How I Eat and Meal of the Day!

Happy Wednesday!

I am going to delight you today with some food-spiration. If you are anything like me you love to eat healthy but sometimes find it hard to do the preparation with your busy modern lifestyle. Also, being vegetarian makes it  tricky to make delicious nutritious meals when I'm crunched for time.

Over the holidays I read a very good book recommended by a friend of mine called "In Praise of Slow" by Carl Honore. How this is related to my food-spiration is that the book taught me to slow down, especially when preparing food. This doesn't mean you have to spend 3 hours a day in the kitchen, but if you examine your schedule carefully you will find the time to prepare food for the entire week and enjoy it.

For me, I find it easiest to prepare my big meal(s) for the week (or the first half of the week) on Sundays and Wednesdays. My good friend and trainer Bobby Tran of the Workhorse Lifestyle here in town got me hooked on doing this. I always use tones of veggies and make something like whole wheat pasta with fresh tomatoes, mushrooms and basil; orzo with pesto lemon juice, goat cheese, tomatoes, mushrooms, red onions or a big delicious stir fry with mushrooms, baby bok choi, peppers, onions, snow peas... you get the idea.

Today I ran out of the pasta I made on Sunday, so I made a carb-less stir-fry with housin sauce (I think that's how you spell it). Brought it to work and all my co-workers were jealous. I eat these big meals for dinner and sometimes lunch depending on my schedule and mood. For example, if I teach a noon spinning class I'll eat my big meal for lunch, but if I teach a night class I'll eat it after that. I find scheduling my "big meal" around my workout gives me the energy back I just burned up and as most people know, your metabolism is the highest in the first hour after a workout.

You might be saying to yourself, "so what about breakfast and lunch!” well I was getting there. For me, I'm a creature of habit, and you are lucky if you are too. I can eat the same thing every day of the week and be content. Due to this I generally use my staple vegetables (see below) to make wraps and salads for lunch. If I'm feeling frisky (or short of time) I'll have soup instead, but try not to do this due to the high sodium content of most soups (I haven't reached the stage of making my own soup yet). This is where my meal of the day comes in, which I will get to in a minute.

For breakfast I try and eat eggs (omelets form using staple veggies) or oatmeal with a little honey or berries, but I find breakfast is my weak point and naughtily will end up having a bagel and a tea or just a banana and drinkable yogurt. If I do this I make sure not to beat myself up (VERY important) and eat healthy for the rest of the day.

I hope that sheds some light on maybe how some of you can improve your diet. I tell my clients to start out small, aim for 1-2 days a week of good eating and don't worry about the rest. Then progressively work up to 3 to 4 to 5 and so on. It's kind of like running a marathon, you can't get off the couch and run 42km, well you could, maybe but you might pass out or cramp up for the next week, anyway the same is with food, you can't go from McDonalds to raw vegan... it just doesn't work.

This brings me of my meal of the day. This is what I had for lunch today and I absolutely loved it.

Spinach Hummus Veggie Wrap

1. Take a spinach whole wheat wrap and spread your favourite store bought or homemade hummus on it. I used roasted red pepper hummus.

2. Fill with your favourite veggies. I used avocado, romaine lettuce (better than iceberg) tomato and red onion.

3. (Optional) Add To-Furkey Deli Slices (vegetarian turkey 35 cal/slice and almost no fat!), tofu or grilled chicken if you eat meat.

4. Enjoy

Super simple, especially if you pre-cut all your veggies on Sunday. A huge bonus, no cheese and no mayo and you wont even notice, I promise! 

To finish off my blog post, I'm going to share with you my staple vegetables. I find these veggies very versatile and can be put in pasta, stir-fry, wraps, and salads...yum

Red Onion

Mushrooms

Peppers: I change the colour weekly

Romaine Lettuce or Spinach (I tend to buy spinach to put in pasta, wraps and salads)

Cucumbers

Tomatoes: my favourite is fresh tomatoes in whole wheat pasta

Zucchini

Broccoli

Garlic: good for heart health

There you go! For my next blog I will be giving an awesome beginner exercise program as well as motivations tips for those starting out on the road to a healthier lifestyle.

Stay Strong

Byn