Continue to Thrive

Eating healthy, in today’s plethora of available food, is very difficult..

    It takes more than just a mindfulness and change in thinking. It takes discipline and constant motivation. For me, motivation that stemmed from pain, was a huge motivator. I had tried so hard for so long to get myself out of pain; to have now found a solution that was working.. I didn’t want to lose that. I love the new lifestyle of living that I have and the physical ability that my body has, that to jeopardize that would not be worth it. It is not an easy feat. I am having to constantly choose good food to put in my mouth. But the more I choose good food, the easier it becomes.

Where to start

    I began by immediately cutting out sugar. I’m not just talking the Oreos in your pantry or the chocolate chip cookies you have every once in a while. I’m meaning all amounts of honey, maple sugar, refined and processed sugar. Most fruits contain a lot of sugar in them, I cut out all fruits except berries (berries contain the least amount and have a good amount of fiber, so I chose to keep those in).

I decided to take the all or nothing approach; cut everything. I felt that I owed myself the time to try as hard as I could. I knew that if I cut corners.. this wouldn’t work.

I heavily limited my carb intake, I knew that eventually I would need to add these back in, but at this point, my body was treating them like sugar, and not digesting them like it should.

Later throughout this process, when I reintroduced more carbs, I made sure that if I was eating them, they were complex carbs that my body could digest better, such as whole grain, seed bread vs. white bread. Organic brown rice, instead of white.

Meal Prep

I gave myself a 2 week process, I set up a daily meal plan so that I was eating just about the same thing for every meal, repeated every day. I started Breakfast with a shot of wheat grass juice (here’s the one I used). 2 scrambled eggs + cheese, half an avocado + salt, 2 pieces bacon, 1/4 cup raspberries. I knew my body would have to adjust to little to no sugar in the mornings because I would occasionally have cereal, oatmeal or bread. It was an adjustment to not have as much food in the morning, but I knew my goal was to eat healthy food. For Lunch I had a huge salad. I piled on spinach/arugula/romaine mix of lettuce, cucumbers, broccoli, carrots, tomatoes, peppers, cheese, olives, green onion, avocado, etc. I used a yogurt based dressing, trying to avoid inflammatory oils (sunflower, vegetable, canola) and only use yogurt or avocado/olive oil based dressings. This part can get tricky, so be sure to read labels. For Dinner I usually kept on hand some vegetable to fry or roast in the oven or on the stove; broccoli and zucchini were my go to favorites, in just a little bit of butter with garlic and salt. Get creative with spices, that will help this be more enjoyable. I had half a plate of those veggies… loaded those up into my system. On a 1/4 of my plate I made sure I had some meat protein, I found that roasted chicken with lemon pepper spice, grass-fed steak (Costco has the best pre-sliced ones), or salmon with olive oil and Cajun seasoning in the oven were my favorites. And that covers it. Same thing (minus some dinner variety), over and over again. It made grocery shopping for my meals easy because I just bought the same ingredients. For my kids and husband (who didn’t have this strict regime), I added some carbs on the side, roasted potatoes, bread/toast, pasta, rice. This gave them variety too.