Tuesday, July 10, 2012
Tuesday, June 26, 2012
Daily Food Log: 2
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Disclaimer: I came back to the top after already beginning this post to type this quick message: I hope anyone that follows this blog is somewhat entertained by my ramblings. I don't want this to be ALL business, so I'll add some filler to keep it interesting. Because that's just how I always end up writing, and hopefully it's not just all a bunch of BS!
The Food Choice Dilemma
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"...eating healthy isn't all avoiding boxes and the freezer. It all comes down to being conscious and knowledgeable of what you plan on burning in the machine that is your digestive tract..."
A major epidemic that seems to hit all of my friends at one point or another is the decision of what you will eat. You want to save money, but you're not experienced enough to know what to stray from or to embrace. So you stick to boxed dinners, frozen meals, and for most people that's comfortable and enough. They are being fed, enjoy what they are eating, and the prices seem quite reasonable.
Going from Hamburger Helper and french bread to orange-ginger talapia and roasted beet, orange, and fennel salad is quite a change, and it will take time to adapt. Sometimes those "old" comfort foods can be a nice treat and can be made with a few tweaks once you understand what healthier options you have to make the meal easier on the ol' body.
My advice is just to always check out recipes online if you're ever unsure. Find some good communities and sites and constantly browse whenever you start to feel like choosing out a meal. Get it prepared, don't rush yourself. Always make a list of the things you'll need, and don't be afraid to try something new.
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| Sometimes it doesn't always work out... but you will never know what will work unless you keep trying |
I'm lucky in that I am naturally quite gifted with cooking, so it's really easy for me to try something new or adapt a recipe. I cannot create from scratch well, but so long as a recipe is written well I shouldn't have a problem making almost anything, which has led me to come up with some great things.
Pick out a primary ingredient and see what you can do with that. When I first really got the "health" kick and started properly adapting my shopping list, one of my first focuses was bell peppers. I love bell peppers. I haven't done much to explore with them aside from some fajitas or hash browns in the morning. I went home, and came across a recipe for stuffed bell peppers. That was one of my first real "healthy" meals where everything on my list I was confident in, and knew was fresh and not some manufactured crap.
From there I found different sources, and I would read through, see something that caught my eye and run over to Whole Foods. Now, this definitely (especially at first) can be a venture that is not so easy on the wallet. I live on quite a controlled budget, but I'm increasingly willing to work harder to make things work to avoid sacrificing quality over cost.
You can start combining many different skills at this point. Seeking out different stores for different items, checking store sales' flyers ,coupons, all sorts of stuff. You'll slowly start to learn what is seasonal and what you can work around. What you can find that's frozen that's just as good as the fresh thing, but cheaper. Eating healthy isn't all avoiding boxes and the freezer. It all comes down to being conscious and knowledgeable of what you plan on burning in the machine that is your digestive tract. It directly influences how much you can do, how you feel.
Some communities share great information and viewpoitns, and I'll do my best to share my examples. You can find a support base for probably anything on Reddit, here's a Reddit frugal subreddit that has all sorts of great tips and information.
Diet is the #1 thing I think that someone can change to improve their life. I've wasted a lot of time before getting rightfully dedicated to a pursuit of health. I think with a little knowledge (it's hard, a lot of nutrition subjects are controversial) a lot of people would be apalled at what they shove down their throat and expect to power the miraculous function of your body living and performing for 24 hours, 7 days a week, 365 a year for 60+ years.
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| We may not know exactly who to follow, but you should never be a prisoner to your diet |
Through this blog, I'll hope to use it as an outlet to express my growth in this dilemma and my solutions. I will share my meal ideas, successes, failures, and hope to show from a first person perspective how anyone can do more for themselves.
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First of my daily logs
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| Wish I had more exotic food experiences |
Today, I started with my Omega3 enriched eggs, like I do every morning. Generally I eat 4, this weekend I made some Swedish pancakes (they were amazing), and had an odd amount of eggs. I had 5 left, so I just ate all of them today. Also, as I always do, I cooked the eggs scrambled without any added salt or anything like that. Topped it with a little Heins Simple ketchup, which I've been enjoying. I hope I'm not being lied to, but so far this ketchup seems to be the real deal on SIMPLE food. Tomato, vinegar, real sugar, and some spices. Shouldn't be anything more added.
Skipped the protein shake because I was really lazy this weekend (enthralled with a new video game), and didn't want to add extra nutrients/calories I felt I didn't really need. Took my vitamin and an Omega 3.
Yesterday night I got an energy kick after completing my weekend gaming marathon (little disgusted with myself, but I feel it was worth it). I was planning on going to the gym, but it was already almost 10 and I really needed to get eggs for breakfast and stuff for lunches this week, so I decided to go get some groceries.
Before I left I found inspiration to check out some lunch ideas to get a little more creative. Up until now, I had basically been sticking to celery sticks with peanut butter, some lunch meat and a couple slices of cheese, and some fruit. I would generally eat half of the celery I brought as a snack around 12. I ate pretty much that same thing varying the fruit I would take for a few weeks.
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| Celery everyday was getting a litle boring... |
Today, I bust out some baby bell peppers, cut up an apple (with a side of almond butter), a few turkey meat slices (found Oscar Meyer all natural, no preservative meats), and a couple 2% swiss cheese slices. I also saw my grocery store had one of my favorite things ever, a sale on red grapes for $.99/lb! I excitedly snagged a bag, and threw a few in today's lunch.
A very varied, light, and colorful lunch! It all tasted great, left me feeling full.
Tonight I also found a new recipe to try out. Not necessarily healthy, but it was a simple honey mustard chicken recipe. I whipped up some sweet potatoes that I grilled with the chicken. They were basted with a vinegar/olive oil base with a bunch of different spices. Pretty good! I'm going to work a lot more on incorporation sweet potatoes into my diet. They're so fibrous and tasty!
Off to tomorrow!
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Supplementing a Diet
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Now one area I sure am lacking true education and knowledge in, is supplements. I understand the basic elements and recently was progressively enlightened on a major aspect of nutrition in the form of Omega fatty acids.Some of my family are health nuts. They know the trends, pills, magical solutions, and the business. I've learned a lot from them. My sister keeping her kids health and having to adapt their diets to their health needs was eye opening. But they also have connections to people who are deep into supplements. From body building to essential oils, I'm pretty clueless.
I recently did some work for a nice lady, trying to assist her in understanding today's digital world. She had just bought an iPod and couldn't figure out how to get music onto it. I spent ~2 hours trying to teach her the process, but she was fairly lost. I do hope she's figured it out more now! Anyways, she works at Vitamin World and as payment (as she gets a great deal on the stuff there) she'll buy me some stuff rather than paying me a few bucks for my time.
Now a quick veering off the subject matter:
Recently I had been studying the effects of the Omega fatty acids. This is a very controversial subject, but some underlying aspects seem to be solid science from what I've learned. Basically, oils come down to 2 types. Saturated, and poly/mono unsaturated fats. Saturated are the "bad" fats. Unsaturated "good" fats. You can't go overboard on either, it's all a balance game but the very word "fats" doesn't necessarily imply negative health effects or weight gain or anything like that. They are a required nutrient for our body to function, create cells properly, and there's a lot of evidence keeping them in balance prevents disease.
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| Avoid a cocktail of supplements, though |
Now, there's a lot to learn here. With time, you can look at your cooking habits and look around at what might work better. Look at the varied diets around the world, and how their health is. America, in my opinion, has done a lot to avoid doing our food like anyone else yet we have little history of how we prepare it. Looking around the world, a large majority of cultures have food practices around today that are consistent of that of their ancestors thousands of years ago. Sushi and curry being huge examples, and those are remarkably healthy countries they originate from.
Learning when to use coconut oil over vegetable oil, what soy-based (read: ALL CHEAP OIL PRODUCTS ON STORE SHELVES) means to you, when to use olive oil, and so on and so forth are all examples of things that with time you can learn to keep different aspects of your health in check. There's a lot to learn, so everything comes back to habits.
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| Choices and habits define who we are |
What I currently take that I feel balances out my diet pretty successfully is a daily multivitamin, a protein shake in the morning (1-1.5 scoops with 8 oz milk), and an Omega-3 supplement. Vitamin World has a nice line-up of vitamins and supplements, I just got their house brand Omega-3 (with both kinds of Omega-3, can take up to (3) of the tablets per day), and their house multi-vitamin which seems to cover the important bases. Then to keep up with protein I take the protein shake and also as a meal supplement to get through the day without snacking. I also drink another after hitting the gym if I work out that night.
Currently that's all I use, but I would like to do more research and find out what else I could throw in the mix to achieve peak performance, but I'm nowhere near that. In all I have read though, don't jump into anything. Don't let some snake oil salesman wring you into spending thousands on supplements promising health and change if you wouldn't even know how it affects your body or if you're also not adapting your diet and routine at the same time. I got maybe ~$40 worth of product that I was already looking into purchasing regardless, so it was a no-brainer experiment and I seem to be feeling better. I can tell a day where I've missed my vitamins. and I've missed my vitamins, that also means I've missed my allergy pill so that day will NOT BE FUN!
There's no easy cure to health (except maybe eating nothing but fresh fish and sushi all day, every day!), but with our access to information, modern medicine, development of science and appreciation of our ancestor's we can all work to find a successful balance.
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Monday, June 25, 2012
Health and Nutrition
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Keeping up with nutritional news can be quite a burden and challenge, but I have a lot around me that generally keeps me well-informed. As I do research, I'll share my findings on here as well, but let's give a brief rundown of what I'm chasing as of right now.
Mainly my diet I would consider paleo. I try to adapt to those kinds of principles, but I don't follow anything strictly. Over and over again you'll read from those who really understand health that you can't follow anybody else 100%. You're always going to have even subtle differences to someone else that can drastically change how you need to treat yourself. But I try to embrace "keto" practices as well.
There's many different communities for all sorts of plans, but do what you feel is right and experiment. I've felt really good by grasping the paleo ideas of low-carb, low dairy, high protein meals that have creative and non-restrictive means of consuming colorful and varied foods.
I have tried to avoid almost all carbs. I'll admit I'm not always the best at cutting sugar, but candy is definitely not my downfall. It's mainly drinks, pre-prepared teas and lemonades. They have just as much sugar and what not as a soda, but at the very least generally contain all natural ingredients. At work, I'm able to stick to a nice bottle of water and a drinking fountain to fill it at less than 25 feet from my back. Today I cheated and am drinking a very delicious peach tea & lemonade Calypso Teamonade drink. It's a good Monday pick-me-up, yet still 29g of sugar. That's a big no-no. Tomorrow I'll be back to my regularly prescribed water!
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| Calypso : My downfall! |
One thing I definitely always want to be improving is my creativity with lunches. I sit in an office 8 hours a day at the computer, but in an environment that limits my lunch ability. I pretty much have to rely on my little 6-pack cooler and tupperware, which I have actually found to be an enjoyable experience.
I find that is one of the biggest hurdles many face, from when you first move out on your own, to when you start really considering your diet, is determining what, exactly, you can eat. Straying from the frozen section can be a very daunting task, but from when I was about 16 years old with a job and able to provide for myself, I made a pact that I would do my best to make my own food and keep creative.
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| Down with crappy, boring sandwiches! |
When you've got the cash to support it, this is easy, but it's so hard to avoid old habits when something like cash may be running low and you can feel a bit of a panic, leading you back to massive amounts of sodium and other fun things when you're eating ramen 3 times a day for a couple weeks. I've been there, and love when I recover back to a "happy" diet.
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Not a new beginning, but one to be sure of
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This is going to be a new project of mine, as I feel I am at a unique point in my life where I'm gaining opportunity and able to fully reflect on my past at the same time.
There's a lot I'm currently working towards, and I am really trying to branch out in many different ways so sharing my journey along the way (as uncensored and real) as possible will be one of my goals. I'm attempting to put a lot out there as a motivation to me, and hopefully, to others. I am looking to succeed.
This blog in particular will be about my journey towards health and its inherent happiness. I've always pointed in this direction, but I've never been fully devoted, but I try everyday to become better informed and educated about the things we do, and the way we treat ourselves and our bodies. Join me, and let's hope it leads to great things!
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