It happened again...

Life took over and pulled me from my writing. And I miss it. SO much.

So, I'm back! I have a lot to catch up on, I know. I'm excited to be back in the swing of things, though. 

To bring you up to speed quickly, I'll make a short list:

1. I am still BLASTing. I'm 100% addicted and am their biggest fan.

2. Still clean-eating. But met with a nutritionist (at BLAST) and tweaked my eating habits a little more. Will definitely be posting about that!

3. I've finally realized that living a healthy life isn't just about what I eat or how long I workout. It's about my relationships (with myself, my husband, family, friends). It's about making promises and keeping them. It's about priorities. It's about taking care of myself, my family and my environment. 

I say all of that because I originally started this blog to share healthy food recipes or nutritional information that I've learned along the way. But this blog is going to be so much more than that. It's about life. And I know that I'm not the only person who struggles with finding a healthy balance with all that consumes our world.

Stay tuned, folks... And as always, thank you for reading! :)

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Experience

That's what I'm going to chalk this past week up to. Experience. I went on a spring break vacation with my work family and it was really hard to not eat highly-processed foods. I feel like I do so well at home because I am in control of what is in the house, but being at a resort, in a different country, is a totally different story. I brought 8 packets of my Whole Foods brand oatmeal (the only ingredient is steel cut oats) and about 15 Lara Bars. I, of course, didn't eat all 15 bars, but I brought them just in case I didn't have any other snack option. Luckily, we went grocery shopping, so I was able to get yogurt, orange juice and milk. The yogurt wasn't 100% up to my standards, but it was great for the situation I was in. The Oikos 0% Vanilla Greek Yogurt has cultured pasteurized organic nonfat milk, organic sugar, organic natural vanilla flavor. I prefer plain, whole milk yogurt and I add honey to it, but again, this was great for snacks and breakfast while on the trip.

Lunch, every single day, was a salad. I either had grilled fish or shrimp on it. It also had peppers, feta cheese, cucumbers, tomatoes and olives. Yum. It was delicious!

 

Dinner varied every night. I never had french fries, potatoes, rice, bread or any starch. I typically had a fish with vegetables, but when eating out, you never know what they use to prepare it. Darn! When we cooked at home, I had a burger with no bun. Again, not happy about it, especially since Adam and I have cut out red meat, but it was either that or a hot dog. When it's out of your control, you choose the lesser of two evils.

 

My downfall? Dessert. I did so well the first couple of nights. And then I saw key lime pie on a dessert menu... The devil came over my body and made me order it. No, really... I think that's what happened! It was delicious. No, I don't regret it. Yes, I felt sick later that night.

 

I also had a few thin mints and chocolate ice cream. In my defense, it was Haagen-Dazs Chocolate and only had five ingredients!

 

 

All in all, I thought I did pretty well. I definitely could have done better, but I also could have done much, much worse. I also used the gym there, but it was no Blast900 workout.

 

All of this to say, I have a nasty cold now. A cold that the kids have had for a while and I have fought for so long. But as soon as my exercise and diet changed, I think my immune system plummeted. Yikes. Ever since the beginning of the year when we started cutting out highly-processed foods, we have been very healthy (knock on wood)... Just goes to show you that it's not worth eating... crap. For lack of a better word.

I cannot wait to get back into my routine. But so far, my day has only consisted of this...

 

 

Just keepin' it real, folks.

 

Thanks for sticking around during my hiatus the past couple of weeks. In the words of Fergie, "I'm back!"

Happy Saturday!

 

This just happened... But it went a little more like this...

 

Me: I'm really in the mood for frozen yogurt. We haven't had it in months!

Adam: We can go get some if you want...

Me: Really? Yay!

.......

Me (as we're eating sherbet): I don't even want to know the ingredients in this stuff...

 

That's why this is a journey. And that's why I'll never say, "I don't ever eat processed foods." Because, well, I do sometimes. And sometimes, like today, I don't regret it. Yum! It was a fun afternoon date!

*Update: I do regret it! After writing this blog and feeling extra guilty for eating something that I didn't read the ingredients on first, I decided to do some research. That's where the Food Babe comes in. Check out this article. I don't think I'll ever "crave" frozen yogurt again. But I still think the Bert and Ernie picture is adorable!

 

 



Lent

Every year for Lent, I always give up something like cookies (sweets), chips or alcohol. But since we started clean-eating in the beginning of January, I decided to make Lent the perfect time to really put the icing on the cake. (Homemade icing, of course!)

 

Picture from here.

I'd say that Adam and I only eat about 5% of processed foods, if even that much. It mainly happens on the weekend when we are tired and just want a quick, but healthy meal. And for the past month or so, we have headed to the Whole Food's hot bar. Our meals aren't that unhealthy... it's always fish, veggie and quinoa. Not bad, right? Problem is, we aren't 100% sure how they're cooking these foods. And sometimes, we go through the ice cream aisle and come home with a "so-so" dessert. So this year for Lent, we decided to give up all processed foods. Let's call it our 40-day pledge. And for an added bonus, we've also decided we won't eat at the Whole Food's hot bar either!

 Original picture from here.

 I have to admit, zero processed foods is definitely going to be a little difficult for me because I'm going away for a week with my work family. And speaking of family, visiting home (Jacksonville) will be interesting since nobody else cuts out processed foods. I'll let this be a challenge for me... Maybe I can get them to start eating clean, too! :) My plan is to travel fully-loaded with Lara bars, fruits and Trader Joe's 100% whole wheat pretzels. And thank goodness for technology... I'll be checking out Lisa's tips on my iPhone whenever needed!

 



Grocery List

Adam and I are pretty habitual people. With that being said, we also never want to get bored with what we're eating, because I feel like that can lead to poor choices when you're outside your home. So I keep a pretty general grocery list, but try to change up the specifics on it. I decided to blog this because I've had a few friends and family members ask me what we've been eating since cutting out processed foods. Honestly, I feel like we eat more now. I'm full longer (obviously because I'm filling my body with nutritious foods) and our monthly spending has also gone down. How? Let me show you.

 

Grocery List:Whole wheat bread or pitas

Vegetables*
Fruit*
Whole milk, plain yogurt
Whole Milk
Frozen fruit*
100% Pure maple syrup*

Organic Yellow Mustard*
Raw, local honey*
Organic tomato sauce*
Organic, whole milk cheese
Lara bars (Good to keep in your purse/desk at work!)
Organic Hummus (Trader Joe's)
Quinoa
100% Organic whole wheat pasta
Wild-raised fish
Pasture-raised eggs
Organic Sunday bacon
Unsweetened cocoa powder*

I'm sure I'm missing items from that list. But the basic idea is to have staples in the house that you can use for multiple meals.

*Things like the tomato sauce, maple syrup, honey and yellow mustard are items that we only have to buy every couple months because we don't use them often. And when we do use them, it's very little at a time.

*I buy fresh, organic produce for the most part. I try to change up vegetables weekly, but our main veggies are broccoli, green beans, carrots, Brussels sprouts and peas. Our main fruits are bananas, apples, grapes, pomegranate and oranges. But again, I try to switch it out so that we don't get bored.
I'm stressing that because as soon as you're bored with your lifestyle, you will veer off course.

*The frozen fruits are used to make a fruit syrup in our yogurt. I'll be blogging how I do that soon!

*I use the cocoa powder to make hot chocolate. Plain, it is nasty! But I use one tablespoon of the powder and one tablespoon of honey and it is so, so delicious! Sometimes I mix it in whole milk, but for the most part I just use hot water. 

 

 

We've definitely been saving money, too. Our weekly grocery bill is about the same, sometimes a little higher, and sometimes a little lower. We rarely eat out now, though. That's where the most savings has come in. We definitely don't deprive ourselves from it, but we try to keep our house full of foods so that we don't want to eat out that much. Plus, we've noticed that as soon as we eat something from a restaurant, we feel very... blah. There really isn't a better word choice than that. I had a girlfriend come in town this past weekend and we had 3-4 meals out. I made really good decisions for the most part, but one night we had dessert and I just felt terrible all night. Yuck. Not worth it in my book!



Lunch, lately...

Since we've started cutting out processed foods, our lunch has been the same every day. Lunch meat is no longer something we want to put in our bodies, so we needed to get creative.

 

Enter the hummus sandwich...

 

 

I buy our whole wheat pitas from Trader Joe's. They get two thumbs up in my book!

 

I use a tablespoon of hummus, then sliced cucumbers and top it with Havarti cheese. It is absolutely delicious, if I do say so myself.

 

 

BUT it can get quite boring eating the same thing every day, so we need lunch ideas! This week I bought different cheese (ohhh, I'm really living on the edge!), but we're still using the same pita and cucumbers. What other vegetable can we put on the sammy? And I'm thinking I may need to attempt some homemade soup. That can't be too hard... All ideas and recipes are appreciated!