A side benefit (and drawback) of healthy eating!

Yesterday Maddie had a visit to her Rhumeatologist then we went and visited a friend in the hospital. 

Then we went to lunch.

So many choices in the big city.

So many healthy choices. So many bad choices.

We ate at In and Out.

Yeah.

It was yummy! But left me feeling a little greasy and queasy.  

So we shopped it off! :) 

I was looking for a new outfit for an important meeting. I didn't find what I was looking for.. BUT, I had to try on SMALL dresses!! WOOOHOOO!! (That was super fun!)

We got home and for dinner I ate the leftover Lobster Mac-n-Cheese that Doug and I made at a couple's cooking class. I hated for it to go to waste!! I ate lots of healthy veggies with the pasta, but oh my....

I was hurting by bedtime and this morning.

With Eat to Live's lifestyle, you don't eat dairy or fat. Well, you can guess what made the mac-n-cheese so yummy. Yeah, lots of dairy and fat.

Ugh! I feel bloated and bleh.

So this morning I got up, had a great workout (even though I wanted to throw up at times!) and decided to enjoy a detox day!

It's back to fruits and veggies for me!

First up a green smoothie. So good. 

A photo posted by emilymclemore (@faithhopeandart) on Jul 21, 2015 at 5:59am PDT

Eating REAL food

I've had a lot of people in the last few weeks ask me about what I am eating...the easy answer is that I am eating REAL food! 

Nothing processed.

Lots and lots of fresh food.

(okay... a little processed as I look at the picture below and see the non-dairy creamer in my coffee... )

So here is what I had this morning for breakfast after a 4 mile incredibly humid/sticky run!

I had a bowl of steel cut oats, some fresh fruit, a glass of water and a cup of coffee.

Side note: I use the Hungry Girl  oatmeal philosophy.. My huge bowl of oatmeal is 1/3 cup steel cut oats, 1 cup water and 2/3 cup unsweetened vanilla almond milk. You cook it just like normal, just longer. Instead of a small bowl, you end up with a huge bowl! And yes, that is a little butter (less than a pat.. but it is the real thing) and a teaspoon of brown sugar.

When I cut up fruit for breakfast, I go ahead and cut up some for lunch.

Lunch is a salad. It's a big salad, but fits in the take along (quart size?) tub.

I have 1/2 and 1/2 spinach and mixed greens first. Then a handful of coleslaw mixture (no sauce on it!) some edamame, yellow bell pepper, cucumber, tomato, carrots and avocado. 

I have a small container of balsamic vinaigrette to put on the salad, if I feel like it. I don't use dressing very often, but sometimes I do.

I will also eat my cup of beans with lunch. I often put the beans in the salad.

And that's lunch. 

What I really like is that for whatever reason, eating this crunchy salad takes time and work.  You have to CHEW the food and since it's work it takes my entire lunch time.  When I ate processed junk for lunch, it would only take a few minutes and then I snacked and often ate more than I intended cause I didn't have anything else to do!

Another thing is that I am NOT counting calories, nor am I worried about the fat in the avocado! Since I'm doing my best to eat a pound of raw veggies, a pound of cooked veggies, a cup of beans and three fruits everyday, there just really isn't any need to worry about calories or fat. I like avocado and I like nuts, so I'm eating them and enjoying them!

In addition to the "approved" Eat to Live foods, I also have my serving or so of non-dairy creamer. I have the equivalent of about a cup and a half of coffee every day and then at night I have a glass of white wine. 

For dinner, I eat my cooked vegetables and often more beans and sometimes some fish or a little chicken. Eat to Live allows for 12 ounces of lean meat/fish a week, and really that is more than enough for me.  

Another question I am asking myself, and others have asked..

Will I be able to continue this lifestyle past the 6 weeks that I committed to? I'm planning on it. I may let up on the very limited meat part, but I don't know, I'm not really missing the meats.  I'll probably add back a little dairy, but I've never been a big milk fan. I do however like cheese dip!

All in all,  I feel better than I have in years and in case I haven't said it lately.. I am SLEEPING better than I have ever slept!!

Spaghetti Squash. So simple. So delish.

I've always been a big fan of pasta! I LOVE pasta! So this new healthy living stuff has forced me out of my comfort zone and into a new world of vegetables.

One of my favorite things about my Eat to Live journey is that I am enjoying eating. I'm not feeling guilty about my food choices and that I am truly enjoying the flavors and textures of REAL FOOD!

This last week I made Spaghetti Squash. I've tried it before and it wasn't a hit.. but I think it was because I was trying to eat it with pasta, not in place of pasta! 

So here is what I did..

Take the squash and wash it and cut it in half. Place on a baking sheet flesh side down and bake at 450 degrees for about 35 minutes.

Take the squash out of the oven and let cool until you can handle holding the squash in place. I didn't wait very long as I was hungry!

Using a fork, start scraping the flesh of the squash. It immediately starts pulling apart into "noodles."

This is just half of the squash! It makes a lot of "spaghetti."

 And here is the bowl with both halves of squash noodles pulled.

And here is a picture of my dinner. Roasted veggies (yes, squash two ways for dinner), green beans, and spaghetti squash with a plain tomato jarred sauce.  It was yummy!

With the leftovers, I poured the remaining sauce over the top of the squash, sprinkled less than a 1/3 cup of Parmesan cheese on top of the sauce and then finished the dish with a generous sprinkling of Italian seasoning. I put it in the oven, with the lid on the casserole dish,  at 300 degrees for 45 minutes. I wish I had taken a picture of it. It looked awesome. It tasted even better!

Homemade Hummus and Roasted Chickpeas

In keeping with Eat to Live and trying to add a little bean variety to my day, I decided to make my own hummus and roasted chickpeas to add to my salads.

I bought a one pound bag of dried chickpeas (garbanzo beans). I soaked the peas for 12 hours and then put them in the crockpot for almost 24 hours. I didn't intend to cook them that long, but I started them before I went to bed and in the morning they were still hard, so I kept them on low and went to work. By the time I got home from work and had a chance to deal with them it was probably 20 hours in the crockpot!

Anyway.. I took them out of the crockpot and placed about a third of them on a cookie sheet lined with paper towels and dried them off.

Then I drizzled some Hot Chili Sesame Oil on them.. just enough to coat, but not too much.

And into the oven at 400 degrees for about 30+ minutes. I wanted them crunchy and toasted.

I ate some by the handful. They were really good straight from the oven hot and crunchy with an occasional kick of spice! I have also used them in my salads all week. I wanted them crunchier, but given how long they were in the crockpot, it is a wonder they were edible!

With the remaining beans I made hummus. 

I placed the beans in my big blender with a little of their cooking liquid and added chopped garlic, Hot Chili Sesame Oil, lemon and some salt.

And pureed for a long time.  I added a little more of the cooking liquid as I blended the beans.

Done! It's yummy and I know exactly what is in it!

Next time I'm going to not cook the beans so long to see if I can get them a little crunchier for my "topping."

And here is my salad with my homemade hummus! No dressing required!

Smoothie Madness

I have become nuts for smoothies over the last couple of weeks.
After years of HATING them!!
In fact, as an adult, I wouldn't even try them cause I have NEVER liked smoothies.

Well, over the years, my running friends and sisters would talk about smoothies and how much they love them and drink them everyday and all that jazz.. I would just grimace.

But our local women's running club had a New Year's Eve run and my friend that is a nutrition guru brought some of her smoothie for the group. I figured I could try it. She doesn't do dairy and since that's why I don't do smoothies as I can't stand the texture of yogurt, I figured, what the heck.. I might as well try it.

Here I am. Yes we captured the experience!

I was SHOCKED! I liked it! The texture of the fruit and vegetables didn't bother me at all!

And so began my journey into wellness.

Over the last two weeks I have had a smoothie everyday! Except for one day as we were out of stuff to make one and the day just didn't go right.. I made crappy food choices.

So I am committed! 

I feel better and I've lost 4 pounds in two weeks!

Amazing.

My girls are even drinking smoothies!

And these aren't smoothies for the faint of heart.. these are REAL fruit and veggie smoothies! 

Take a look at my go to smoothie recipe. It's a little longer process, but I really like the taste.

1. 1/2 cup almond milk and an orange. Pulse together.

2. Add spinach, carrots, grape tomatoes, a little avocado and some water.

3. Strain. This is a personal choice as I love the flavor of the orange but I don't like all of the pulp. And I want the real thing and not orange juice! This may not be a needed step if you have a good blender. I had a Ninja blender that I was using (as seen in the below pictures), but it wasn't making the veggies smooth enough. Nice blender but I think there was too much area for the veggies to move around and not enough force to break up the particles. I got a new blender and it is amazing.. now the pulp is creamy and not pulpy (is that a word?)

4. Add a banana, some frozen peaches and strawberries.

5. Blend.

6. Pour.

7. Enjoy.

 

The above smoothie color isn't pretty, but it is yummy. Notice that I didn't add any sweeteners. I don't really like it sweet. The fruits make it plenty sweet in my opinion!

After more than a full week enjoying smoothies and seeing that I really will drink them, I decided to get a blender made for smoothie making.  Oh the difference! It was incredible!!

I got the Nutribullet Pro and WOW! Look how beautiful that green is!!!

I am still straining the veggie mixture, but instead of needing to because of the grit, I am so that I have room for the fruit! In the old blender, once it was strained the mix would give me less than a cup of liquid. Look at how much liquid I have from this mornings mix! 

Once I added the banana, strawberries and peaches I had 20 ounces plus!

And a TMI sidenote: I've always had stomach/gastro issues. Too many salads in one week were not good. This has been an issue of mine on Weight Watchers. It's hard to process that many uncooked veggies. Well, the smoothies are no trouble. I feel better than ever and my system is happy. I'm sure its because I'm straining out most of the fiber and bulk, but hey, I've taken a giant leap into healthy eating, the "grit' will come later!

An A+ Life

My oil painting #3 got an A+! Fun times

I'm also giving myself an A+ on my new weight lifiting regime! I've upped my weights and am feeling it. I was able to increase by 10 pounds on most of my exercises and I added a couple of new things too! I'm feeling stronger and leaner. Too bad my scale isn't reflective of my work yet!

And I'm even giving myself an A+ on my eating! I did that 7 day challenge and that helped me focus on my food choices. The best thing I am doing is that I'm eating breakfast everyday! I love, love, love Hungry Girls oatmeal recipe. It just takes planning as you need at least 20 minutes. But it's yummy and soo easy and healthy!

Now  that I've gotten you interested...

Healthy Oatmeal

1 cup unsweetened almond milk (30 calories)

1 cup water

1/2 cup old fashioned oats (150 calories)

Put all 3 in a big sauce pan together and bring to a boil. Stir. Turn to low and stir every so often for the next 15 minutes. It will thicken up, but still be pretty soupy in the pan. After about 15 or so minutes, pour into a large cereal bowl. Let cool a couple of minutes. It will thicken perfectly.

I add 2teaspoons of light brown sugar (30 calories) and mix well.

enjoy! 

Total calories 210 and the best part is you are full all morning!

That's an A+ in my book!

Hope your life is going well, we are living life in the sweet spot right now!