Thoughts on Skipping Dinner

Alright, before anyone freaks out and goes into “eating disorder” “starvation” “metabolism meltdown” mode, let me explain.

When I say skipping dinner, really I mean changing dinner. Making dinner the smallest and least planned meal, turning it more into an evening “healthy snack” of sorts.

See Mr. Gaunt and I start our day at 5am, and have usually consumed about 200 calories by 5:45 am. That means we have on average another 17 hours of “eating time” to fill. If you eat ever 2-3 hours, that’s a ton of food.

Currently we eat like this:

5:00 am WAKEUP!

5:45 am BREAKFAST: Drink smoothies while driving to work (200 Calories) some mornings we also have a light  pb&j (150 calories)

8:00 am BREAK: Cliff bar or piece of fruit (150 – 200 Calories)

10:00 am LUNCH: Fruit + meal (500-600 Calories)

12:30 am BREAK: Tea

4:30 SNACK: Ezekiel bread with swiss cheese, tomato and avocado open face (300 Calories)

So it’s about 5 hours before bed time and I have consumed give or take 1300 calories. According to this site I should eat 1900 calories to lose fat and 1680 calories for extreme fat loss.

That gives me 300 more calories for the rest of the day. I can tell you right now, that although I make dinner almost every night, I am never starving. I’ll even admit that sometimes I’m not even hungry, I just eat because I made it. I would be perfectly happy with a sandwich, or some fruit, or another smoothie. I don’t need a 600 calorie dinner. I eat great all day, I’m never hungry because I eat every two hours.

This will also help because Mr. Gaunt and I plan to start the Couch to 5k plan. Running around 6pm. I don’t want to be A. Full or B. Worried about starting dinner. I want no excuses to not work out!

So we are going to give it a shot for one week and see how we feel. If we are hungry we will eat. If we are tired or headachey or in any way uncomfortable we will re assess the situation.The main goal is to eat during the day when we are being active and working, and get all our calories and nutrition early on so the evening can be a time for working out, digestion and relaxation.

Any opinions are welcome.

Eating like a baby!

****First let me note that this has NOTHING to do with the supposed “baby food diet” that Jennifer Aniston was on.****

This weekend I spent a lot of time with Jenny and Liam, and there was lots of food involved. Jenny feeds Liam super healthy, and he is at that age where he eats real food, not baby foods. We joked how we should eat more like him, then I realized, it’s not such a joke! You don’t give your baby garbage food because its bad for them, why do you give it to yourself?

Happy AND Healthy!

So I have decided to do One Month of EATING LIKE A BABY! What does this mean exactly? Well its a little blurry on the exact rules, because I’m kind of making them up…lol. Basically its the following:

1. SMALL PORTION  (ideally even cut up into small bite size pieces, even a sandwich)

2. LOTS OF FOODS IN ONE MEAL (have a little fruit, a little cheese, a little carb, a little veggies)

3. NO ARTIFICIAL INGREDIENTS (Real fruit, Unsweetened applesauce, plain yogurt, water)

4. LITTLE TO NO MEAT

5. LOTS OF VEGGIES (cooked or raw)

6. NO EXTRA FLAVOR (no butter, no oil, no sauces. Use fruit to add flavor to yogurt etc)

7. DRINK ONLY WATER (have less than 12 oz of milk a day)

8. PRE MAKE FOOD (always have cooked noodles, cooked veggies, cut up fruit on hand)

9. BRING SNACKS EVERYWHERE (mini muffins, dried fruit, wheat crackers)

10. EAT FOUR SMALL MEALS A DAY (eat all day long actually as long as it small amounts)

11. NO EATING OUT

12. STOP WHEN YOUR FULL (baby’s know this, so should we)

13. EAT WHEN YOUR HUNGRY (you will never find a baby starving itself, or skipping meals)

So that’s the basic jist of it. Pretty simple right? This will however mean not a lot of major meal cooking, but I do plan on posting all my food prep for yah! June 1st is the official start, but today I made this in preparation:

Watermelon and Cantaloup

Mini Vegan Banana Apple Muffins- Recipe to come!

Wheat, Spinach, and Sundried Tomato Pasta

Veggies grilled on my cook-top Grill

Sunday Budget

Ok last week I mentioned my goal of reducing our grocery bill down to $67 a week, this week I want to share how things turned out. First off I want to clarify that each week doesn’t have to be a perfect $67, but I would like it to even out to that by the end of the month. Also I’m trying really hard to reduce my artificial ingredients, today at Target this proved to be difficult.

Ok so to start with last week we spent:

$52.88

This included the $22 for our Door to Door Organics box. The other $30 was basically spent on Milk, Cliff Bars, Smart Ones Meals, Bottled Water, and Fruit. We had a fair amount of food still so we really didn’t need to buy much.

Today we went to Target. Now I have heard mixed reviews on shopping produce at Target but I have always been pleased. They have a mix of Organic and non organics, they usually have everything I need in stock (like Kale even thought King Soopers, Safeway, and Whole Foods were out). They also have GREAT fruit prices. (see their ad here)

Today on Ad they had:

1 lb Strawberries: 2 for $5

1lb Fuji Apples: $1 a pound

Annie’s Organic Mac n Cheese: $1.25

Kellogg cereals & Breakfast Bars: 4 for $10 plus a $5 instant Target Gift Card

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So we spent $80.93 today, if your curious here is the (approximate) breakdown:

-$20 on Fruits and Veggies

-$16.00 on Almonds, Organic Peanut Butter, Bread, and Dark Chocolate

-$12 on Cliff Bars (Also Organic and Natural)

-$7 on Dairy (Cream Cheese, Milk, Ice Cream (ok its fat-free sorbet)  (Havent made the switch to Organic in these)

-$5 on Weight Watchers Smart Ones Meals (for Mr. Gaunt, the Kashi Organic ones are TWICE as much…grrr)

-$13 on Cereal and Oatmeal (I have switched to Organic Kashi Oatmeal, but the Cereal deal was too good to pass up)

So basically out of our $80 only $24 of it was spent on items that are not “Clean Eating” material. Now not all of those were Organic, but they were natural ingredients. I am VERY happy with this! And we remembered our bags! Yay! now I just have to use up all these good foods before they go bad. I read somewhere that no one should eat anything that wont expire in a month.

Oh and I have a TON of Sweet Potatoes, any ideas for HEALTHY (no candied Yam ideas) recipes? I’m pretty sure we will make sweet potato fries, but I would love to bake something with them. In my head I’m picturing a Sweet Potato and Peanut butter bar…lol…how could I do this? Anyway sorry if this post was boring, I found it really comforting to break down my bill into nutrition like this. Try it! I will be doing this every Sunday evening.

Weekend Meals

POACHED EGGS & TOAST : Protein (22g) Fiber (4g) Calories (242) Fat (11)

MACARONI & CHEESE : Protein (18g) Fiber (10g) Calories (309) Fat (6g)

SALMON DINNER : Protein (47g) Fiber (11g) Calories (582) Fat (23)

DAILY NUTRITION CONSUMED: (please note I only counted the large food and did not count oils, seasonings, and drinks)

CALORIES: 1133  DAILY REQUIRED: 2000

PROTEIN: 87 grams  DAILY REQUIRED: 46

FIBER: 25 grams DAILY REQUIRED: 25-30

FAT: 40 grams DAILY REQUIREMENTS : 65

These werent actually eaten in one day, they are parts of two days meals. The above chart also does not include any snacks or beverages I consumed. This is just a good way to show you what kind of nutrition my main meals have.

Looking at this though, it shows that I am in fact lacking in FRUIT! Grrr I cant wait for summer! Today I am planning on getting a big bag of Grapefruit and peeling them all and putting them in Mason Jars to eat throughout the week. I love fruit, and I get sad when I don’t have it. Other than that each meals includes Whole Grains (the toast, the Orzo, The macaroni) and a healthy Protein (Organic Eggs, Low fat turkey Sausage, salmon) I also managed to get veggies in two of the dishes (Kale in the Mac-n-cheese and Asparagus).

Obviously all the meals do include carbs.  I usually do at least one meal a day without carbs, but the carbs were all whole wheat. The Mac-n-cheese is a “were too lazy to cook and we want comfort food” meal for Mr. Gaunt and I. I get the Back To Nature 100% Whole Wheat macaroni and White Cheddar at Sunflower market or Whole Foods. We almost always add a lean chicken sausage to give us a little protein, and yesterday I chopped up some kale and threw that in (I’m pretty much convinced you can throw Kale in anything). As soon as I did this (added the Kale) it got me thinking about Kids and feeding them vegetables. Teaching my children good nutrition is really important to me, and I plan on doing a post on this at a later date.

The Salmon is also a new thing. I have been purchasing Tilapia because its cheap and easy and lower in fat, but have recently heard poor reviews on its nutritional values. As a kid growing up in Washington I was always the odd man out because I hated Salmon and people cook a ton of it there. As I’ve gotten older my taste buds have changed greatly and now I really like Salmon. The cost is a lot higher (almost twice as much) for frozen Salmon Filets at Costco versus Tilapia, but investing in my health is what this year is all about! So Mr. Gaunt and I bought the Salmon and we attempted to grill it (on our cooktop grill) last night. Things started out well but then flipping the steaks caused them to break apart, so Mr. Gaunt just chopped them all up. It was actually quite yummy because it has a bunch of crispy parts. We put it on a bed of Orzo with some sesame asparagus, delish.

Anyway I just wanted to show some good healthy meals that are pretty damn easy if I do say so myself. Now Im off to get Grapefruit!