tend to binge on sweets when I get home from the office or when the pressure kicks in. It’s my immediate self gratification. I am human, it’s my weakness.
Something else that I have to say is hard to accept when eating better is the cost. It’s a shame that when you shop along the perimeter of a grocery store to get the fresh food, produce, meat and vegetables, you end up paying a lot more money than you do for the processed, high sugar crap in the center of the store. There aren’t coupons for discounts on apples and strawberries or salad. They run specials on those items, but you can’t walk in there with coupons on top of their specials. That frustrates me.
I was listening to a new podcast on my run today, The Natural Running Network Live Blog Talk Radio on “How to Achieve Racing Weight for Endurance Athletes“. I don’t consider myself an endurance athlete, but I guess training for marathons, I sort of am… Anyway, I wanted to hear their concepts on what they suggest for proper nutrition and it was also a confirmation to me that I need to get on track. So I am hoping the motivation of it helps spark me back into it. 21 times becomes a habit. If I can repeat my good eating habits again, within the first 2 weeks I will become more clean and then it will become more of a habit for me again. When I followed this plan I was actually so full, I couldn’t finish the food a lot of the time! I never felt hungry because the quality and quantity of food was so good.
An example of a day on this plan was quite normal:
- Breakfast – steel cut oatmeal with blueberries
- Snack – 27 grapes with cheese stick or a chiobani plain yogurt with fresh cut strawberries and a little agave nectar
- Lunch- hard boiled egg or egg salad with lettuce wraps or a large salad loaded up with proteins (chicken, eggs, salmon, tuna, shrimp) or a home made vegetable soup loaded up with beans and shrimp or chicken. That was always very easy for me to have because I would heat it up at work and have a hard boiled egg, almonds and shrimp for additional protein.
- Dinner – Grillers protein veggie burgers, chicken, salmon (proteins) with veggies, low carbs as a side.
- Snack – apples and 17 almonds
So what’s wrong with eating good foods like almonds and apples, grapes and cheese and shrimp? Nothing really, it just takes some work to prepare the meals ahead of time and make them back into a habit. So here’s to starting a new day again and getting cleaner with my eating. I am hoping this will also help me increase my running speed.
I’ve actually been working on eating better the past few weeks too. I have to admit I’m really not much of a sweets person (except for ice cream!), but I am a total cab addict! I can polish off a loaf of italian bread in one sitting if I’m not watching myself! I agree that the expense of buying fresh, healthy food and produce can be frustrating. Do you belong to a bulk type store, like a Costco or anything? That’s been working for me recently, I buy their bags of frozen fruit for green smoothies and the bags of individually packaged frozen fish are a life saver for me and so good! Plus you can get good stuff like almonds, quinoa and oatmeal in bulk for a good price!