Week 4 concluded the big nutrition overhaul month, and we have both definitely learned a lot in the past 30 days. Ultimately, this experiment led to multiple discoveries, which are so basic but we obviously forgot:
Have a plan
Basically, I know what I'm going to be eating for the day. This doesn't mean we can't go out to eat (because let's face it, our restaurant/entertainment budget has increased with our grocery bill); I know what food is going in and can somewhat plan my food intake to offset it. The same thing applies for exercise -- if I'm running a bazillion miles in the morning, then I have to make sure to refuel. In the past few weeks, I may have gone a little overboard with the restricting, which presumably led to the freaky ammonia smell in my nose after I run or exercise.Traveling is seriously rough.
It may have been kind of weird, but I had to plan ahead to bring healthy snacks with me when I was on the road. I ended up traveling to Peoria, IL, Kalamazoo to Port Huron, MI (views of Canada, you guys!), and Chicago. Coming next: Boston, Columbus, and who knows where else!
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| Sometimes it SEEMS like I'm driving this much! |
Eating enough and well on trips is an art I have not yet perfected.
A day or two before the trip, I sometimes make what I call my "power muffins," bite-sized 50-calorie/oil-free chocolate chip banana bread mini-muffins, which travel well and hold me over in emergencies. I started experimenting with little bite-sized quiches, but haven't invented a recipe that's worth repeating yet.
Let's not forget - hotel breakfasts are the worst!!! Sometimes it's an all-you-can-eat buffet, but you leave feeling half nauseous, lethargic, and full of grease. Other times, it becomes a battle in the decision between a cheese danish and a bearclaw. Not ideal.
As a "Marriott person," I really like Springhill Suites. The breakfasts at Marriott hotels are usually consistent across brands, and I like that so I know what to expect. Navigating around hotel breakfasts that vary is like playing MacGuyver: what can you make with the few things you've got in front of you? At Springhill, I toast an English muffin, add some of the eggs, and top with salsa or a sprinkle of the delicious egg seasoning they usually have on-hand. If I'm really hungry, I add a slice of sausage. Add a small glass of OJ and I'm good to go!
Kind of random, but this is so awesome I have to share: Courtyard by Marriott now has an EXCELLENT breakfast menu (although one that's not free, unlike the others) that lists the calories next to the menu item, a la Panera. LIKE! Talk about making decisions so much easier.
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| photo: blogs.marriott.com |
...I have so much more to write about traveling, staying healthy, and exercising. That may have to come in another post.
Vehicle safety aside, I usually have to eat while I drive, or I don't get to eat at all. Bringing finger foods is the only way!! I really like Fiber One Oats & Chocolate bars, Smokehouse Almonds, and this new snack mix from Target's Archer Farms brand that is extremely addicting. It's oats and cocoa baked together to form clusters, with chocolate chips, almond slices, and little chunks of pomegranate mixed in. I'm warning you - this stuff is like crack! I can't remember what it's called (and it's not labeled as 'Crack'), but you'll find it in the trail mix aisle in a package that looks like this:
Here's a sampling of some other relatively travel-friendly foods I like to bring with me:
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| My already-running-late-but-need-to-eat meal: peanut butter & banana. |
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| Left to right - enchilada (good only until lunchtime), frosted mini wheats, grapes, pear, water. |
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| First energy gel ever made that you don't need to choke down. It contains bits of fruit |
I eat when I feel hungry.
And I TRY stopping when I feel full. If I'm feeling "snacky," I have to ask myself if I'm actually hungry. Or, maybe I'm thirsty. This trick usually works, but not always. This is definitely the hardest part of the nutrition overhaul, as I predicted.
Sometimes, if I walk away for a few minutes and distract myself with something else (on Pinterest, perhaps?) I can resist the urge. A couple of times, I brushed my teeth and flossed if I felt like I had to have candy - lots of it. If I spend time brushing and flossing, and then need to do it again after eating again, that's usually enough to stop my lazy self from eating more Sour Patch Kids. :) Hooray for dental health!
I'm embarrassed to confess that I haven't been living by this rule lately, because portion control is closely tied in with this. It's even more challenging when eating out - so keeping an eye on quantity, even if it's healthy food, is something I still have yet to conquer.
More recipes!
The best thing about the project was getting out of the food rut, thanks to the internet.
A couple of fun fitness-food blogs via Pinterest and Google I follow daily now:
A couple of fun fitness-food blogs via Pinterest and Google I follow daily now:
- Iowa Girl Eats is an awesome blog by a Midwest girl who's not only a runner (respect!), but a lover of delicious and usually-healthy food!
She takes existing recipes and adapts them so they're slimmed down, or will share recipes she's developed on her own. She also publishes recipes that are so good, full-fat and all, that you have to try. No hard-to-find or weird ingredients, just good taste and lots of nutrients. So, you need to go visit her blog right now. I've been following along for the past few weeks and have seen her share recipes that look and sound so good that I want to drop everything I'm doing and run to the grocery store. Grapefruit mojitos, buffalo chicken quinoa mac and cheese, or the superfood salad with lemon vinaigrette. Yum.
- Run, Eat, Repeat is a blog written by Monica, a super quirky personal trainer (and runner!) in California.
She says all the crazy things we only think about in our heads - and then writes them in her blog. :) She posts multiple times a day, and takes photos of the creative-and-sometimes-weird food concoctions she makes up. Other times, she talks about her run; she's a fellow Garmin lover. Most of all, she's hilarious. I have literally LOL'ed while reading her blog, so go there now!
The ammonia thing might've been what did it for me, but I've always held to the mantra, "Garbage in, garbage out." The cleaner and fresher your food, the better you'll feel. I still have candy and dessert, but sometimes I just feel like BLEH when the sugar crash starts to hit. Taking that further, balancing carbs + protein + vegetables has been working well. Check out Greg McMillan's article on the best foods & drinks to consume to optimize recovery from a (hard) run... I always feel great the next day when I drink Endurox R4 within 30 minutes of a workout. It works! Bonus: The more concentrated you make it, the better the fruit punch flavor tastes.I overcame my pricey 2-box-per-week cereal habit and started looking more carefully at how I was starting my days. I'd get hungry about 2 hours after breakfast, but once I added some kind of protein (peanut butter, greek yogurt, eggs), I didn't feel the urge to snack when 9 or 10am rolled around.
Like I mentioned earlier, our grocery bills nearly doubled. Now, we eat lots more salads, fish, fruit, and fresh produce. Frozen vegetables are still fair game. We definitely follow the typical runner's grocery list.... Because we always run into one of you at Kroger, you'll see our cart loaded with some of these things:
- Bell peppers
- Salad greens & spinach
- Carrots
- Broccoli sprouts (omg! My new obsession... I could eat this stuff all day, every day!!! More nutrients and longer shelf life than alfalfa sprouts!)
- Egg beaters
- Cottage cheese
- Salsa
- Tortilla chips
- Ground turkey 93/7 lean
- Ragu pasta sauce
- Whole what pasta
- Multi-grain bread (I know it's not as healthy, but the taste is totally worth the trade-off)
- Grapes, apples, bananas
- Tofu
- Frozen fruit berry medley
- Potatoes - sweet and russet
- Meal replacement drinks - an addition to a meal for when Ben's really hungry or wants something chocolatey-sweet but healthyish
- Kale - my other new discovery!
- Ciltantro (I eat cilantro pretty much daily in some way)
- Avocadoes
- Rotisserie chicken
- Chickpeas
- Oats
- Honey
The most notable things that disappeared from our grocery list (or were purchased in drastically reduced quantities):
- Oreos & cookies. Funny story, we used to buy so many Oreos so often that Kroger started sending us coupons for free packages. That should've been a sign.
- Cheese (besides cottage)
- Goldfish & snack crackers
- Ice cream in mass quantities
Number crunching.
I succumbed. I gave in. I started counting calories... and it wasn't the worst thing in the world. Since I've fallen off the wagon a bit since week 4 actually ended, I may get back on. It's not about the number and calories themselves, but mostly about being conscious of how much junk I'm actually eating - and how quickly that adds up throughout the day. I use an app (available on Android & iPhone) called LoseIt! Highly recommend over any of the others that I tried. It allows you to track exercise, calories, add recipes (I can save recipes with my own concoctions), favorite/recent items, restaurant foods (because I eat at Chipotle and Panera when I'm on the road, and they're all in there!) and best of all: you can scan a food's barcode to enter it into your log.... no more typing and searching! I even found Bakehouse granola nutrition data available on LoseIt.
You can see all of your stats and track everything on your phone and/or on the loseit.com. Convinced yet?
We took this calorie-counting practice and found alternatives for the things that we wanted. As an example, a 2,000 calorie serving of ice cream wouldn't really cut it for the day. Best discovery ever: Dream DeLite at Jiffy Treat, which is a water-based soft-serve ice cream that tastes exactly like its heavier counterpart. 8 calories per ounce, compared to 25 calories per ounce, and you won't taste the difference. Artificial ingredients, you say? I checked - it looks pretty clean! It's pro-biotic and does not aggravate your stomach if you're lactose intolerant... and you can get it in flavors! A usual cyclone at Jiffy Treet (comparable to a Blizzard at DQ) would cost me only 100 calories in frozen yogurt + whatever mix ins. This makes dessert about 200 calories, 200-300 calories less than the original version. Yum.
How about you guys? Anyone trying any new eating habits? Have you found any good low-cal same-taste food substitutes?
You can see all of your stats and track everything on your phone and/or on the loseit.com. Convinced yet?
Looking at an overview of the day usually let me know how I was doing and helped me figure out foods that left me full or were just calorie-bombs with no benefit. With the weigh-in function, it was also to see which foods (::cough:: Chipotle ::cough::) were really high in salt.
We took this calorie-counting practice and found alternatives for the things that we wanted. As an example, a 2,000 calorie serving of ice cream wouldn't really cut it for the day. Best discovery ever: Dream DeLite at Jiffy Treat, which is a water-based soft-serve ice cream that tastes exactly like its heavier counterpart. 8 calories per ounce, compared to 25 calories per ounce, and you won't taste the difference. Artificial ingredients, you say? I checked - it looks pretty clean! It's pro-biotic and does not aggravate your stomach if you're lactose intolerant... and you can get it in flavors! A usual cyclone at Jiffy Treet (comparable to a Blizzard at DQ) would cost me only 100 calories in frozen yogurt + whatever mix ins. This makes dessert about 200 calories, 200-300 calories less than the original version. Yum.
How about you guys? Anyone trying any new eating habits? Have you found any good low-cal same-taste food substitutes?
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