30 Days - No French Fries

This post is a bit off my normal topic train but, I hope you'll come on this journey with me. It's been decided by the powers that be (aka my pants) that it's time to get on the healthy train and try to shed a few pounds.

Now, you might be thinking "This isn't a bad thing! Lots of people do this!" and you would be correct. I, however, am not "lots of people". I say this for two reasons: first, I admit that for most of my life, I have been blessed with a ridiculous metabolism and I've never struggled with weight. Then 30 happened. Second, I DON'T LIKE VEGETABLES. And, it appears that to eat healthy, you are supposed to eat a lot of them. You see this little girl? That's me.

But, my pants are winning this argument and I have admitted defeat in the vegetable battle. I figured it's much cheaper to eat better and try to lose weight than to buy new pants (note: this thought occurred BEFORE I made my first "healthy" trip to the grocery store. More on that later.)

So, here we are on a 30 day healthy eating adventure. It's not just dinner either - this is 3 meals a day plus snacks. All healthy. Broccoli help me.

Since I have an aversion to what I assumed was all healthy foods, my husband and I decided to peruse the internet for healthy recipes that we could combine together into our own 30 Day Healthy Eating Plan. I ended up finding this cool website that had 84 quick and healthy meals.I liked this site because it gave you breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks for 4 weeks AND gave you a shopping list.

We have completed our first week and let me tell you - it's not the eating that's the hard part. It's all the planning and meal prep that goes in to this. No wonder you lose weight because by the time you are done slicing, dicing and containerizing you don't even WANT to eat anymore. OK - I'm lying about that part but you get the idea.

There are a lot of options for every meal every week so we aren't using all of them. Frankly, it's way too exhausting to think about eating and planning a different breakfast and lunch every single day. We doubled up on some of those to save time, sanity and money.

So, what did we eat our first week? Get to it already! Let me start by saying, I have NOT given up wine during this month. I know you were concerned. I'm trying to lose weight and eat healthy, not be completely miserable.

For breakfast each day, I toasted up a whole grain english muffin with a bit of almond butter with a side of fruit. In addition to vegetables, whole grains also seem to be important. Also, potatoes are not whole grains much to my dismay. Amazingly enough, the almond butter was delicious and the whole grain english muffin wasn't terrible.

It seems as though fruit is a completely acceptable snack so we went to the store and bought ALL OF THE FRUIT. It was kind of ridiculous how much we bought but we were convinced that we were going to be starving and in need of constant nourishment.

For lunch, we had 2 different recipes for the week. First was a chicken caesar salad complete with cherry tomatoes and red onion and a dash of parmesan cheese. I ate the tomatoes and onions and you know what? It was really good! I also made up some pizza pita pockets complete with whole grain pitas, low fat mozzarella and pepperoni. On the side was fruit and these DELICIOUS brown rice, sesame and flax seed crackers. Go find these - they are seriously good.

Now for our dinners. This was more of an adventure for us. Our week consisted of a cheesy chicken and veggie pasta (whole grain of course), cajun chicken breast with cous cous and roasted peppers, pork chops with balsamic green beans and brown rice, a steak and arugala salad and finally a walnut apple salad with grilled chicken. This was all healthy! I was as shocked as you are (or aren't as apparently I've been living under the anti-vegetable rock).

This was my first time ever having cous cous. I didn't even know what it was but the website told me to eat it. We got this rosemary and garlic blend and it was seriously good with the chicken and peppers. 

My favorite meal of the week though was the pork chops and balsamic green beans. While I HATED the brown rice, the beans and chops were so good. We seasoned up the pork with some delicious tuscany inspired spices and grilled them on our George Foreman. The green beans were fresh and cooked up with (bless the healthy food gods for not being completely horrible) ONE slice of bacon, balsamic vinegar and salt and pepper. I could eat these every night they were that good.

So, it's a wrap on week one and I have to say we not only survived, but I'm also not dying of starvation. Yea!

I'll be blogging more about the recipes as we go week to week and I'll even throw in some wine pairings for good measure. Just don't drink wine EVERY night. At least that's what Google tells me.