WFMW: eating clean
POSTED ON Wednesday, August 19, 2009 at 4:25pm
Today is Day Seven of a new way of eating for me. Last Wednesday I went grocery shopping after making a meal plan for the remainder of the week and stocked up on all the things I’d need for those meals - fresh fruits and vegetables to go along with the lean ground turkey, chicken breasts, and grains I already had. I did the same thing on Sunday night, sitting down and planning out my meals for the week. I’ve been doing this for awhile now and posting to the blog for Menu Plan Mondays, however I never planned for breakfast or lunch, only supper. Since beginning to eat clean I have been planning all three meals, leaving the two or three "snacks" or smaller meals to be fruit and nuts, or cottage cheese and fruit, or a hearty smoothie, or any number of other similar things. Other than flipping through more cookbooks and magazines to find recipes to use I have not found this to be any more difficult than before. At some point I will have made enough recipes and learned enough about eating clean that I will be able to make meals without a recipe but for now, as most of the recipes I used previously do not read clean, I find that "cooking from a book" works and works well.
What exactly is eating clean? Google will turn up numerous links on the subject but directly from the Eat Clean Diet site is this:
What is eating clean? It is treating your body right. It is eating the way nature intended. You eat the foods our bodies evolved to function best on, and that makes you feel – and look – fantastic. When you Eat Clean you eat more often. You will eat lean protein, complex carbs, and healthy fats. These practices keep your blood-sugar levels stable and keep you satisfied. The best part is that if you need to lose weight it will happen almost without you having to try. And yes, you can have a treat now and again.
Best of all, Eating Clean keeps you feeling great and full of energy. In fact, you can forget all about the days when “dieting” meant feelings of hunger, lethargy or deprivation.
Eating Clean is not a fad; it’s a way of life. When you Eat Clean your body will react by losing weight if you need to lose, maintaining a healthy weight if that’s where you are, and even gaining weight if you are too skinny. But regardless of whether you want to lose, maintain or gain, you will feel better than you ever have before.
Never worry about counting calories again. You will never have to diet. Eating Clean will keep you lean and healthy for the rest of your long life. Eating Clean guarantees results!
I am not in this for the purpose of losing weight although that would be a very welcome bonus. I have 10 or 15 pounds that I wouldn’t mind letting go but I am in this for a better me, a healthier me. Already, one week in, I feel better in the sense that I am rarely hungry. I don’t have those cycles of being stuffed and then empty and ravenous and then stuffed again. Everything remains on the same level for the most part if I eat every three or so hours depending on what the previous meal was. I like this feeling. I like feeling in control of my hunger instead of letting it rule me. And I love that I’m eating a much, much wider variety of fruits and vegetables than I had before starting and eating those at every meal. I had a portobello mushroom last night, which I’ve never had, with a couple tablespoons of salsa on it topped with a little bit of green onion, a scattering of shredded cheese, and sprinkled with sesame seeds and then baked for about 10 minutes. It was very good and I was very surprised. I’m not a mushroom-hater but nor do I like to bite right into one. I’d rather they just "be there" when they’re in my food (as in pasta sauce or lasagna).
This doesn’t taste anything like what it looks like.
Unless you think it looks delicious. Because it is.
Two peaches (skin on), a kiwi, strawberries, a juiced orange, and spinach.
I’m very excited to see where this takes me. I’m a little nervous, however, about how well things will go once B returns home on Sunday. I don’t expect him to eat all the things I’m eating but I don’t want to be making two separate meals. It’s hard enough making the same meal for just two people at the best of times. I hope that he will continue to be more open to trying new things - all I ask of him is that he taste something and eat that bite before deciding if he likes it or not and he’s gotten pretty good at doing that - and that’s all I can ask at this point. We don’t have junk food in the house but he does have a few snacks. His snacks aren’t "bad" per se due to his inability to handle artificial colours, flavours, and preservatives but they are still snack-type foods. Onwards and upwards and working towards forming good habits…
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