Today has been a pretty standard day – woke up, walked the dogs, watered the Christmas tree 🎄, and ate breakfast. Breakfast wasn’t too standard though … I’m trying someone “new”!!
Breakfast today was 1/2 cup egg whites, 1/4 cup shaved Brussels sprouts, 2tbsp shredded taco cheese, 1/2 grapefruit, and a packet of stevia in the raw. This “new” plan I’m trying seems so obvious – focusing on eating mostly plant based foods, some lean protein, and limiting high carbohydrate processed foods – but as someone who has been trying to recover from binge eating disorder it’s taken a lot for me to get to basics rather than trying to yo yo my way back to a healthy weight.
As I mentioned, the basic principle to this plan – which is “the skinny” but I won’t call it that because of the implication of that word – is to eat whatever you want, BUT you must have a serving or two of vegetables before. The idea is that you fill up on veggies, then lean protein and by the time you get to the carbs you may take a bite or two but you’re too full to finish. As you can imagine this is a bit more complicated than that and that’s why there’s a book about it – but I guess the point here is that I tend to make nutrition so much more complicated than it has to be.
The book describes different options and gives a very clear discription of how to eat – and surprisingly it is a lot of volume. What really got me what just that – the volume! I’m what you’d call a volume eater – I’ve never done well with diets or nutrition plans that are super restrictive. What has drawn me to this book is the simplicity – and the statement that you can literally eat as many vegetables as you want – fill up on veggies, then lean protein – snack on veggies all day – you can never eat enough veggies.
Now, the drawback for me is that I am not a huge fan of veggies, but I’m open to learning how to cook with different vegetables and maybe I can learn to like something other than green beans and Brussels sprouts!
As you can imagine the plan is pretty low-carb for the first phase – but if you ask me, I feel that if you listen to your body you can play around with the carbs. What I like about it is there’s no need to count – eat as many veggies as you’d like – you can probably eat an entire cup or two of veggies and be full and only accumulate 30-50 calories where the same cup or two of cake would be 300-500 calories (or more) and you’d be hungry right away.
As I get further into eating more veggies I’ll try and post some recipes, if you have a favorite recipe please share below!!
On another note I’ve made it a priority to spend time with the fur kids …
Played tug of war with charlie and even got Louie to play a bit with the laser pointer (Louie doesn’t usually play with me much).
Miley has never been a big fan of playing with others, so she’s just been hanging out by my side as I’ve enjoyed some play time with the boys.
The rest of today is pretty much going to be full of relaxing and enjoying my last day off before the week starts – it’s really freeing to know I can begin a healthier eating style without a whole lot of stress – recovery isn’t easy but it’s much easier when there’s less emphasis on what you can and can’t have and more emphasis on eating more healthfully!
What are your plans to get back on track after the holidays? Why wait?
What are your favorite vegetables? Share your recipes!
Do you struggle with an eating disorder? Have you had trouble staying true to a healthful diet plan due to your history? My dogs help keep me calm – what do you do to take the pressure off of yourself?
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