Chronicling my daily eats wasn’t as easy as I thought it was going to be. I have new respect for all you food bloggers. First, while I told myself that the fact that everyone on the Internet was going to be seeing and judging me from what I put in mouth wasn’t going to affect what I ate, it kinda did. I could see how if I did this on a regular basis it would cause me to start restricting again. (And also to start combing my hair in the morning before leaving the bathroom.) Second, I make crappy looking food. Compounding that problem, I lost my crappy camera and was forced to use my even crappier camera phone to showcase my weird food in all its off-colored glory.
So, I can’t say I’m entirely comfortable with this idea but quite a few of you now have asked me to give you an example of what I mean when I say I “eat intuitively” and I feel like it’s important to walk you through what it’s like for me. What I’m hoping this will accomplish: That any of you semi- or fully- disordered eaters out there will see that real change is possible and be inspired to make that change yourselves. Seriously, if I can do this ANYONE can. What I don’t want to happen: For you to look at this and say, “This is what Charlotte eats so this is what I must eat too.” This is what I ate in one day. Some days I eat more, some are less. I want you to eat what makes you fell good and healthy and strong!
Consider yourselves fully warned – blurry pictures of gross-looking food ahead! Owooga!
I always start off my day with a quart – yes that’s a quart Mason jar – of herbal tea. This morning’s concoction was pomegranate and mandarin orange with a sprinkling of True Lemon’s dehydrated orange crystals and some stevia for sweetener. And I like to drink it in my favorite corner in my kitchen, a.k.a. the only place I can get warm here in the winter.
Protein pancakes sounded good for breakfast this morning. They’re super easy and really filling! Beat 2 egg whites to stiff peaks, add 1 whole egg, 2 Tbsp of your flour of choice (I used oat), 2 Tbsp almond milk and a dash of baking powder and vanilla. (P.S. I did not make this recipe up, so a big thank-you to the many bloggers who have featured it on their sites!) Mix it all together and it makes this:
Kind of amazing right? 6 big fluffy pancakes that I topped with a drizzle of maple syrup and a huge dollop of whole whipped cream. (It only takes like 30 seconds to whip cream. Seriously. Don’t give me that look.) I stopped when I was full:
Just one sad lonely pancake left! But I’ve learned that there’s no point in eating past the point of fullness, it just makes me feel icky. And I didn’t want to feel icky since after chucking the wee ones on the bus, I had to race out the door for the gym and my daily sweat fest with the Gym Buddies! It was leg day for Lindsey’s Fit Blogger Challenge and it was a good one! Upon finishing our weights, I had my protein shake like a good girl:
Mmm… look at all that green nastiness! Seriously I make the worst smoothies ever. This one had whole yogurt, 1 scoop vanilla protein powder, a handful of frozen raspberries, a bunch of spinach and a couple of avocado chunks all blended up to puketastic consistency:
[Edited to add: I just now noticed that for the love of little green apples, I put the lid to my cup with the drinking side down ON THE GYM FLOOR. And then I DRANK OUT OF IT. If I come down with a mouth fungus you’ll know what happened. Eek.]
Whatevs. I drank it anyway. Geez, Charlotte, stop with the dramz already! (Apparently food blogging makes me channel Cher Horowitz.) After dropping my punkin off at preschool, putting Jelly Bean down for her nap and showering all the gym stank off, I grabbed a handful of dried fruit and nuts:
This is a really big deal to me. Dried fruit used to be one of those things that I never, ever, under any condition ate. It has no fiber! It’s highly caloric! It’s all simple sugars! But now? It’s what I really wanted so I ate it. And I liked it. Plus it probably helped replace some of the glycogen I burned off chucking all those heavy weights around the gym and scratching myself. Next up, lunch:
A big bowl of last night’s leftover soup! I know it looks like swamp slime but it was really good – I made it with grass finished organic beef, barley, lentils, parsnips, carrots, green beans, corn, tomatoes and mushrooms. Plus I got to finish my leftover pancake from breakfast! I love leftovers. (Note: I will likely have this same soup every day for lunch for the next 5-7 days. I’m weird that way.)
Taking a quick break from my manic working – must get everything done in the 2 hours that Jelly Bean sleeps and the preschooler is preschooling! – to enjoy a dark chocolate Lindt truffle. Amazing. Then about 4:30 I always get seriously hungry. It’s too early for dinner but I’m usually hungrier than just a snack so here’s my, um, high tea?
Yes, that’s the business end of a whole artichoke. I dip it in my homemade yogurt dip (whole yogurt, a dash of mayo, sea salt and enough hot Tandoori powder to fell a water buffalo. It’s not a meal if your lips aren’t burning!). I also had a nitrate-free organic chicken sausage and some green snap peas. No “after” to show you because I ate every last bite. And then about an hour later, more chocolate in the form of Heather Eats Almond Butter’s Almond Joy bites:
Don’t judge. Whatever it takes to get me through the witching hours, i.e. those insane hours between dinner and bedtime where the noise level in our house makes a Metallica concert seem tame. (We might also have a mosh pit going on. Nothing like killing your brother to get you out of homework!) Was I hungry? No. Did I eat it anyway? Yes. And I liked it. Finally, around 7 p.m. – yes, ridiculously late, I know but Jelly Bean is sick and wouldn’t let me put her down so I couldn’t make anything until I could hand her off to my husband – dinner was ready:
This totally makes you want to come over for dinner, doesn’t it? It tastes better than it looks. Truly. It’s a bed of greens topped with cowboy groats (buckwheat groats cooked in water and a can of diced tomatoes with a can of black beans stirred in and sprinkled with taco seasoning), shrimp sauteed in coconut oil and hot!hot! salsa verde poured over the whole mess. And because I know you’re wondering, the kids ate it too (minus the salsa). Turns out if you starve them until 7 p.m. they’ll eat just about anything. Alas, as often happens to me at dinnertime, I got full pretty quickly so this is where I stopped eating:
You like my fancy cloth napkin? We recycle old burp cloths as napkins around here. Sure, little yellow duckies aren’t the most appropriate but they’re very soft!
Well, that’s it – my contacts have grafted themselves to my corneas so I’m heading to bed. I hope that you found this helpful, or at least useful. And hey, you’re always welcome to come to dinner!
Have you ever tried blogging everything you eat? Did it stress you out as much as it did me?? Do you have a favorite midday indulgence? Have you ever eaten off the gym floor?
Written with love by Charlotte Hilton Andersen for The Great Fitness Experiment (c) 2011. If you enjoyed this, please check out my new book for more of my crazy antics and uncomfortable over-shares!
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