Goodbye 2011!

Good news: My cravings for sugar are, thankfully, diminishing with each day.  *phew!* 

Bad news: I accidentally ate something I shouldn't have yesterday!  *oops!*  (I didn't realize that the dried cranberries in my trail mix were sweetened with sugar until it was already too late! Thankfully I only ate 1/4 cup so the damage was pretty minimal)

This is another thing I'm quickly learning though....there is so much hidden sugar in foods that you would least expect.  Should it really be that difficult to cut out processed sugars from your diet if you choose to?  (It is seriously in everything.)

Anyways, moving on--the highlight of my food yesterday was my paleo-friendly beef stew.  It was delicious!! ...And with leftovers, I get to have it again today. :)

Here is the recipe:
2 lbs. or so of stew meat (I cooked all of the meat that came in the package I bought)
3-4 carrots
3-4 celery sticks
1 small onion
5 cloves of garlic (I really like garlic...adjust the amount as you see fit)
1-2 potatoes (optional)
1 can of diced tomatoes
4 cups of chicken stock
salt, pepper, rosemary, thyme, cayenne, and any other spices to taste

--Get everything chopped up and begin to cook your aromatics with some olive oil in your soup pot. (if you choose to use potatoes they can go in at this point too!)
--While those are cooking, brown your stew meat in another pan. 
--Once the beef is browned, add it to your soup pot in addition to your can of tomatoes, broth, and spices.
--Cover the pot and allow it to simmer for about 45 minutes or so, stirring occasionally. 
--Remove the lid, and cook for 25 more minutes or so.  (This is probably pretty obvious, but I would suggest giving it a bit of a taste test at this point as well and adding more spices if necessary.)
--And, then eat and enjoy! :)

Delish!

It was very good--I even went back for seconds!  And with it being winter back here on the east coast, I anticipate making this and other soups many more times along the way.

In other news, one of my new favorite things of the day is seltzer water.  I love my diet soda and, with that being gone for these 30 days, I think this is going to be an okay replacement for those times when I really want something carbonated and flavored.  I currently have a can of raspberry lime seltzer next to me and am definitely enjoying it! haha.

And lastly, here is my last piece of insight that proved to be a big help yesterday:  Eating more substantial meals really helped me not want to snack on carb and sugary things in between.  And with each of the meals tasting good I didn't feel like I was missing out on anything, which I also think is key to being successful in eating paleo.

I think that's it for now....hope you all have a fun and fabulous New Years Eve tonight!  I'm looking forward to seeing what 2012 will bring.  :)

Until next time....

Zucchini Pancakes

I finally feel like I'm getting the hang of this! 

Day 2 was more difficult than day 1; I felt pretty lazy most of the day but I'm not sure if it was because I'm fighting a bit of a cold or if because of the diet....or maybe a little of both?  Needless to say I wasn't really motivated to do much of anything and, other than getting some practice time in, didn't get a whole lot done.  Good thing I'm on vacation, right?

I did make some delicious tuna fish salad for lunch though!  I always forget how much I like tuna until I have it....it totally hit the spot!  (And gave me a meal idea for sometime in the future too!)

I think one of the things that made day 2 hard was the fact that I got hungry only a couple hours after every meal.  So today, for day 3, I made a larger breakfast than I had for the first two days and it really helped!  So, I think that is one of the keys is to eat a good size breakfast.  May sound obvious to some of you, but it has made quite the difference for me today and it's my plan for tomorrow as well.

So here is what I had: zucchini pancakes! :)

I found a recipe online and tweaked it a bit:

1 zucchini (grated)
2 green onions (chopped)
salt and pepper to taste
1 egg (beaten)
some olive oil
--Shred the zucchini, chop the onion, and then combine them in a bowl and flavor with salt and pepper
--Drain the water away from the zucchini...this step was not mentioned in the recipe, but would have been really helpful! (my suggestion is to use a strainer and be sure to get as much of the water out as possible)
--Next add the egg and mix it all together
--Add just enough olive oil to coat the bottom of your pan and heat it up!
--Once the oil is hot, divide the zucchini in to four pancake mounds in the pan.  You can use your spatula to flatten them out a bit, and they will take a good 5 minutes or so on each side to cook.
--Once they are cooked through and brown enough to your liking on each side, you are finished!

there they are cooking in the pan! 

 

I was a little nervous as to whether or not I would like them because I don't normally like zucchini but they were actually quite good!  I definitely plan on making them again. (I will be sure to get a good 'after' picture then as well.)  

And since I talked all about having a good breakfast, I will have you know that in addition to the pancakes I also had one additional egg scrambled and an orange.  Quite the daredevil, aren't I?! :P

Nothing much more to report for now; I'm still feeling somewhat tired today but I've got some yummy smelling beef stew cooking on the stove, and a workout planned for a little later that I'm looking forward too.

take care!

Day 1

Well, I made it!

For breakfast yesterday I had a 2 egg scramble with onion, bell pepper, and spinach.  It was pretty good but I found myself hungry again just a couple of hours later.  It was no big deal because I was home, but I was hoping that breakfast would hold me over longer.....perhaps I need to add another egg or egg white to the mix and get some more calories?  Or maybe try and find a good sausage (not likely) or bacon? 

So for lunch I had a pretty big salad with grilled chicken on it.  I pounded out the chicken to tenderize it some and then cooked it on my George Forman grill.  It was awesome!  The chicken took about as long to cook as the chopping veggies did so it made for a pretty quick meal. (bonus points!)  And then for dressing I did the juice of a half of lime, a little bit of oil and some spices.  I was pretty hungry by that point so didn't want to take time figuring out an awesome dressing, but it worked and I was happy :)  ...And I still have half of the chicken breast for another meal.

After getting hungry fairly quickly after breakfast I wasn't really sure how long the salad would hold me over so I packed a snack on my way out the door and decided to only eat it if I got hungry while I was at school practicing.  So about 3 or so hours after lunch I ending up having my snack of a Lara Bar and some cut up celery with some sunflower butter.  Here's the not so fun part though: can you guess which of those things turns out not to be Paleo friendly?    Ya, it's the sunflower butter. (Bummer, right?!)

When I bought the sunflower butter I was super stoked because you aren't supposed to have peanuts while doing Paleo and I had read somewhere that this was a good alternative.  But alas, it is not.  The darn thing has a little bit of sugar in it and it also turns about you aren't really supposed to have seeds either.  So what the heck am I supposed to put on my celery and apples for snacks?!  I suppose almond butter is the actual alternative to peanut butter but it doesn't really taste good to me so it sort of makes the situation a double bummer.  But, I'm trying to do strictly paleo for 30 days so I'm going to suck it up and go and see if I can exchange the sunflower butter with the almond butter.  (Trader Joe's is pretty good about exchanging so Im hoping they will let me even the the sunflower butter is already open.)

By the time dinner rolled around I was pretty hungry again and didn't really want to eat the leftover chicken so I went hunting for something quick.  The answer: shrimp!  I bought a bag of frozen shrimp so I took some out and ran them under water of varying temperatures until they were defrosted....this took maybe 10 minutes or so.  In the meantime I took half of the asparagus I bought and started steaming that.  To prepare the shrimp I sauteed some onion and garlic and then added the shrimp along with some cayenne, cumin, and cilantro.  It ended up being delicious with some fresh lemon juice drizzled over it all and it was another super quick meal which we all can appreciate. :) 

Yummy!

So that was it!

I would say that hardest thing for me was not being able to go get a coffee from Dunkin' Donuts.  Call me crazy, but when I was out running errands I wanted nothing more than to have a medium iced coffee with 2 cream and 2 pumps of cinnamon! (ha!)   I obviously managed and it's clearly not that big of a deal, but I think I'm going to find that the hardest things to give up are going to be the things that I have worked into my schedule.  It also takes a ton of planning because you really are cooking every meal and no one wants to eat the same three meals every day.   That's all a part of the fun though, right?

Looking forward to day 2, I'm hoping to up my water intake and get my heart rate up some.  And I'm also thinking of making some beef stew. :) 

Stay tuned!

p.s. I promise every post wont only be about what I ate that day....I'm sure I can find more interesting things to write about :P

What is Paleo?

Guess there is no turning back now!  I even shared this with facebook friends...oh boy. ;)  Time to dive in then:

I am no expert by any means, but here is my synopsis of what the Paleo diet is.

Essentially, you go back to eating how a caveman would-- before modern agriculture.  The concept behind it is that that is how our bodies are designed to be fed and that is how our digestive system can work most effectively.  It's supposed to help you lose weight and help to cleanse your body of all these artificial things that we put into it day after day. 

So that means meats (organic and grass fed with no antibiotics as much as possible), vegetables (TONS of them!), and some fruit and nuts.  You can cook with olive or coconut oil, and you can also have coconut milk from the can. 

Nuts are okay within reason, but you aren't supposed to have peanuts. (This one I don't quite understand....) 

And with the fruit--you are supposed to stay away from the super high-glycemic ones if at all possible, and they say berries are your best choice. 

Oh, and coffee and tea are okay too...just without anything in them. :/

So no grains, no dairy, and no sweeteners....and no alcohol. :(

And they also say give it 30 days, see how you are feeling and then, if you want, you can start to work into bringing back some of the things that you eliminated.  You can see how your body reacts and at that point figure out what works best for you long term.  (I'm not saying no to cream in my coffee forever, and I'm definitely not saying goodbye to gin and tonics forever either...but I am for 30 days.)

Sounds sort of limiting, I know. But after researching online there are tons and tons of recipes that look fun to try and many of the things we eat today you can still make, just without one or two of the ingredients.  So there ya have it.

Day 0

It's my second attempt at a blog!  My first one documented my cross country road trip which was such an awesome awesome adventure.  And people seemed to really enjoy reading it as well!  (Well, my mom did at least.)  But that was easy--I take pictures of amazing places and share them with people.  It was 10 days of excitement and then I arrived at my destination and began a new chapter of my life.  

So here we are a year and a half later with this blog that's going to cover a much more personal topic--weight loss.  *eep!*  It's definitely something I don't really enjoy talking about and frankly wish I didn't have to.  But the fact of the matter is, I want to lose some weight!  Over the summer I did p90x and ate super healthy and, as a result, I dropped some weight! woohoo.  Then I started school up again and time to workout and plan meals went out the window.  (I swear I'm just that busy and not making an excuse.)

All was going well up until Thanksgiving when things got super stressful.  I was sleeping even less than the normal 6 or so hours a night, upped my caffeine and sugar intake to stay awake during my long days  and barely had time to plan meals which meant I started to eat out more too. (Oh, and I also started drinking more) 

Fast forward to today and I'm six pounds heavier than I was when I started school in late August.  The clothes are starting to get a little tighter, the stomach isn't quite as flat as it once was, and I'm not getting in any regular workouts.  Sounds sort of like life, right? :P

 It's also worth mentioning that my body does not shed the pounds very easily.....I have tried pretty much every diet and no matter what I do I can't seem to lose the amount of weight I want to.  It's a mystery to me as to why I just can't follow weight watchers like the next person and lose the pounds, but for whatever reason that just doesn't work for me.  So alas, here we are. 

Paleo diet time!  I first learned about this way of eating from one of my best friends that is studying nutrition in school.  I've been interested in giving it a shot for a while and with 4 weeks off of school this seems like the perfect time! :)

I have a delicious non-paleo dinner planned for tonight (my last supper! ha!), and a whole bunch of delicious paleo items all ready for me in the fridge for my week ahead.  It's gonna be good and I'm going to document it all. :)

So stay tuned.....if nothing else, hopefully we will have some good stories to tell at the end of it all.