Since I started Healthy Eating 101, I’ve gotten a couple questions via email about what exactly I eat each day. My meals are pretty basic but there is a lot of flavor and variety throughout the day. My goal is about quick preparation, portability, and whatever makes my life as easy as possible. During the week, I don’t have time to live in the kitchen. I save that for fun on the weekends because I do love to cook and bake.
I like to eat smaller meals, 6 times a day since that seems to keep cravings under control for me. If I’ve just eaten or know I’m going to eat in an hour or two, it takes much less willpower to resist a tray of muffins or surprise cake at the office. If I’m hungry, that cake is going down! The framework of each meal and snack is pretty much the same each day, but the items change daily. Meaning lunch is always a protein, veggie and carb but some days are tuna, broccoli and rice. Other days it’s a hamburger, side salad and whole grain bun and so on.
Breakfast
I love having eggs for breakfast and I’m lazy so I typically hard boil a bunch of eggs at one time and eat them throughout the week. I started the day with 2 hard boiled egg whites. Why don’t I eat the yolks? It has nothing to do with health. Thing Two loves them so I eat the whites and share the yolks with him. I also had a maple flavored meat-free sausage. These sausages are completely awesome so I actually prefer them over the real thing just for the taste. On the side, I had two pieces of whole grain toast with natural peanut butter (chunky, of course), and coffee.
Snack 1
Most days I have non-fat Greek yogurt and some sort of carb. Yesterday I had oatmeal, but I’ve also tried brown rice, cheerios, wheat berries, and other grains. I just mix it in with the yogurt. The oatmeal is just dry, unprepared oatmeal mixed in. Sometimes I will make the oatmeal with water first, but most days I don’t bother. If I’m feeling crazy, I sprinkle cinnamon and nutmeg on top.
Lunch
I’m all about quick lunches that reheat well in the microwave. I had a grilled chicken breast, broccoli and black beans. I seasoned it all with Red Robin seasoning. I love that stuff and put it on just about anything. It’s a sweet, spicy, salty combo that’s great! Lunch is very easy to throw together the night before. I just dump out the broccoli from a bag of frozen broccoli. The black beans are straight from the can and rinsed off. I grill several chicken breasts on the weekend so I just toss one in with the broccoli and beans. It doesn’t get much easier than that. The flavor combinations are endless too since you can try all kinds of herbs and spices, BBQ sauce, pico di gallo…
Snack 2
Usually I workout mid-day, so in the afternoon I had an orange and a protein shake post-workout. That keeps me going until dinner time. I do change up the fruit from day to day. I just grab whatever fruit we have on hand from our produce share. This week it was oranges and grapefruits. Next week might be kiwi and apples.
Dinner
Tuesdays are the nights that The Kid and I grab something quick for dinner. It relieves me of dinner duties and doesn’t break the budget. We get whatever it is to go and come home to work on homework or just hang out and relax. I stopped by the salad bar at our grocery store and got a huge salad with spring lettuce, spinach, asparagus, various veggies, and grilled chicken. If we’re eating at home, I do something similar as with lunch and just reheat a protein, veggie and side from what’s ready in the fridge.
Snack 3
I’ll warn you that this is a weird combination of ingredients, but I love it so much that I have it every night before bed. I mix up cottage cheese, coconut oil, and chocolate protein powder into a lumpy, thick pudding consistency. It’s slightly sweet and definitely chocolatey so it’s almost like dessert before bed for me. Yes, I know it sounds gross but it’s oh so good. I’m almost out of my chocolate protein so I’m already planning the next flavor to try out for this.
I do a heck of a lot of eating as you can see so eating healthy does not equal being hungry. It’s also not boring since the only limit is my own imagination and creativity. I spend about an hour on the weekends cooking the meats or making a batch of soup or chili in the crock pot. During the week, it’s minutes each night to pack meals or heat up dinner. So that’s my exciting day of eating.
Do you have weird combinations that turned out delish? Do you have a planned night to eat out during the week?
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