Well, it begins. My 4 week long project! One day in and I’m feeling excited and ready. And I may or may not already have decided that the first thing I’m going to eat when this is over is froyo…I digress. 

In terms of data for this-this morning I took weight and general observations (I’m hoping my foot problems magically disappear-a girl can dream, right?) about how I feel. Tonight, my sister is going to do blood pressure. The blood sugar tests came in time, but the kit didn’t come with the lancets (the things that poke you), so I didn’t do that. Since I still haven’t made it to the store to get them, there’s a good chance I’m just going to prick myself with a (sanitized) needle tomorrow morning so I can get the reading. 

A lot of you wanted recipes for this process, so I’m going to go over everything-I did a lot of food prep today and yesterday, so instead of just dumping every recipe on you guys today, I’m going to post recipes/foods as I eat them. 

Here’s some of the prep that I did though.

(This will be in more detail tomorrow.)

Yeah…I’m pretty sure we’re set on meat. Which is probably good-whenever I clean up my eating, I start craving meat like crazy! Last night for dinner, my dad grilled Greek seasoned chicken for our salads, so he threw a few extra things on the grill for us! The turkey burgers are pre-seasoned with Italian seasoning (but don’t worry-nothing weird!), plus garlic powder and salt and pepper. The chicken is seasoned with garlic powder, salt, pepper, and an Italian herb blend. I’m planning on freezing some of this for next week-seasoned and grilled chicken is way better than just plain chicken!

Veggies getting cooked up.

A week of lunches all packed up. 

Homemade ketchup from The Fat Chance Cookbook (which was my inspiration for this project).

Pre-workout Energy Balls. This is a recipe I’ll go ahead and post now! I kind of just threw it together-for me, it’s functional more than anything! I need something in my stomach before morning runs, and what I had been eating was Thinkthin Divine bars, which are chocolate coconut. I ended up using coconut flour instead of coconut, which worked out amazingly well, as it completely held these balls together. This recipe is functional more than anything-it may be a bit bland, so feel free to add a little honey, chocolate chips, raisins, nuts, etc!

1 banana, heated and mashed

1/2 c rolled oats

1/8 coconut flour

1/2 t vanilla

1 T cocoa powder

2 T chia seeds

Mix well, and roll into balls.

So…I’m sure everyone is curious-what did I eat today?

Homemade cappuccino-my mom really wanted me to try one from her Nespresso! It was good, but not quite the quality of my favorite place!

Breakfast-two sunny side up eggs and blueberries. It occurred to me that I won’t have a chance for some nice eggs in a while-dining hall eggs are much more suspect, and this is way more interesting than hardboiled!

After breakfast and food prep, I headed to the track for a speed/Crossfit style workout. I was disappointed I couldn’t do today’s Crossfit workout-squats are not happening for me right now (although my knee is definitely getting better), so I’m looking at this as an opportunity to really work on other things. 

I started with a half mile warm up, and then did 10×200. And then this WOD:

This was originally going to be 4 rounds, but it was taking forever! The lunges are 50 EACH. I broke up the middle parts into 2 sets of 25 lunges, 20 sit ups, 15 push ups, and 10 hollow rocks. I did both back and front lunges (about half and half) to mix it up. My legs were definitely feeling it by the end!

Lunch was quick.

I made my butternut squash soup with cranberry relish, but for the relish, instead of adding sugar, I swapped out about half of the cranberries for one apple so it wouldn’t be quite so tart. Topped with creme fraiche. I also had a few bites of grilled chicken, and a small piece of 100% chocolate.

 

 

(This is the cranberry relish.)

I had Chem section today, so I rushed back in time for that. Afterwards, I had a small snack of one of my energy balls and a little sunflower seed butter.

I really like this sunflower seed butter-the only ingredients are sunflower seeds and salt-the other brand I normally buy is lightly sweetened, and their unsweetened type is pretty bad. 

I went to a Yogalates class as well today. I’m not sure if I mentioned this before, but somehow I committed to teaching yoga at one of my sorority recruitment events, and given I’m the most inflexible person ever, that will be interesting. Anyways, I wanted to go to a couple of classes before then. This was mostly Pilates, but I definitely felt the burn!

Here’s dinner-a turkey burger with homemade ketchup (although these turkey burgers are so good I’d actually rather eat them without), lettuce leftover from our ski trip supply, homemade Balsamic dressing, and roasted cauliflower with cumin. I’m not normally a cauliflower person, but I really like it roasted this way! It’s basically just olive oil, cumin seeds, salt, and pepper, in the oven for about 20 minutes. The recipe called for a yogurt sauce-yogurt, a pinch of salt, and fresh mint. I actually might have liked it better just as is, but I think I like the idea of adding mint and yogurt to salads. Also-homemade ketchup+yogurt for a healthy 1000 island? Maybe?

I had a lot more salad than this afterwards-it just wouldn’t fit! And then I ended with an orange. It turns out the oranges from last week’s CSA boxes are blood oranges!

So….how was today? I ate well. I didn’t miss anything. But I’m tired. I’m definitely low on sleep from ski trip, and without my usual daily shots of sugar, I’m feeling it a bit more. After section, I had to keep reminding myself that I was not hungry, I was tired. So yeah. Sleep would be good. Lack of sleep probably does lead me to eat worse things in general. However, I’m not looking at a TON of sleep in the near future-at least not tomorrow. I still have a million things to do today and I can’t sleep in tomorrow because I have to train quidditch. So we shall see…

But in terms of food-I feel really good! I felt happy today (until the tiredness hit), and I’m excited about this. Everything is pretty much already laid out for me to eat the rest of the week, so I don’t anticipate too many problems. I’m confidant that I won’t cheat on this, because I’m much more committed than just saying “I’m not eating sugar for a while.” I’m  taking data and trying to prove a point, so I’m not giving myself the option to not make it through. Plus, with all this delicious food, it shouldn’t be an issue!

What else do you want me to touch on with this project?