You Can Eat Right While On-the-Go??

February 26, 2015

Perhaps the hardest part of any diet is trying to eat right when you have a busy life. It’s so much easier to go through a drive through than to set time aside to cook each day. Or at least that’s what we have in our heads! There are some easy ways to make on-the-go eating healthier!

I’m a college freshman involved in a service organization that requires volunteer hours, has mandatory meetings, and social events. I also play intramural softball and go to the gym 6 days each week, and have to stay on top of my 5 classes, all while living on campus WITHOUT a kitchen. I understand busy. I don’t recall a time in my life where I wasn’t busy! One thing I do when I’m on the go is have a smoothie for dinner. Smoothie King offers some really great flavors that are sugar and dairy free. It’s one of my favorite things to get after a workout or just a stressful day. I also hate waking up in the morning, so I generally am rolling out of bed about 10 minutes before class begins. In these cases, I grab some cold fruit from my refrigerator. Some days it’ll be a handful of grapes, other days it’s a banana. It just depends on what I bought at the grocery store that week! Which brings me to another tip. PLAN AHEAD. Before you go to the grocery store, write down everything you will need for the week ahead. On Sundays, I always buy 3 bananas to eat on my way to West Campus on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. That way I won’t be tempted to walk to the Chick-fil-a across the street. Also, it is really fun to ride a bike and eat a banana at the same time. 

Meal prep!!!! I can’t stress this enough. If you know that Mondays and Tuesdays are extremely busy and you won’t have time to cook, make the meals on Sunday afternoon! Then put them in a container and refrigerate until those days. Another thing that I do is order food to go from a sit down restaurant. Last Sunday, I called Fish Daddy’s and ordered grilled tilapia, shrimp, and vegetables. They had it ready in 10 minutes, and it is only a few dollars more expensive than a Whataburger meal. Then I camped out on my futon and watched Netflix for two hours, but didn’t even have to feel guilty. What a win-win. 

Take food to go! If you get a giant plate at a restaurant, I promise that the food will still be good tomorrow (not responsible for cases where it isn’t). Get a to go box, put it in the fridge, and bring it to work for lunch the next day. Bringing your own food is guaranteed to be more healthy than swinging through McDonald’s on a lunch break. 

If you’re like me and you love to eat out, find out what places have a healthy option for you. Unfortunately, I have had to give up going to Cane’s (or Layne’s if you’re an Aggie), but I have found that I can still go to Smash Burger and get the Avocado Grilled Chicken Club which is life changing. Most of your favorite places will have healthier options, you just have to look into it. 

Yes, all of these things take a little planning and time, but anything worth pursuing should take effort! 

An Ode to Chipotle

February 23, 2015

Being on the Paleo diet has forced me to try new things. I pretty much hate all vegetables. Ask my mom. That’s always the food group that I skip over. But unfortunately, those are pretty necessary for any diet. I have found that I can choke down green beans, broccoli, carrots, and lettuce if I eat them at the same time as the meat in my meal. I literally put a green bean (or whatever the particular vegetable it is) on each bite of meat so that I can’t taste it but still get the nutrients I need from it. So that seems to be a winner for me!

Other things, not so much. I have always been obsessed with milk, but dairy is not Paleo friendly, so I had to give almond milk a try. Let me tell you, that pathetic excuse for a milk replacement cost me $3.50 for one gallon and has been rotting in my fridge since. I gave it one sip and then ran to the trashcan to rid my mouth of its tasteless blasphemy. Now that I think about it, I should’ve never trusted a liquid that supposedly comes from an almond. 

I also have gotten food poisoning TWICE from this place on campus that serves salads. It might be because I have terrible luck, or maybe the servers there don’t like me and are purposely poisoning me. Either way, I will be avoiding that place at all costs now. 

There is a long list of foods that are flat out disgusting including every kind of Paleo friendly coffee and tea I have tried from Starbucks. I have probably wasted about $20 there to try and find something enjoyable, but oh well. It’s all about trial and error. 

On the bright side, there are tons of things I have found that I like! Organic pecans are a life line. I also have a new love for kiwis, which I had never tried before. And putting guacamole on anything and everything is a necessity. AND if y’all thought I was obsessed with Chipotle before, you don’t even understand. I practically keep that place in business now. I go at least 3 times a week because it is so amazing and organic and I can actually eat almost everything they sell! See, Paleo can be fun. 

I Don't Even Like RC

February 22, 2015

Cravings hit me like a brick wall. I’ll be going on about my day when suddenly the intense smell of freshly baked cookies or pizza or queso will capture my senses. This is where the true dedication comes in (or the failure). Usually, I can tell myself that the temporary tastes of those foods are not as satisfying as a healthy and lean body, but sometimes it is very difficult to convince myself of that. The little devil on my shoulder will whisper, “you can have just a little! A little won’t matter because you’ve been eating so well today. You deserve it!” But what is a little? A little turns into a lot, and a lot turns into another failed attempt at dieting. That’s why it is important to think of Paleo not as a diet, but as a change in lifestyle. It is best to not give into even “a little” of the foods that will not nourish your body, because it is much easier to walk away if you haven’t tasted it yet. 

It gets really bad at times, though. At this point, I have started to crave things that I don’t even like that much! Just yesterday, I saw a commercial of a kid drinking an RC soda. I kept thinking to myself, man an RC sounds so good. And then I was like, what the heck? I hate RC hahaha. Luckily, cravings pass, especially if you go eat something else tasty! Finding things that you like to eat and are Paleo friendly is key. For me, I’ll have some grilled shrimp and sautéed vegetables or a hamburger patty with guacamole on top. A good meal takes care of cravings pretty well! 

Bacon is Good

February 18, 2015

Here’s a fun question to answer…. “Hey Shelby what kinda diet are you on? I know I’ve asked like three times, I just don’t get it.” To be honest, I didn’t get it at first either. I’ve been on dozens of Paleo sites trying to pinpoint exactly what this diet entails…or more accurately, what it doesn’t entail. It’s pretty simple, though, when you think about it this way: if the humans of the Paleolithic Era (a really long time ago, even before agriculture and chipotle (yeah I know, dark times)) didn’t have access to it, you can’t eat it or drink on the Paleo diet. The good news is that almost all meats are included in this. A DIET THAT LET’S YOU EAT RED MEAT? Yes. Jackpot. The bad news is that this does not include any dairy product, grain product, processed food, junk food, fast food, fake food, or really anything that brings you happiness. Just kidding. Well, actually I’m not kidding at all. Literally none of my favorite foods made the list of acceptable things according to the Paleo diet. Except bacon. Bacon is the saving grace. 

See the problem is, Americans aren’t the best at eating food for its true purpose: to fuel and energize us. Going out to eat is merely a social event. In fact, it’s very rare to spend more than a few hours with friends or family and not have food incorporated in some way. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it becomes a bad thing when the food everybody eats is doing nothing but sitting and rotting in the body. Food has lost its purpose of energizing us if it doesn’t have any nutrients. After 18, almost 19 years of living in a culture that practically idolizes food, I had to do some major mind adjustments in order to change my habits. Everything on the Paleo diet is meant to enrich the body in a positive way. When everything you are putting into yourself is being used to help make you function, it leaves no room for fats, sugars, and carbs to settle and cause weight gain. Therefore, weight is lost! It’s really awesome. And seeing physical results is far more awesome than the temporary tastes of my favorite foods. 

So next time someone asks me why I’m taking the bun and cheese off of my hamburger, or they joke about throwing my food into a bush for me to gather myself, I have no problem telling them why I’m eating this way. Paleo is not a diet, it is a change of lifestyle- one I plan to continue even after I reach my goal weight.

21 Days

February 17, 2015

It is now day 21 of Paleo which means…THE HABIT HAS BEEN FORMED. Yep, that’s what they say. It takes 21 days for habits to take root, and it all gets easier after that. I have experienced this in other areas of my life. Starting college was quite the transition and after the newness and excitement had worn off, homesickness settled in. I longed for my bed and my family and just to come home to a dinner waiting for me on the stove. But surely enough, after about 3 weeks to a month of college, I had gotten used to this way of life. If anything, it’s stranger to return home now than it is to be here in College Station. I went through similar circumstances when getting in shape for high school basketball. The beginning was always rough when season rolled around, and with coach Hodge’s practice hours, it’s a miracle I wasn’t having a daily mental breakdown. Oh wait…I actually was. But sticking to a schedule and forcing myself to get out of bed and go to the gym on those bitterly cold mornings developed a habit. Basketball practice became something automatic.
Likewise, transitioning from the typical diet of a college freshman to the diet of a Paleolithic hunter and gatherer has been quite the struggle. I went from having Chick-fil-a for lunch, burgers and fries for dinner, to a veggie egg-white omelet for breakfast and lean meats and assorted fruits throughout the day. It used to be a struggle for me to go a day without a Dr. Pepper, and now I drink water religiously. Seriously, at the beginning I felt like I was going to drown in all the water. Going out to eat with friends was extremely painful. I could taste all the foods I used to eat and crave them immensely. Chips and queso, pizza, cookies, ice cream, enchiladas, spaghetti, BREAD. I ached for those tastes again, but I fought the temptations like my life depended on it.
It’s hard. People ask me what my secret is behind the motivation and how I have been able to say no to the foods that surround me constantly, especially being on a college campus. Honestly, the secret is that there is no secret. We have been told our whole lives that the way to lose weight is to eat right and exercise. And that’s really all there is to it. There isn’t a magical process, and if you hear about someone losing weight without having to work hard, it’s probably too good to be true. Eating right and exercising is a HUGE discipline. At first, all of my thoughts revolved around what I couldn’t eat anymore, what I was missing out on, and how my hours in the gym could’ve been spent hanging out with friends or reading chapters in my textbooks. But at 16 pounds lighter and a shirt and pant size thinner, my thoughts have evolved into how much better I feel, the energy I have, and the progress I have made and will continue to make. Seriously, it’s crazy. My face that is normally broken out has cleared up, I have such a renewed mind, and all the exercise has released endorphins, making me generally happier. It is an incredible feeling to look in the mirror and see such significant results in only 21 days.
Don’t get me wrong, I still have tons of temptations. Just today I was tempted to eat the chocolate Hershey’s kisses that had been in my bag, taunting me since Valentine’s day. When I strongly debated eating just one, I thought of my goal to have reached a total weight loss of 20 pounds by the end of this week, and I decided to get rid of the temptation. I gave the entire entire bag to a classmate. Although I was strong in this example, there have been some slip ups, like the scoop of ice cream I had two weeks ago and the coke I had at the movies when I visited home. Slip ups are going to happen, but it is most important to correct those mistakes and focus on staying committed, rather than indulging in other negative areas.
So yeah, it is possible to eat right and exercise while living on a college campus. Luckily I have an awesome group of friends to support me and a best friend on the Paleo diet as well! I am so glad I persevered through those first 3 weeks because the benefits outweigh the challenges in every way. 21 days down, a lifetime of healthy living to go!