Wordless Wednesday

 

Wordless Wednesday

Going Meatless

A loose vegetarian? This is the term my friends Olivia & Kim used when talking about their recent (well, actually it’s been awhile) eating habit changes. They sticks to mainly a vegetarian lifestyle, but every once in awhile they’ll allow themselves to eat meat. Now, I don’t think that their change came from feeling sorry for animals (although I’m sure it did strike a cord), but more from them wanting to make healthy decisions about what they put into their bodies.

Now, I’m not sure how 100% vegetarian’s/vegan’s feel about this term, but I feel like it’s the right word(s) for what I’m aiming for in my life. I’ve talked about how I love meat before, and I know that a lot of our meat gets pretty mistreated when it’s in animal form. It’s pumped full of hormones/chemicals, which can be really bad for us humans. But even with that, I love meat.

But for my health and my family’s health, I want us to make a change. I want our diet to be mainly vegetarian, with only small portions of meat/poultry from time to time. I know this isn’t something that can happen overnight. My husband refuses to go vegetarian at all, unless I can find some good substitutes. So, I still buy chicken breasts and ground beef. Which makes the temptation that much harder to resist.

I recently discovered the vegetarian section at our local Wal-Mart (don’t judge, I’m limited on store choices) though. They carry this brand called Morningstar Farms, which has several vegetarian/vegan products! I tried out their Chik’n nuggets a few weeks ago and I loved them! So did Emery. So I went and bought some more, along with some meatless meat crumbles. Last week I decided to make our Velveeta Cheeseburger Skillet with the crumbles as a substitute for the ground beef and I thought it tasted really good.

My husband on the other hand, didn’t. Emery was more into playing with her food that evening instead of actually eating it so her reaction doesn’t count, lol! But, the week before last I made meatless burgers from a different brand called Boca and my husband enjoyed those. So, it’s a work in progress and we’ll eventually get there! It’s all about making them taste good. And since I’m a “first timer” in the kitchen, it might take a little while. Here’s hoping it won’t take too long though!  

Vegetarian

Recently, I decided I needed to take a different approach to my diet. I need to start really watching WHAT I’m putting into my body. Counting calories has been great, and I’ve lost 10 lbs with doing just this and working out. Unfortunately with life being a bit more hectic than usual, eating on the go, and not having a lot of time to keep a consistent work out going, I’ve realized that just counting calories isn’t going to cut it. At least not if I want to keep loosing.

So, recently I’ve looked into vegetarianism. Now, before I go any farther let me just say I love meat. I am from Texas after all. I love a nice medium rare, 12 oz. steak (great, now I’m hungry) just as much as the next Texan girl. But, eating this all of the time is no bueno. Not that I eat a steak every night for dinner. But I do catch myself eating friend chicken, chicken, or beef in/with a lot of my meals. I really feel like this needs to stop. I think I need to be focusing more on whole foods. Lots of veggies, fruits, and a lot more water. A lot like clean eating.

I don’t plan on being completely vegetarian exactly. Like I said, I love meat. But, I think that I need to cut as much of it out as possible. My plan is to really limit beef, and just stick to chicken (not fried chicken). Slowly wean myself off of them both to where they’re pretty much nonexistent. Maybe only include them in two meals a week? I don’t know how well this will work, or if I’ll even be able to stick with it. Especially in a family that loves meat, and will not alter their diet just because I’m altering mine. LOL! But, my main goal is to have more veggies and fruits than I do meats.

This week I ate meats. I had some hot pockets that needed to be finished up, and I’m the only one that eats them. Excuse? Maybe. Tomorrow I’ll be doing our weekly grocery shopping, so I’ll be going through a whole foods and vegetarian cookbook to get some ideas on recipes and ingredients. If I fail miserably, well at least I tried, and learned a few recipes! 

What Diet?

Oh boy.

So, as I had said before our great time at the show wasn’t without its stressful moments. I also should have mentioned I pretty much ate the weight of two elephants while I was at it, this past weekend. Meh! I know. I was on a roll last week, and I was so motivated. I refused chocolate, and I stuck with my plans. I felt like a damn champ! Then, Saturday happened and I had myself 6 pieces of pizza, a salad, two brownies, two hamburgers, and about a gallon of sweet tea. I seriously could have swallowed a whole large pizza to myself had I not realized I was the only one left eating. Yea..and that was just Saturday. I had this whole morning work out planned for the day, but it rained. Now, I know I have a treadmill, but when you’ve been doing nothing but running inside for two weeks, you need a little change. Does that sound like an excuse to you?? Yea, because it was. But anyway, at one point this weekend I also had myself about 3/4 of a container of Chips Ahoy! Chewy Chocolate Chip cookies and a big ass taco salad (with the shell). Don’t judge.

On Monday and Tuesday, I didn't work out. To make matter worse, on one of those days I overate! People, I’m not proud of this. I was supposed to do a weigh-in over at My Fitness Pal on Monday, but I was way too ashamed to get my ass on the scale. I really really need to work on my impulse control and stress eating. I do it every single time! I’ll have a good two weeks and then do something to completely sabotage it. It’s miserable! I feel miserable. I look miserable. It’s like I freakin' binge eat! Only I don’t plan on throwing it back up because that would be wasteful.

Seriously, this bad habit of mine along with the stress, caused me to break out over the weekend. I look awful today! It also caused me to get all bloated. But more importantly, it completely screwed my “good thing” that I had going, up. I got my ass back on track Tuesday. I hope I can keep it up. I need to figure out how to control the amount I eat. And I really have to do something about the weekends. When I’m out and about it’s just so much easier to get take-out or fast food instead of making and packing a lunch. I’ll go in dead set on a salad and come out with a double meat double cheese. No control, what-so-ever.

To further my humiliation, and to give me some damn good motivation I’m thinking of posting pictures as I progress. Nothing says “get your ass to working out” more than embarrassing pictures of your jiggle up on the net, right? Eh, it’s an idea. Once I take the pictures I’ll let you know what the plans are. They may have to stay in a little black box buried in the backyard, but we’ll see.

Something’s gotta give. I have to kick my ass in gear. I know I can do this because I have before. Unfortunately back then I had way too much extra time on my hands so I could spend hours working out if I wanted to. Nowadays, I’d have to be up before the sun and we all know how I feel about that idea, right? Gr. Here’s to some much-needed changes.

Oh! I Have To Feed You, Huh?

When Emery was a baby I knew that nutrition and food would be really important. I was able to breastfeed, switched to a pump once I had to go back to work, up until Emery was nine months old. I wish I could have gone longer, but at the end of the day, I wasn’t able to keep up with Emery’s appetite. Mom Tip: Pump as soon as your milk comes in, and store whatever you can if you plan on going to work and want to continue to breastfeed. Still, I’m definitely a breastfeeding advocate. We mommies produce milk for a reason, and no matter how much “closer” formula is getting to breast milk, it’s still not the same. So I believe that if you can breastfeed, do it.

Now, once I had to switch over to formula I was at a loss. Which formula would be the healthiest for our baby? We tried Similac for a good while before finally settling on Enfamil. Had I known then that there was a pretty good selection of organic baby formula; I probably would have gone that route. But, this mommy never bothered to look it up. Major mom fail. We also have a very limited selection of places to buy our “baby supplies” here in this small town. None of the stores around here carry any kind of organic formula at the moment. So buying online would have made it that much harder to get if we ran out at some point. Because let’s face it the first few months you start out pretty forgetful thanks to that new mom brain. I’ve heard it only gets worse. Still, I tried my best to inform myself about the ingredients in order to select a brand that worked for us.

Then, when she was able to have baby food my husband and I both agreed that it didn’t matter what the cost was we were feeding her only organic food. But when it came time to actually go shopping for the organic baby food we found that it was a bit more difficult than we originally thought it would be. Our local Wal-Mart had a very limited selection of Sprout Organic Baby Food, but a bit of a bigger one with Earth’s Best. I ended up mixing and matching. She loved pretty much everything that we gave her, and I was really happy that we weren’t feeding her junk. It wasn’t until she was about ten months, that we decided to check out H-E-B and I’m really glad that I did! They have a wider selection of organic products and an even bigger selection of organic baby foods. SCORE! So this made things a lot easier for me and gave Emery more of a variety.

But now that we’re in the toddler phase I'm at a loss again. Only recently has she been able to chew her food really well so I’m about ready to promote her to “big kid" food status. Her molars are coming in nicely, which is great because before she would occasionally choke on her food and it would scare the living crap out of me! Now that they’re coming in she’s been able to eat a lot better with no choking scares. Thank GOD! So with that out of the way, I'm now left to worry about WHAT we’ll be giving her to eat. It’s about to be up to me to cook and prepare her food and this has me really nervous, and a bit worried. Confession: I’m not a very good cook. Aside from lemon pepper chicken, spaghetti, and anything that involves instructions on the back (no more than 3 steps) I have no idea how to cook. It’s a really foreign concept to me. How have we made it this far, you ask? Well, my grandmother and mother insist on feeding us. If we don’t go over to eat, they bring it over to us. Those ladies are firm believers in having at least 5 meals a day. Since we don’t have an actual stove in our house, we stick to microwavable food or easy stuff like sandwiches or fruits. Now, this is perfectly fine for us adults, but it’s not the healthiest thing for a growing babe.

So what should I feed an almost 1 1/2-year-old? How much, and what is too much? My kid is a vacuum and she’ll eat pretty much everything on her plate and then some. I usually stop her before we get to that “bloated belly” point, but then I feel like my kids on a diet and I feel all guilty for taking it away. That's when I start to fear that I’m starving her by doing this, and end up giving her the plate back. So, if she’s going to be eating a good amount I want to make sure that it’s at least HEALTHY. But where do I start? I’m perfectly fine with munching on an apple or even tomatoes for dinner, but that doesn’t strike me as a healthy, well-rounded dinner for a toddler. So if anyone knows of any cool food blogs or even just some suggestions for some easy meals, I’d really appreciate it!

Let me know what you feed your little ones!