Are You Sure You’re Eating Healthy?

Is Working Out going to be Enough?

I believe I have expressed this before, but I think it’s a good place to start for this post.  My workouts with a personal trainer have been like no other workouts I have ever done.  The level of intensity, my level of improvement from week to week,  and  pushing myself to the next level have all been in a kind of super speed compared to the times I had attempted to get started on my own.  Having someone there for me to make sure that I meet my workout goals has been truly amazing and something I am so elated to have in my life right now.  Alannah has taught me proper form, that I am stronger than I thought and that my potential is truly greater than I had ever imagined it to be.

I have all this personalized individual attention in the way of working out that I became kind of wrapped up the physical aspects of a healthy life and started to forget a bit about the nutritional side of things.  I mean I have always been fairly conscious of my eating, mostly out of necessity because of my allergies, but I have always been one to read ingredient lists, make my own food when I can and to pick the “healthier” option when available.  However with a slowdown in my progress (visually at least) I figured it was time to sit down and reassess what I was putting in my body.

After returning from vacation down south it seemed like a great time for me to re-evaluate my goals and what I would need to do in order to achieve them.  So for the week after vacation I started to write down everything I ate while attempting to clean up my diet.   At the end of the week I noticed things like rice crackers, whole wheat wraps, brown rice, and other carb heavy sides or snacks were popping up all over the place in my food journal.  Although none of these things are super unhealthy, my diet seemed to have become centred around carby food and I am not sure why or how that happened, it was like I had forgotten the 7 guidelines Alannah had given me just months before.

Taking into account the 7 guidelines, looking into various clean eating articles and books I set out on a path to clean up my eating and just get my body back on track.   I sat down and I planned out my meals for the coming week, it may have taken me a couple of hours to get all 7 days of breakfasts, snacks, lunches and dinners planned out but it was 100% worth it.

After planning out my meals I started my meal prep, I made a grocery list and hit the store to get all my lean proteins, vegetables, fruits, and sweet potatoes…oh how I ate so many sweet potatoes.  Once home I started to prepare breakfast first, by making easy one serving grab and go oatmeal packets (best idea ever by the way, if you eat oatmeal and are generally in a rush in the morning, I STRONGLY recommend this).  I pre-cooked my turkey breast for the week and baked my sweet potatoes and placed them in containers for easy lunch assembly.   I found that having most things prepared and ready to grab made it so much easier to stay on track as the week went along; especially on the weekend because the food was there and ready so there was no excuse to eat something else.

The next thing I did that I think really helped to keep me on track and stay focused for my first week of getting back on track and detoxing a bit was making my meal plan visually appealing.  Normally I would write out my meal plan on a piece of paper and refer to it when I need it, but this time around I figured I would try something new. I put in a bit of extra effort and made a meal plan tables using Word.  This way I could print it off and stick it on my fridge for referencing.  By putting it on the fridge it was not only available to me but also to my husband, so he could get on board with my eating plans and help me out on days where I might not have as much time as him to prepare supper.  So far so good, it has been working swimmingly and it makes figuring out what my snack is going to be on Saturday afternoon so much easier, also it being on the fridge is a great reminder to make healthy choices and to stick with my goals.

So what have I learnt from all of this?  I have learnt that exercise is great and definitely a HUGE part of leading a happy healthy life, but it definitely won’t cut it on its own.  I had been neglecting my diet a bit the past couple of weeks which means of course I hadn’t been getting optimal results.  But this is all a part of finding a balanced and pushing yourself to be the best you possible, sometimes it just takes some reminding.

How do you keep yourself on track when you have strayed from your diet a little too much?

Brittany