Actually this one happened before Christmas so it can't really be called a New Year ResoIution. I was tired and never felt rested, had a skin tone that varied between grey and yellow, and had massive bruised eyes, not to mention being overweight, lacking concentration and focus, and feeling like a hyperactive attention-deficient kid. So I decided to go on a health kick the week before Christmas to try and make myself feel better and to a certain extent it did work.
Part of this health kick is having a smoothie in the morning for breakfast. I often end up not getting breakfast until I get into work at 7am because I have no appetite to eat anything before then. By this time I've been up two hours and have had three or four cups of tea. So rather than force myself to eat, which makes me nauseous during the car ride to work, I've been laying off the tea and drinking my breakfast instead.
The smoothie of choice pictured above was a big handful of spinach, banana, Greek yoghurt, natural organic fruit juice and oats. I don't have blender, only a food processor, hence the 'bitty' appearance. You don't taste the spinach by the way. You can get away with a ratio of about 60:40 fruit to veg and not notice any taste of the veg. To the smoothie I add physillum husk to ensure I'm getting enough fibre and an acidophillus for get the good bacteria into my stomach.
Drinking this while getting myself together in the morning has been giving me more energy, reduced my sugar cravings and stopped me snacking on sweet stuff during the day. I can spread out the time period over which I drink it and don't have to find time to sit down and chuck back a whole bowl of stuff in one go. Little and often works better for me.
The smoothie also fitted in with my clean eating regime that I went back on after I went back to work on 7th January. I walked in and saw cakes, biscuits, crisps, snacks and knew I had to do something drastic. Being 'careful' with my diet in this environment wasn't going to work - I had to have strict rules in place and clean eating provides them.
Part of clean eating is about eating high quality non-processed foods, which automatically means no cakes, sweets, pastry, biscuits etc. There's a number of other rules too, which anyone on a health kick would probably do anyway:
The hardest rules on the list are remembering to eat small meals 5-6 times a day and combining the carbs and protein in roughly equal quantity - both are designed to stabilise blood sugar and metabolism to avoid overeating and binge eating.
For the first week i've allowed myself as much as I want on the meal plan with no calorie counting - I had a mental image of my body restocking itself with whatever nutrients it needed to make up for being deprived while trying to cope with processing the junk I was eating. However as of yesterday I'm adapting the quantities in the meal plan because for the first time at 4:30pm my brain was telling me 'enough. No more food. I dont' want it'. This is what yesterday's meal plan looked like:
6:30am Meal 1: smoothie - greek yoghurt, banana, oats, apple and mango juice
10:30am Meal 2: small sweet potato, four thin slices of ham (chopped), 4 baby tomatoes, 3tbsps of cottage cheese as binding, raw carrot strips
1:30pm Meal 3: chicken breast, sweet potato, salad, raw carrot strips, cottage cheese, sliced red pepper
4:30pm Meal 4: sweet potato, four thin slices of turkey (chopped), 4 baby tomatoes, small palmful of cottage cheese as binding.
9:00pm Meal 5: banana and small glass of milk
I could not face a meal at 7:30pm last night, but managed to get something down me finally at 9pm as I was worried I might wake up at night feeling hungry.
Because of this, I've adapted today's menu a bit so I'll eat less food at each of the five meals so I can fit a sixth in when I get home and eat with Martin. Also, yesterday I went off sugar. Just like that. Didn't like it in tea and coffee anymore. Very interesting :-)
9:30am Meal 2: burgen bread slice, three thin slices of ham chopped, 3 baby tomatoes, 2 heaped tbsp cottage cheese, raw carrot in strips, satsuma
12:30pm Meal 3: sweet potato, two boiled eggs chopped in 2 heaped tbsps cottage cheese, salad, grapes, seasoning
3:30pm Meal 4: burgen bread slice, three thin slices of turkey
chopped, 3 baby tomatoes, 2tbsp cottage cheese as binding, grapes
6:30pm Meal 5: large prawns with parsley marinade and green beans
9:30pm Meal 6: banana and small glass of milk
Excercise-wise while I am back on the treadmill again, it really is only to stretch my legs and limber up a bit as I'm feeling very stiff and sore all over when I leave work. Bad posture I'm sure. But I'm happy just to concentrate on getting my food and nutition right, and watch the effect it has.
At a later date, I'll add a bit more structure to the workouts, and maybe get back to the weights again.
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