After a couple years of college-style eating, Colton and I both felt like it was time to start eating well again. We weren't eating unhealthy meals, but we were having plenty of the sweet stuff afterwards and in between. One of the reasons I married that man is that he loves good food. I love good food. We LOVE good food. And I don't mean good-for-you food. Anyways, that explains why it's taken us a while to want to eat better.
Despite our common love for anything scrumptious and sugary, we got a gym membership and stocked up on spinach. Lo and behold, magical things started to happen.
Since I've started college, nay since high school, I've just accepted the fact that I am a chronically sleepy person. No matter how much sleep I get, I usually wake up wanting to take a nap. But since we started our health kick, we both feel so awake! Even after getting up at 5:30 to work out, we can go go go all day and still keep our eyes open through scripture-reading.
We've both dieted before. He was a wrestler in high school, so cutting weight was almost his specialty (let's not talk about the time we basically weighed the same junior year...never happened). I've mainly dieted in the past by counting/cutting calories and it works, but I'm usually even more tired and grumpy, not to mention hungry and I usually got discouraged and gave up before coming anywhere near my goal.
This time we both wanted to do something different. We eat when we're hungry and we still have dessert, only more like once week instead of once a day. We work out more, but we do it together at least half of the time and mix cardio with weight lifting to hopefully add some tone instead of just becoming smaller flabby people.
We haven't eliminated any foods, but we try not to eat bread for breakfast or lunch. Obviously we still have sandwiches here and there, but it's a lot less often.
And the best part...smoothies! We have them all the time! We were totally terrified to drink something green at first, but it tastes the same with or without it, so why not get some vitamins?
Here's how we make our Mix n' Match Green Smoothies:
Base: use all
1/2 c. almond milk
1/2 a banana
about 1 1/2 c. ice
Fruity Goodness: pick 2 or more
1 peach/nectarine
1 apple
1/2 c. pineapple
1 c. strawberries
handful of raspberries
Greens:
2 c. spinach
Extras: optional
1 T. flax seed
1/4 c. oatmeal
Put the liquid in first, then go from the softest ingredients to the hardest ingredients (example: milk, bananas, peach, spinach, apple, ice).
One of these babies will fill me up until lunch time, plus I feel like I had dessert for breakfast. Bonus points.
