Obviously, I like to post a lot of my food on Instagram. Following a strict diet can be hard, but I try to make it fun and I try to make it look good. And Tom's only requirement for what he eats is that it has to be delicious. The other major requirement for meals in our house is that it has to be FAST. In the mornings, my meals have to be grab-n-go. At lunch, I am either working or driving to my other school. And since my energy has been so low lately, dinners have to be super easy cause at the end of the day, I am just barely making it. Combine all this with food restrictions and it can be tough. Thankfully, we've gotten a system down that ensures we spend minimal time prepping food during the week, we stay on our food budget, and we are getting lots of healthy veggies, protein, and fat at each meal. Here's how we do it: 1. Flexible grocery list During the summer, I love to try new recipes and be adventurous in the kitchen. I'll make an exact grocery list with specific ingredients I need in order to make more complicated recipes. For a long time, I tried this approach during the school year and it got frustrating with AIP simply because shopping for specific recipes requires you to cook that recipe regardless of if you feel like it later on in the week. If I buy ingredients for a dish that takes 45 minutes and I plan to make it on Thursday night, but then Thursday rolls around and I have no energy, I'm going to be stressed about making that food. If I don't make the food, will it go to waste? And more importantly, what are we going to eat instead??! So, I started creating flexible grocery lists. Game changer. Not only does this take the pressure off me to cook certain meals on certain nights, BUT it has also helped save us money because we eat what's in season and what is on sale at the grocery store. Which definitely helps when you are trying to buy all organic. I go to the grocery store with an idea of what type of veggies I will buy, but when I see that collard greens are on sale and kale is not, guess what I'm buying? The collards. This isn't to say I go to the store without a plan. I have categories I plan to get, but then flexibility within those categories. So here's what my list might look like: 2. Lots of repetition (but only once)
There's a lot of info on why AIP'ers should rotate their food and not eat too much of the same thing. Even if you don't have food issues, it's great to get a lot of variety in your diet. However, cooking something different for every single meal is time consuming and not economical, especially if you are buying different ingredients for each dish. So what we do to get variety AND save time and money is we rotate ingredients each week instead of each day. For example, one week I'll make a huge batch of butternut squash for us to eat. We'll eat that as a side for dinner every night that week. But then the next week, I'll get sweet potatoes and that will be our side dish. We get variety, BUT I only have to cook once. Furthermore, I'm able to buy ingredients in bulk to save money. Which leads me to my third point... 3. Bulk Buys and Batch Cooking As you probably noted in my photo above, we shop at a few places. If you aren't shopping at Costco, I would suggest you check it out and see if they carry products you would use on a weekly basis. We used to have a Sam's membership, but then we realized that Costco actually carries much more organic produce. We buy our fruit, greens, and some veggies at Costco each week. Bananas, berries, salad mixes, avocados, AND some times they even carry those Paleo Hail Merry tarts! In addition, we buy our coconut oil there. It saves us about 10-15 bucks a week when we shop there. In addition, we buy our fish there-- sometimes we buy frozen salmon, sometimes canned salmon, and sometimes cod. The important thing is that they sell WILD CAUGHT fish, which is incredibly important. Then we buy our "single" items at Whole Foods. We shop at Whole Food primarily because they offer a wider variety of organic produce than HEB, however, if there are items we know are cheaper at HEB, we will sometimes swing by there as well (Did I mention that grocery shopping is pretty much the whole Saturday morning affair?) . At WF, we buy organic meats, organic produce not available at Costco, and a few products like salsa, epic bars, and dried ingredients from the bulk bins. Then, finally Sunday afternoon, I do some batch cooking. I start by roasting three trays of vegetables for side dishes. Sometimes I buy the pre-chopped veggies at Costco (score!). While my veggies are roasting, I assemble my salads for the week. After that, I make a ground beef or bison skillet-- I just throw some green veggies with onions, garlic, etc. in with the ground beef. All in all, it takes about 1.5-2 hours to make about 15-20 meals. After two hours I have the following: 1. All veggie sides for dinner 2. Lunch salads for the week 3. Breakfast wraps or hash for the week 4. 4-6 servings of dinners to get us through Monday-Friday Our dinner menu might end up looking something like this: Monday: Sweet potatoes with ground beef/veggie mixture Tuesday: Sweet potatoes with ground beef /veggie mixture Wednesday: Salmon with brussels sprouts and spinach Thursday: Roasted veggie bowl with ground beef on top Friday: Leftovers: whatever meat and veggies are left in the fridge! You can see, we eat a lot of vegetables, but a little bit of prep makes it easy and convenient for us to stick to a healthy diet, even on those days when I'm just not feeling it! It is possible and it is totally worth it:) If you are wanting to try batch cooking, just keep in mind planning is key BUT you can do it!
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When Tom and I first got married, we started each year with setting goals: spiritual, physical, financial, and personal goals.
My favorite goals were always the physical goals-- I've said before that I was a cardio junkie gym rat for the past two decades. Some years I accomplished my goals (run a sub 1:50 half marathon) and some years I didn't (my hatred of swimming got in the way of that triathlon). But this year was much different. For the past three months, I've been on a pretty intense regiment to fight an infection that my body has been battling for a while. In fact, the infection probably contributed a great deal to my autoimmune issues-- that coupled with genetics, environment, diet, and excessive stress (another post on that later). Recovering from this infection has been no joke. Imagine the feeling you get when you are about to be over the flu-- when your body is working the hardest to break that fever and you can't really get out of bed without feeling like you might fall through the floor. That's basically how I've felt for three whole months. Since that's the case, anything other than walking the dogs and gentle yoga have been out of the question. So I had to reassess my normal New Year's Goals to align with what I really need: rest. For my entire life, rest has been an afterthought, IF that. Rest days were overrated and sleep was whatever I could squeeze in. In fact, as I write this at 9:30 on a Sunday morning, I realize that these past few months are the ONLY time in my adult life when I did not wake up at the crack of dawn to go run 6 miles or go to the gym. These past few months are the ONLY time since junior high that I have consistently tried to get more than 7 hours of sleep. What a huge shift in mindset. I don't know why our culture has this mindset that if we aren't always DOING something, we are lazy bums. That if we aren't burning the candle on both ends, we will end up as failures. I know I've lived by that philosophy. I feel guilty if I am not being productive. If I am not working out each day. If I am not fully committed in my time. I fear taking time to rest because I am afraid I will become useless. But this is a problem. Not only did I wear myself into the ground, but ultimately this mindset reflects that I put my self-worth in what I can accomplish. What a horrible hamster wheel to be on. So this year, I decided my goals should be different. I wanted to focus not on what I could accomplish, but on becoming the person I want to be-- traits and character that have nothing to do with accomplishments. So here are a few goals I have for the new year: 1. Be patient. No surprise here. As the independent, wait-for-no-one, I'll-get-it-done-first-because-I'm-competent person I strived to be, I am so impatient. When walking with groups, I get annoyed at how slow everyone else is walking. Power walk IS my slow walk. But whew-- chronic illness has humbled me and at many times, physically limited me. It has also taught me to be patient with others and patient with myself. I used to make no apologies for being impatient. Now I realize that showing patience with others helps me slow down and reflect. It has also made me more patient with myself. 2. Value people, not feelings People with chronic illness know this-- it is hard to keep your cool when you don't feel well. When the room is spinning. When you are sleep deprived. When your muscles stop working. Feeling crappy can lead to me acting crappy far too quickly. Unfortunately, this can lead to me being short and rude with the people I care about this most. My goal for this year is that when I feel agitated or short fused, I stop and tell myself this: "How I feel right now is not more important than my love for _______. Do I want to communicate how I temporarily feel physically or do I want to convey how much I love this person in how I respond to him/her?" 3. Practice imperfection In my little hamster wheel of accomplishments, I often had the mentality that if I couldn't do something perfectly, I shouldn't do it. For example, if I couldn't go to the hardcore, 90 minute yoga class, I shouldn't do yoga. Or if I couldn't learn a new skill and completely master it, I just shouldn't attempt to learn it. Stupid, I know. Not only was that stupid, but it was a completely unnecessary source of stress. So my goal for this year is to stop aiming for perfect. That applies to every area of my life: the cleanliness of my house, my workout schedule, my finances, my to-do list, etc. My whole life has been about perfection. This year its going to be about "Eh. that'll do." These goals are totally different than any other year's. But they are what fits this time in my life and honestly, what I need the most. Here I am , almost a month into the New Year and I have to say these goals aren't something to accomplish in a month or even a year, but a lifelong practice in compassion. What about you? Did you set New Year's resolutions or goals? Have you kept them up or have they fallen by the wayside? (No judgement if they did. Adopt my policy if you only stuck to it for a week--Eh. That'll do.). |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. Archives
January 2017
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