Tag: paleo

It’s not a Diet

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It’s not.  It is a time of restricted eating.  Diet denotes a period of limiting food to one’s body with the desired intention to lose weight.  A time of restricted eating means that there are many foods that I avoid, but I fill my belly 3 times a day to its happy content with the desired intention of feeling great.

This year’s Paleo Challenge is geared towards reforming my dietary habits for longevity, with the 30 day period as a launching pad for the rest of the year.  It is about getting reacquainted with not having wine every day, following a consistent regime of yoga and exercise, thinking about what goes into my mouth.  I want to be healthier in mind, body, and spirit for a lot longer than a mere 30 day period.

I don’t love giving up bread, cheese, beans, booze, but I do.  It truly makes me feel great, it makes me refocus on the importance of keeping indulgences to a minimum. It is a focused time to cut the crap in order to motivate myself to be a better human in general.

Cut off

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It’s that time of year again.  I dread this time, but I am simultaneously looking forward to changing my ways.  Every year I do a 30 day paleo challenge- a time when I have to drastically change my lifestyle and eating habits for the better.  This year, I really need it.  I have really gone off the rails in terms of using red wine as a source of stress reliever and personal reward.  I have been taking most of my meals out of the fryer, I have been ordering food on my weekends, too lazy to grocery shop,to  cook, and to clean.  Lately I have trimmed my meals down to once a day because I don’t even want to take the time to chew.  I am not mad at myself, I am not disappointed in my past behavior, but it is time to act mature about the things I put in my body.  This is the time to concentrate on everything that I put in my mouth.  No more comfort eating, no more boredom snaking, no more stress french fries.

So, the next 30 days will focus on vegetables and fresh food.  It will focus on water and self-improvement.  Aside from the diet goals, I have to do a full body overhaul.  I have to stretch, exercise, write, read, photograph, and create art.  I have to stop so much focus on work, and focus on my physical and artistic self.

A Good Day To Eat

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So many tasty things went into my mouth today, and the ironic thing is, that this is me trying very hard to eat healthy, to get ready for summer by watching the foods I consume.

Breakfast:  Green Curry Soup.  Yeah that’s right, green curry soup.  No it was not leftovers, I purposefully cooked that this morning for no other reason than that is what I wanted.  I like soup for breakfast, its hot and satisfying. If you have stock on hand, which I do because I work in a commercial kitchen and there is always no less than 12 quarts lying about, and you keep it veg (or use quick cooking meats like chicken and/or bacon), the time commitment is minimal.  Chop some veg, sauté in butter, and the spice, the stock, coconut, cook until the potatoes are done, about 20 min.  In that time you make a list, set up you station, then you are ready to sip down as much soup as you like while starting out the day.

Lunch:  Family style served at the restaurant for the staff.  Today’s lunch included kale salad with poblano buttermilk dressing, radishes and pumpkin seeds, tomato soup, mashed potatoes and chicken with gravy.

Dinner: a late night dinner that used many leftover ingredients in the fridge.  Arugula salad with strawberries (going bad, mind as well mince them up) with olives and crushed cashews, dressed in fresh lemon and olive oil.  Pan fried flounder (in the freezer, wild caught from Aldi) topped with a sauce made from onion, cumin, tomatoes, mushrooms, and coconut cream.

Today was a good day.  Its times like this that I look forward to tomorrow, and all the deliciousness it holds.

Personalize Diet Plan, Named

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Real food diet, ground to mouth, that’s my plan.  Simple foods, minimally processed and whole singular ingredients only.  Although the ingredient list many be long, that is not because of what is on the label of the can or plastic packaging, it is because I strive to eat a very diverse amount of meat, vegetables, fruits, roots, seeds, nuts, spices, vinegar, fats.

Bread, you say, has but 4 ingredients: flour, water, yeast, and salt, so why then are you of the skip-the-bread clan?  How can this easy list go wrong?   The problem with bread is that the flour highly processed. It offers no nutritional value per se and now I am sure that all flour has come from a GMO crop, and almost all of it has been bleached, stripped completely of any traces of minerals and vitamins.

I also try very very hard to limit my cheese consumption which I difficult given my Dutch blood.  Although cheese has but two ingredients: milk and culture, the problem with dairy is how the cows are treated, what they are fed, the medicines they receive to produce a lot, and what milk has gone through to get to the table: homogenization, pasteurization, and overall low quality.  Nothing about the dairy farm is natural.

So when people ask me how I eat, I don’t want to say Paleo- that sounds limiting and also the worst diet name ever.  I eat real food, whole foods, minimally processed, like you cook it some and it’s ready to go. Real food doesn’t have any ingredient list, that’s my diet.  Real food doesn’t specific what’s not in it (growth hormones or preservatives) and definite does not come in plastic.

January 1

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Starting off the new year with that classic resolution stuff, the inclination to make myself a better person and a happier girl.  I want to feel good about myself, I don’t want to get caught up in my own hang ups about wanting to be more, wanting to be different, making goals and not reaching them.  I don’t want to keep thinking about self improvement, I want it to actually happen.  I don’t want to hide from what scares me through a mask of food or alcohol abuse.  I don’t want to do things out of boredom.  I want to find inspiration in the ordinary, I want to find happiness on my own terms.

Like always, to ring in the new year, for the first month I am treating myself properly by following the right diet.  You are what you eat, I preach it all the time, and it is time to follow my own advice.  Eating properly is the first and most important step for self respect.  This means eating nutritionally dense food that has minimal processing.  Respecting the vegetable, avoiding the sugar.

It is not a diet, it is pressing the reset button, rebooting my appetite, focusing on putting my health before fun, reestablishing a system of rewards that is not based on cookies and bourbon, but based instead on inner happiness and finding peace with reality.