1st day of the new plan

Wow, eating clean is tough, but eating only home-made cooked meals is like a daunting task.
I can already say that the kids and I are not going to be on the exact same page, because I already fed them raisin bread for breakfast.

What can I say, I'm not miss perfect-mom, never been, probably never will!

Breakfast: omelette with 2 eggs, a bit of milk, a bit of cheese. I also through in some capsicum left over from yesterday's Mexican themed dinner, and a bit of cooked ham.
Cheap, quick, healthy kind-of.
Snack: 2 squares of dark Lindt mint chocolate that I gobbled without even thinking twice. For no good reason except that the chocolate was left on the table that I was cleaning, and bad habits die hard!

Lunch: green juice (celeri, kale, mint, apple, cucumber ~600ml or 20 oz). Super yum, and ~200 kcal for this giant cup. Salmon sashimi (3 pieces), edamame, one miso soup (soy sauce! miso mix! fatgar!).
Snack: babybel.

Dinner: I made a vegetable mix as a spaghetti sauce for the family. Onions, sliced carrots and mushrooms, fresh tomatoes. I planned to use it as a side for my fish, then got lazy and had pasta too. On the bright side, I had only a little bowl of pasta, instead of my regular giant plate, and they were wholemeal if that matters. Fresh pasta are super easy to make and SO cheap, I'll be sure to post the recipe with pictures sometimes soon.

I recently started to get my groceries delivered instead of going grocery shopping. On the down side, it's difficult to chose fruits and veggies online, and I usually get delivered ripe ones that I need to cook asap and freeze if we want veggies for the week.
On the bright side, most shops offer free delivery if you reach a certain $ amount, and with a family of 4, it's easy to reach it for 10 days worth of grocery. If anything, we save money as I only buy things we need and often shop on the special offers page. Also, see below.
And I say YEAH to not taking the kids to the supermarket.

 

It seems that keeping a food diary might be a simple trick to curb my binge eating habits. I ate less today than on most Sundays.

The day is not finished, but I'm going to call it a day for this post, so that hopefully I'll limit what I eat tonight. I'm planning to be good: drink tons of tea if I feel like a sweet, instead of raiding the cupboard full of free-delivered snacks. Because yes, I decided that kids will be cut from sugar progressively and not cold-turkey as if they were willing adults!

Eating lite to live longer

Alright, I feel like I'm about to write what has been said for a while now.
Plain, non processed food, is a cheap and easy way to be healthy. It's a little more work, but it can be delicious for the entire family.

And if you're on a budget, it's the ONLY way to make it through the month. While pressing your own glass of orange juice is more expensive than buying one 1l of it, solid food items are way more expensive to buy than to make.

In the next few weeks, I'm going to post simple recipes of food I'm eating with my entire family. Skinny soups for the busy mom and hearty stews for the whole family, home made desserts and .
As we all get to understand:








Of course it is not entirely true. Eating fat will make you fat, clog your arteries and eventually make you die of a heart attack, I DO believe that sugar will kill us all faster, because there is more of it everywhere.

And carbs can be your best friend if you exercise, as they provide good energy.

There is good fat (think avocados) and good sugar (think apples) as long as we eat everything in moderation.  The enemy is Fatar, the fat sugar ;-) Think spreads (chocolate or peanut versions), industrial biscuits, cake, bread and cookies, factory yoghurts, and such. Fried dough, chicken nuggets.

As my friend says, you can never outrun a bad diet and she's right. As much as I love to exercise, when I eat half a pack of my favorite caramel cookies at close to 100 calories a pop (yes EACH!!!) in front of the TV or while working at night, I would need to exercise at high intensity for one full hour or more: go run at good speed (I usually last 25 minutes and I'm quite proud of it), or do hot yoga, zumba, rowing machine,...
For a handful of cookies. You get the idea: better to just exercise 20 minutes a day than to chug fast calories and then have to spend 2 hours in the gym, only to balance in and out, not even to lose weight. Anyway,  I have a full schedule and do not exercise on most days.

Get where I'm going?
I'm starting a journey on the path to whole food. I will exercise in moderation, eat in moderation, say no to crazy snacks, and monitor my progress here to see if it's working and stay accountable of my food journal. If I'm not too lazy, I'll try to post exercises and cooking videos. We'll see about that one... Any way, talk soon! xoxo

From the couch to the track.

I'm still pretty much a couch-potato, but not for long! :)

It has been a little bit over two weeks now that I started my diet journey.  I got some serious help from a fitness website, My Fitness Pal. This website, such as many others out there (the former My daily plate, now a part of Lance Amstrong Livestrong website; and plenty apps and websites) allows you to log in daily calories and exercise, meet some fellow dieters, potentially make some new friends, find awesome recipes and diet tips, and encourages you to stick to your program until the goal is reached.

I believe that the key to success lies in the support system, and that’s where this website makes wonders. Tracking MFP friends’ progresses, I figured out that the best way ever to shed pounds is to run. From fast walking to jogging, the walk-run scene is the one that creates diet winners (and iron men, so please do not underestimate this one. Ever.).

NOT this iron man (although...)

THESE guys

Again, you can find online tips, about what to eat, how not to get injured, and best of all: how to start running. From scratch. Better yet, from the couch.

The official name of the most popular beginner and now infamous program is C25K (Couch to 5K). It says it all, right? It is a pretty easy program, based on the simple and yet so true idea that when you run too far, or too fast or both, too soon: you fail. If you’re not ready for it and running is too painful, you just cannot go through this pain and this miserable afterward feeling, so you just drop it. Back to square one and being a potato couch. I’ve heard and said that I’m not a runner: I could barely run to save my own life. But if you think about it, running doesn’t require any special skill (not talking marathons here!). You don’t have to learn how to, you don’t have to practice a special movement. Come on, my kids run at least 2-3 hours a day! And stop in the middle to jump and dance!

To be totally honest, I cannot run for more than 10-20 minutes at once, without being out of breath and close to collapsing. But this program starts you with sequences of running for 60 seconds, walking for 90, and repeating it to total 20 minutes. I say it’s doable.

Running is just a matter of designing a training plan, and sticking to it. Thanks to the C25K website, all the work has been done, you just have to do it. More info on the official website.

And here we go, the no-food journey is finally started

I’m on a diet. For some reason this sounds trivial but it’s not. It’s a struggle, it’s a journey, and it’s a goal that stays in my head from dawn to dusk. Each day. I wanted to be on a diet for over a year now, but it's just like when you have to quit smoking. There is no good time, it doesn't make sense to start before a weekend, or a big party, or pretty much ever. Normal eaters, the majority of the population, who weight a number and find peace with it (being anywhere from skinny to moderately fat; and sticking with it) cannot understand that.

I mentally count the calories of what goes in my mouth then I count it again on my computer at night, in my online journal. When I go over my daily goal of 1200 calories, I’m usually off by 10 or 20 calories, and I log in some exercise to compensate (the 5 minutes I had to walk to catch my bus, the 7 minutes I lifted weight from the delivery room to the office, then to our stockroom). Anything not to add another failure to my weight problems board.

I like the online system, because a diet is a mental challenge against yourself, and a virtual journal is exactly what I need to succeed. I get to share my thoughts, post my mood, seek advice and encouragements from my online friends, my fellow calorie-deprived buddies. Suits me well.

While online, you get to browse through so much more info, by hoping from a post to another. This way, I encountered dieting online store that I could not believe existed, diet recipes that (almost) sound yummy (don’t know about the taste), and crazy exercising tips. Empowering new starts stories of people like me (or real obese, which I'm far from) becoming marathon runners. Or just zipping their size 2 jeans and looking good (I don't aim for the stars every morning, you know).

Because I cannot refrain myself from chatting and writing non-stop, and most of my dieting partners are in the US (don’t draw stupid conclusions here, I’m using an American app, that’s all) I needed a new space outside the official website. Hence the new blog. Welcome into my no-sugar-barely-any-fat-story, it starts today. (Well, technically it started last week but it doesn’t sound as dramatic, does it?)