Healthy Eating

I ate healthily yesterday - I'm very proud of myself. This is what I'd do all the time if I had the willpower to run the fast food gauntlet between the bus stop and my house without succombing: drink 2 litres (not just water - I include tea, squash and juice); eat at least 5 portions of fruit and veg; no chocolate, cake, crisps, biscuits or sweets.

Yesterday I did the above (actually I had 7 portions of fruit and veg, lordy) as well as spending an hour in the gym and I even took my make up off before I went to bed! This regime is highly unlikely to last, though.

i try to eat healthily: loads of water, meat rarely if ever (like a few times a year), at least 5 fruit/veg portions, chips or crisps limited to 2x/week, tiny portions of dessert if i'm desperate for sugar, and no artificial sweetners.

on the other hand, i probably use a bit too much olive oil/butter in cooking and the amount i drink is shocking.

I'm with you on the booze lauren. I'm giving it up for a bit, I've managed to go to the pub with friends TWICE! and just drink soda and lime, and orange juice. And it wasn't that bad! Last night I managed to find my colleagues highly amusing as I watched them descend into drunkeness, and when they got too far, I just walked away and got home at a reasonable time, and woke up completely clear headed. it was actually very liberating.

I think one of my main problems, apart from drinking too much, is portion control - I don't have any, and Chris has none when he's cooking. And I'm greedy and will eat everything on my plate and then go back for leftovers. I've never really eaten in-between snacks or puddings, and only really drink water when I'm not on the booze, so I just need to cut down on portion sizes and alcohol.

One of the problem Chris has about eating healthily is that he finds it really limiting to have to keep all of his cooking ingredients 'healthy', though we've found we've enjoyed making and eating our own vegetable soup, which is good.

I think portion control is part of my problem too, is so much as the diet i was on said you can have unlimited amounts of potato, pasta, rice, most fruit & all veg. but then it get's pretty stodgy. i try to limit my drinking to weekends & i do actually drink quite a lot of water, much to my disgust in the middle of the night!

Yeah Vicky OTM about portion control. When Matt and I cook from a recipe and it says something like 'serves 6', we don't bother to third it, just half it. Hence big meals. Which I eat all of.

I find this ok as long as I don't snack. But work is a real problem - my boss ALWAYS has biscuits and chocolate and stuff around and is one of those weird people who can have the same chocolate bar on the go for YEARS. Literally. Whereas if I have stuff like that in my sightline I can't help but go back to it again and again even when I'm not hungry.

I think our best 'healthy' meals are curries, which we probably have two or three times a week. They are almost all vegan, there's no wheat obviously, and they're crammed with whatever veggies we feel like. (Usually with brown basmati rice.)

indian's got to be great for dieters, lots of great whole foods and fiber and plenty of spice, makes you feel quite full!

don't forget the loads of clarified butter, though, which i've heard is somehow worse than normal butter. and the lovely naan, also brushed with butter.

Not forgetting deep fried pakora, bhajia etc. I'll third (fourth?) the portion control thing. It's a weird feminist "if he can eat that much, so can I darnit" attitude. It's also down to greed and being trained to finish everything on my plate by my mother.

I am on my third day of healthy and am even going to the gym prior to this evenings bouzing sesh!

my mother was so hardcore about finishing everything on the plate when i was very small, then was startled when she had to (or thought she had to) put me on a diet a few years later.

We are people who have pretty much eaten whatever we pleased for the past 5 years, but that has caught up with us. We've never eaten much fast food, cook at home more than we eat out, and have been fortunate to live close to excellent farmers' markets. Portion control has been our downfall, and the fact that I love to bake.

We've done the Atkins thing twice, in 4 month stints, which just destroys me because how can one live without fruit? Back in November though, my husband found he was no longer borderline diabetic, but full-blown and in need of taking some serious action. I thought that would mean no more carbs ever (esp. no more booze), but happily that has not been the case.

He has this glucose monitor and we've been experimenting with foods and combinations to see what he reacts badly too. So he has to stay clear of corn, and white rice, but bread and pasta are okay. Carbs are broken into 15 gram units and he gets 4-5 with every meal. Vegetables in general don't count. Proteins are 3-4 oz/meal. Fats are at your discretion and we use butter and olive oil and lard depending. And we are incorporating elements of the Poly Meal, having a glass of wine every day, 100 grams of dark chocolate, lots of garlic and almonds, and more fish.

Three months of this and he's lost 15 pounds and his glucose is close to normal. I've dropped 5 with no effort. We really haven't changed what we eat, just how much we eat. The carbs are lower by a slight amount from our non-Atkins days, but the proteins are less than half of our normal consumption. We eat more vegetables, especially greens. I think the amount of fat we're eating is the same. Portion control really seems to be the heart of it. The fridge is full of leftovers, but that's just fine.

That sounds reasonable and quite yummy.

Sprouted seeds/beans is the way to go, I've decided. So cheap and easy! (Though admittedly it's not usually me who remembers to do the daily rinses...)
http://www.allorganic.net/sproutseeds.html

i've been on the SOUTH BEACH DIET since the first week of jan

(which SAYS you can eat all the seafood you want tho the sbd's inventor may not have taken into account quite how MUCH i want)

but i recommend it, and so does geeta!!

Groo. I've had about three hectic weeks of drinking. It is to be healthy eating from here on out (for a few days, anyway). Tabbouleh for lunch, I think.

Jamie Oliver was very anti-South Beach on telly last night.

Healthy news: I've lost over a stone.

me too!

I think he was more anti South beach because his plans were all messed up, from talking to Tim it seems one of the more sensible diets, almost as sensible as my "only booze on holiday" regime. Thanks goodness I'm on holiday in sheffield this weekend

Further to my last post I then went and roasted a chicken.

There was swede mash, also. Fried into little cakes.

Oh well.

damn the greed and having to finish everything on your plate.

it'll be the death of us all.

Portion control is definitely where I go wrong. That and chocolate.

Today is fat day. I have already had a giant raspberry danish with pink icing and it's moussaka for lunch, but I don't care - I won't be back in the office until next Friday, so I feel kind of festive.

It's getting springlike = actually having urges to eat green leafy stuff, which is ace obv. However, not so ace is my urge to fry bacon and/or chorizo to make piggy dressings for salads :/