A Full Day of Healthy Eating

It’s 2020! To celebrate the new decade, I’ve been doing what any amateur adult would do and I’ve been eating all the bad food. And by bad food I obviously mean the most delicious food that is the worst for your body. I’m talking pizza. I’m talking taquitos. I’m talking all the chicken nuggets. Add all the soda pop and alcohol I’ve been consuming to replace all the water I haven’t been consuming and it’s safe to say I need to replenish some nutrients here.

So…

…this is my full day of eating when I’m being extra good to myself while also eating in a deficit.

(Actually it’s a combination of what I ate Monday and what I ate yesterday, but don’t tell the food police. I eat basically the same thing every day so it’s fine.)

 


Breakfast

My easiest meal. Mostly because it’s the same thing every day of my life.

 

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Jimmy Dean Delights: Turkey Sausage, Egg White, & Cheese English Muffin with Coffee (elixir of life) and my First Liter of Water

They’re easy, they’re healthy, and they’re delicious. I eat the same thing for breakfast every day. Listen, breakfast was always hard for me because as much as I try to make myself be a morning person, I am not a morning person. So I found something that works for me and that’s what I’ve stuck to for the past couple years. And of course I add Tapatios hot sauce. Only Tapatios.

 


Lunch

Lunch is the hardest meal of the day, in my opinion. I work at my husband’s business and if you know anything about owning a business you understand me when I say sometimes we don’t get to take lunch. If the phones are ringing off the hook or we’re short-staffed in the warehouse, we all jump in and help keep everything running smoothly at the expense of our “break-time.”

So here are my typical lunch options for busy days vs normal days:

 

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Busy Days (Monday): Subway Steak & Cheese Salad with their Chipotle Southwest Sauce and Sweet Onion Sauce for dressing

According to my metabolic type and personal research, my body functions best on higher protein, lower carb foods. (I am not one of those people who can have a cup of white rice for every meal and lose weight. I will bloat until I look like Violet Beauregarde.) So when I can, I opt for no bread. Our subway also has a drive-thru so on busy days I swing by there and eat at my desk. This is what I had on Monday.

 

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Normal Days (Thursday): Bird’s Eye Veggie Made Rotini Alfredo with Broccoli

This is still a very easy meal… but hey, I do have to stick this one in the microwave. Honestly, I don’t have time to cook at lunch and I even if I did, I don’t want to. This pasta is great and I usually throw in some leftover veggies from the night before; today was broccoli.

 


Dinner

As a rule of thumb for my dinners I try to make them:

  • Little to no carbs
  • A good source of protein
  • A full serving of vegetables
  • As little processed ingredients as possible

I already showed you my turkey scramble recipe, but I also love to make fish:

 

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Marinated Salmon with Steamed Broccoli

That sounds very fancy, but it is not at all. I get individually frozen salmon filets and a 30 minute marinade. When I get home from work, I thaw my salmon in cold water, then stick it in the fridge with my marinade for half an hour, then saute it in a skillet. Literally that easy. Oh, and I get steam-in-the-bag frozen broccoli so that gets popped in the microwave while I cook the salmon. Ta-da! A well balanced dinner.


And that’s basically it. A couple things to note:

  1. I try not to snack on a daily basis because I can’t control myself around a good snack. I mean honestly, who can though?
  2. I don’t count calories or macros anymore simply because I know the nutrient breakdown of the foods I eat regularly because I have counted calories and macros for so long. It’s redundant and doesn’t give me anything by writing it down anymore. I highly recommend it, though, if you don’t already have a good idea of what you’re consuming calorie and nutrient wise.
  3. I drink 3 liters of water every day throughout my day, and a cup of decaf green tea before bed

 


Voila! A full day of eating. I’m slowly but surely putting together a blog about how I figured out how to eat healthy and how I make my “meal plans” so if all of this sounds like something you could get on board with but don’t know where to start, keep an eye out for that blog. It took me about six years to figure out how to eat healthy on my own so if you’re struggling, I feel you. The best advice I have is that the slower you start off the easier it will be to maintain changes. Give it time.

But okay, that all sounds very bloggy. I’m going to go now.

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Did anyone else celebrate going into the ’20s by partying like Gatsby? First I took a drink, then my drink took a drink, then the drink took me. 

Jump to Recipe (Don’t click this, it’s the title)

Do you all wanna see what I had for dinner last night?!

Please don’t tell the blog police, I think I’m about to break like 9 blog laws because I’m about to give you a recipe without a super long, unnecessary anecdote that everyone would “jump to recipe” from anyway.

So, I don’t take credit for this, I took inspiration from Remi Cruz on YouTube. She’s fantastic and possibly my spirit animal. But I took her meal and made it about 80% more simple. I wouldn’t even call it a “recipe” it’s just a meal.


Okay, get yourself the following things:

  • A frozen bag of any vegetable
  • A frozen turkey patty
  • Some fresh spinach
  • Some seasoning
  • Sriracha (optional, but delicious)
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See above needless photo of ingredients; maybe they’ll let me off with a warning now.

Now…

  1. …throw your frozen veggies in the microwave to cook, I used butternut squash last night.
  2. While that’s microwaving, cook your turkey patty until it’s thawed enough to start aggressively chopping it into crumbles with a flat wooden spatula.
    • Oh, and throw some spices in there too. Life-Hack: Just use Italian seasoning for anything that you don’t know how to season, especially if you’re going to put sauce on top of it anyway.
  3. By now your veggies should be done, so take them out of the microwave and throw them directly in the skillet with the turkey crumbles. Cook that a while longer to dry out the veggies.
  4. Then make sure your turkey patty is pretty much cooked and throw in a handful of spinach (I recommend ripping it up with your hands so it doesn’t get stringy).
  5. Immediately turn off the heat and put a lid on the skillet, but leave it on the burner while you get your plate and stuff ready.
  6. Once the spinach is wilted, stir it all together again, plate it up, throw the sriracha on top, ta-da!

Bonus Tip:

Remi made a sauce in one of her vlogs and it changed my life. So if you’re feeling frisky, mix together some sriracha, dijon mustard, and soy sauce and throw that on top instead of the regular sriracha. Don’t ask me measurements of those, she said it so off-handedly and I tried it and it worked and it’s the second best sauce I’ve ever tasted in my life. Idk.


See?! Eating healthy isn’t so bad.

(Which is what I said to myself earlier in the day yesterday as I was staring down my husband’s Thanksgiving leftovers from across the table with my kale salad and deviled eggs. *whine*)

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If anyone knows how to make food photography NOT look like the same brown mush in every photo, hit me up.