So I want to be real with everyone here…..I don’t ALWAYS eat healthy. When I am tired (like on Friday nights) or when I am tempted with yummy food (like on Saturday when I was at a party), I have a hard time eating healthy. And you know what?…..I am OK with that.
I have found a balance of eating healthy MOST of the time is what works best for losing and maintaining weight (a 90/10 rule). The key there is that I don’t indulge in EVERYTHING anymore. I try to pick and choose what I should spend calories on. For example, I work at an agency where there is food around (like donuts) a lot during the Holidays. I am a HUGE donut fan but also know that they are empty calories that will only make me feel good for the one minute I am eating it (yes, I eat fast – especially donuts). So I only eat donuts when they are from the REALLY good donut place. See the sacrifice there? 😉 I think this runs in the family because my Grandma would never eat cheesecake because she didn’t think the calories were worth it….I will have to respectfully disagree on that one though 🙂
For last week, I ate healthy all week (even when I traveled for work – more on that in another post) but then we had pizza for dinner on Friday night. I balanced my pizza consumption by eating veggie pizza (then it is “healthy” right?). Now the old me would have thrown in the towel on healthy eating if I did that and just ate a pastry for breakfast while telling myself I will just start over on Monday. Fast forward to now and I instead woke up Saturday and ate eggs, avocado w/toast & grapefruit for breakfast and shrimp, broccoli & rice for lunch. I have found that I can’t get down on myself if I fall off the healthy eating wagon, I just get right back on.
On Saturday though, we had a holiday party where I did indulge in yummy food (e.g. taco dip, desserts, meatballs, spinach dip, etc.). What I do now is try to always put my food on plates so that I am not mindlessly grazing and also try to be conscious of when I am actually full. I did OK at the party but did eat more than my share helping of things like homemade chex mix (that stuff is addiciting!). I use to try and eat something healthy before I went but have realized that my “fullness factor” goes away when it comes to brownies and taco dip so I wouldn’t eat less, just more overall including the healthy food.
Although I indulged a bit on Saturday, I woke up on Sunday and ate my usual eggs, veggies & toast breakfast and followed that up with shrimp, broccoli & rice leftovers for lunch. This always gets me right back on track to healthy eating.
And despite the fact that I was feeling under the weather (the little ones are always bringing home some sickness this time of year), I still managed to muster up enough energy to cook because I knew that I wanted healthy food to eat for the week, especially if I am not feeling well.
My meal plan for this week are the following recipes:
- Baked Ziti w/Spinach (8 servings) @Skinnytaste
- I added mushrooms & zucchini to pump up the veggies in this.
- Also, don’t do what I did and put the frozen spinach right into your pan, it made it all watery so I had to scoop out the water
- Crockpot Sazon Pork Chops (4 servings) @Skinnytaste
- Loaded Lentil Salad (4-6 servings) @Hummusapien
- I left out the pepitas because I didn’t have any
These meals keep me on track with my vegetarian goal of 2019. I also was able to make the ziti and the lentil salad on Sunday afternoon so the only thing I have to make this week is a crock pot meal!
How do you balance healthy eating with temptations around?
