#abzski health kick: food to keep you on track
Last week I was talking with a friend about the food I love to eat and it was at that point that I realised how much my diet has changed for the better over recent years. Because of this I thought I'd talk about some of the meals and food that I love to eat and how they help me to stay healthy and feel good. Before I do I'd like to stress that I'm not an expert on nutrition, exercise or anything else and I'm not vegetarian, vegan or anything like that. I like a wide range of food from around the world am and always looking for new things to try. I do however have a problem where I can't eat certain foods and I can only take others in small doses. For example certain types of dairy are becoming a no-no for me and I can't ingest more than one acidic item a day, i.e. an orange or something spicy.
One big thing that has changed is that I don't snack. It's amazing. It took a lot of willpower to begin with but I no longer feel the need to snack. This is fantastic news because when I lived at home I could go through a packet of biscuits in one evening and take 3 or 4 bags of crisps out with me for the day. I cut this out, not because it caused me to put on weight but because I felt so unhealthy! Even now if I have a packet of McCoys or some custard creams I feel a bit groggy and disgusting. It's not nice.
I'm convinced that cutting out snacking is why I no longer crave sweets. I don't need cake and I certainly don't need chocolate, granted I'll have a creme egg from time to time and if it's birthday cake then it'd be rude not to have a slice but I can easily dismiss them.
There isn't anything that I have instead of these snacks and sweets because they're additions to a meal, they're not part of a meal. I'd much rather have another scoop of chorizo pasta if I'm really that hungry but cutting out the crap eventually means you don't need it anymore.
Our dinner time meals haven't changed too much in that Shaun still likes to have a few pasta based dishes a week so I don't eat as much rice or pasta as I used to because it bloats me and I feel awful afterwards. Instead I'll have an extra spoonful of curry or whatever it is and sometimes add an avocado to the side.
That leads me on to my favourite discovery. I love avocados! I love avocados mashed up with tuna, made into smash for toast, sliced with a little lemon and a poached egg on top or chopped up in salad. I have about 3 avocados a week because I find they go with so many fresh tasty dishes which make me feel good!
Eggs are another thing that I've been eating a lot more of. Poached on toast with a little pepper, hard boiled and sliced up into a salad or creamy pasta and sometime fried with a little basil sprinkled on top. There are loads of good looking recipes with eggs cooked in these ways that I really want to try. For example sweet potato and bacon hash topped with a fried egg.. how amazing does that sound?!
Sweet potato is amazing and one of my go-to vegetables. I don't often have normal potatoes anymore as I opt for a sweet potato instead, they're so much nicer as a jacket potato than the standard one and I don't bother with the cheese/coleslaw/beans topping either with makes it a more enjoyable experience to be honest. I make sweet potato wedges and want to start including it in pasta dishes. My bestie made an amazing sweet potato curry the other day so I absolutely need to try and make that.
The other thing I've cut out of my diet is frozen food. The only thing I eat out of our freezer are meats that I've had to freeze and spinach, because frozen is always significantly cheaper than the fresh and you get loads more
Spinach is another thing I've been putting in everything. I added it to a spaghetti and meatballs dish for the first time the other day and loved it. Spinach is one of those foods that seems to give me energy and make me feel good whenever we have it. I also often make it as a side dish with spring onions and a little nutmeg, sometimes with some cream mixed in too.
Because of my recent aversion to dairy I'm not having as much of it in my diet. Cream and milk are the main causes of problems and cheese I only have in moderation these days which seems fine at the moment. Where I do have milk is in a couple of cups of tea, I don't drink instant coffee anymore because I liked it milky and it would cause me all sorts of issues so I cut that out completely but I will have the odd fresh deliciousness from Starbucks or Costa. I've tried a couple of Lactose free milk and cream products recently and I seem okay so I think when I do fancy cereal (which isn't very often!) I'll buy those instead.
Peppermint tea has been part of my life for a while now and I noticed such a difference in myself when I started drinking it that I wrote a blog post - which you can find here. I still drink peppermint tea pretty much every day and still love it as much as I did then.
I really enjoy my food, I enjoy making it and eating it so I don't want the experience to stop there, it has to make me feel good too! Of course these are just some of the things I love to eat and drink, there are so many others but for now these are the ones that matter.
One big thing that has changed is that I don't snack. It's amazing. It took a lot of willpower to begin with but I no longer feel the need to snack. This is fantastic news because when I lived at home I could go through a packet of biscuits in one evening and take 3 or 4 bags of crisps out with me for the day. I cut this out, not because it caused me to put on weight but because I felt so unhealthy! Even now if I have a packet of McCoys or some custard creams I feel a bit groggy and disgusting. It's not nice.
I'm convinced that cutting out snacking is why I no longer crave sweets. I don't need cake and I certainly don't need chocolate, granted I'll have a creme egg from time to time and if it's birthday cake then it'd be rude not to have a slice but I can easily dismiss them.
There isn't anything that I have instead of these snacks and sweets because they're additions to a meal, they're not part of a meal. I'd much rather have another scoop of chorizo pasta if I'm really that hungry but cutting out the crap eventually means you don't need it anymore.
Our dinner time meals haven't changed too much in that Shaun still likes to have a few pasta based dishes a week so I don't eat as much rice or pasta as I used to because it bloats me and I feel awful afterwards. Instead I'll have an extra spoonful of curry or whatever it is and sometimes add an avocado to the side.
That leads me on to my favourite discovery. I love avocados! I love avocados mashed up with tuna, made into smash for toast, sliced with a little lemon and a poached egg on top or chopped up in salad. I have about 3 avocados a week because I find they go with so many fresh tasty dishes which make me feel good!
Eggs are another thing that I've been eating a lot more of. Poached on toast with a little pepper, hard boiled and sliced up into a salad or creamy pasta and sometime fried with a little basil sprinkled on top. There are loads of good looking recipes with eggs cooked in these ways that I really want to try. For example sweet potato and bacon hash topped with a fried egg.. how amazing does that sound?!
Sweet potato is amazing and one of my go-to vegetables. I don't often have normal potatoes anymore as I opt for a sweet potato instead, they're so much nicer as a jacket potato than the standard one and I don't bother with the cheese/coleslaw/beans topping either with makes it a more enjoyable experience to be honest. I make sweet potato wedges and want to start including it in pasta dishes. My bestie made an amazing sweet potato curry the other day so I absolutely need to try and make that.
The other thing I've cut out of my diet is frozen food. The only thing I eat out of our freezer are meats that I've had to freeze and spinach, because frozen is always significantly cheaper than the fresh and you get loads more
Spinach is another thing I've been putting in everything. I added it to a spaghetti and meatballs dish for the first time the other day and loved it. Spinach is one of those foods that seems to give me energy and make me feel good whenever we have it. I also often make it as a side dish with spring onions and a little nutmeg, sometimes with some cream mixed in too.
Because of my recent aversion to dairy I'm not having as much of it in my diet. Cream and milk are the main causes of problems and cheese I only have in moderation these days which seems fine at the moment. Where I do have milk is in a couple of cups of tea, I don't drink instant coffee anymore because I liked it milky and it would cause me all sorts of issues so I cut that out completely but I will have the odd fresh deliciousness from Starbucks or Costa. I've tried a couple of Lactose free milk and cream products recently and I seem okay so I think when I do fancy cereal (which isn't very often!) I'll buy those instead.
Peppermint tea has been part of my life for a while now and I noticed such a difference in myself when I started drinking it that I wrote a blog post - which you can find here. I still drink peppermint tea pretty much every day and still love it as much as I did then.
I really enjoy my food, I enjoy making it and eating it so I don't want the experience to stop there, it has to make me feel good too! Of course these are just some of the things I love to eat and drink, there are so many others but for now these are the ones that matter.
♥ abby
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