WIAW – My Food Philosophy

I was torn between sharing my amazing collection of nut butters (truly, it’s amazing) or talking about my food philosophy (if you could call it that) this week. Since last week I talked about trying to eat more, I thought it would be timely to talk about my philosophy as it relates to food.

Over the weekend, Amanda posted this question to her Facebook Page:

As you can see, I have somewhat strong feelings (okay, that might be an understatement) as it relates to labeling foods as “off limits”.

Last week my forehead broke out in what I believed to be pimples, and upon getting feedback from my friends, some people thought they might be more related to an allergy. I’m lucky in that I can only ever recall one allergic reaction in my life. I was 12 or 13 and I ate six or eight eggs in a short amount of time one Easter and ended up breaking out in hives. As I hadn’t changed my skin care route, or detergent recently, my next assumption is that the bumps were related to a food intolerance.

Ugh.

See, my philosophy of eat all the things means I’ve never dealt with having any food “off limits” in my life.

Once when I was in Grade 11 I decided to go vegetarian for a month with my best friend, as her boyfriend at the time was vegetarian. I think I lasted three or four days until we had salmon for dinner one night. I reasoned that some people who are vegetarians eat fish, so I could too.

I believe in eating healthy whole food

For a while when I was 20 or 21 I was working evenings and would regularly eat a protein bar for dinner. I reasoned that because it was a protein bar it was healthy; therefore it was an acceptable alternative.

I can’t tell you how much current me cringes at that.

The closest I’ve come to consuming a protein bar, is having a Vega Vibrancy bar as a snack last week.

I’ve seen a ton of people raving about Quest bars lately, but I’d much rather eat real food instead of a bar designed to taste like cookies or a cinnamon bun.

This said, in my attempt to eat more, I did pick up a handful of bars for afternoon snacks on days that I run. They’re also easy to toss into my purse on weekends, as I find I’m having a harder time-consuming enough on weekends after my long runs, but that’s a story for another day.

Counting is for accountants

Okay, so I am an accountant, but I have no desire to count calories or macros.

While I do think it’s helpful to occasionally check in and see how I’m doing calorie and macro-wise, I’m certainly never going to live and die by those numbers.

I consciously work to consume sufficient quantities of carbs, protein and fat, but I’m really not going to get fussed if one day I eat more protein and another day I eat more carbs. I fully believe that being conscious to it (and I’m actively working to consume more protein) I’ll give my body what it needs.

If I want it, I eat it

I don’t believe in denying myself food

Yes, I have some weird and wacky food rules, but if I crave something, I’ll eat it. I may not always eat it right that second but I will eat it.

I’ve been craving red meat, specifically a good juicy burger, so that’s on my list to eat this week.

I also eat dessert nearly every night. At the bare minimum I’ll have two or three dates with peanut butter as my dessert. On Sunday I shared some of my gelato collection with a friend and had some dates. I didn’t feel one bit bad about it.

I don’t believe in guilt

When ever I make a choice as it relates to food, I do so consciously. Okay, most of the time I do so consciously.

Since I’m the one making the choices as it relates to my food, I see no reason to beat myself up for my choices. If I decide to get fries with my hamburger, I’m going to get fries with it and I’m going to enjoy every last one of them.

I believe in moderation

This week I may treat myself to a burger and fries – but I can tell you I’m not going to eat a burger and fries every day, or even every week. Heck, I probably won’t even do it every month.

I’ll have dessert every night, but it will be a few spoonfuls of gelato, or two or three dates, or one of Amy’s amazing cookies (although I really wanted to eat the whole batch!).

I’ll have a glass or two of wine on the weekends, but not a bottle. Most of the time. Sometimes a bottle is necessary 😉

Tell me: Do you have a food philosophy?

WIAW – Minus Dinner

Well hello and Happy Wednesday to you all!

While it may be mid-way through the week for most of you, I just have one more day of work until I get a long weekend. Let me tell you, I’m very much looking forward to having an extra day to rest and sleep in.

Today’s post is an excellent example of why I’m not so great at WIAW posts.

I did awesome and taking pictures of my meals all the way until dinner. And then? Plain old forgot. Whoops. So today you can see everything minus my (super amazing) dinner 🙂

Breakfast

By now you probably know I’m a creature of habit. Same breakfast every week day.

Boring 😛

I promise to remember to take pictures of my weekend food one day because it’s far more interesting 🙂

Snack

Oh. Hey. Trailmix.

That’s new.

Heh.

Lunch

Since I ended up working all last weekend I had no time to grocery shop. Thankfully I had food in my fridge from my Costco run, so lunch was the most amazing soup…

…baby carrots…

…and a hot cross bun with coconut butter.

I can’t believe it took me so long to make coconut butter. I used Ang’s recipe and it turned out so yummy!!

I also had some chocolate for lunch dessert, because lunch dessert is important.

Snack

Refresh tea with vanilla syrup and some milk. Noms.

Banana – note the lack of banana spots. This one was pretty much perfect! with strawberries.

I know it’s not exactly strawberry season, but these were on sale and they looked good to me.

The dinner that wasn’t

After work I came home and had a slice of cheese…

[insert picture here]

…and a small glass of wine to told me over until dinner time.

[insert picture here]

I was cooking dinner for a friend and I had the most amazing dinner planned!

Hand-made perogies that were filled with potato and cheese AND another kind with sauerkraut. Seriously amazing.

[insert picture here]

We paired the perogies with bratwurst, beans and beats. Seriously, so amaze.

[insert picture here]

I’m kind of bummed I forgot to take pictures, but by the time it was 7:40 I was far too concerned with shoveling food into my face and didn’t remember about pictures until I’d cleaned my plate.

Guess that just goes to show how yummy my dinner was 🙂

Tell me: What was the favourite thing you ate yesterday?

 I’m also going to link up for What I Ate Wednesday.

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A Day of Food: Sick Day

I have a confession to make……I really enjoyed talking about food with all y’all last week.

I’m glad I decided to do a WIAW post because it really showed that what I thought my feelings were about sharing my food, weren’t actually my feelings about sharing my food. Did that make sense? Maybe?

Anyway before I even posted my food last week, I was already taking pictures of what I ate when I was home sick. See, I’m approaching this whole posting food on my blog thing as a way to show how I eat for different days: sick days, running days, lazy days, etc.

While I’m a super boring eater, I do eat differently depending on the day and my hunger levels (and sometimes I even remember to take pictures!) and while I would never claim to the healthiest person out there, I do think it’s important to show how I fit food into my day.

Typically, when I’m not feeling well, I revert back to being a six year old. White bread and easy carbs for me please 🙂

Breakfast

 

You would need to pry coffee from my cold dead hand for me to give it up. Yes, even when I am sick. Sorry, not happening.

(Shout out to Ann for the kick ass mug for my collection!!)

Instead of my usual green smoothie, oatmeal sounded pretty much perfect to my feverish and dizzy body.

These were amazing. Seriously amazing. I’m so glad I picked them up and I can’t wait to eat more of them! ❤

Snack

Mmmmm. Nuts. <–TWSS

That is all.

Lunch

I popped over to the store to buy….something? I think it was zucchini for dinner, anyway, I saw bagels and I just knew I was going to be shoving a bagel into my facehole for lunch.

I love bagels so much, but rarely eat them and I appreciated every bite of this one – topped with dill cream cheese. So yum!

Snack

Cheese and crackers will always be the most perfect snack. Always.

Dinner

This pan of amazingness is all thanks to Amy. When she posted about sweet potato, zucchini and runny eggs I knew I’d be making it sometime soon. It just sounded like healthy comfort food to my sick body. I even branched out and sprinkled nutritional yeast on it to give it a cheesey flavour. Who am I?!

Tell me: What do you crave when you’re feeling under the weather?

 I’m also going to link up for What I Ate Wednesday for the second week in a row!

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More ways to connect with Ange:
Facebook --> Cowgirl Runs
Twitter --> @cowgirlruns
Instagram --> cowgirlruns
Bloglovin --> cowgirlruns

A Day of Food: Run Day

Since I posted a few weeks ago about not talking about food (much) on here, I decided I was going to do a sampling of what I eat throughout the week.

However, instead of doing it every Tuesday (or similar) I’m going it based on training. So, today is a running day, I’m going to show you what I ate last Thursday. I had a 15km tempo run scheduled for after work, so here’s what I ate throughout the day.

Breakfast

I’m a creature of habit. I wake up and turn on the coffee machine, feed Merlin, wander aimlessly for a minute or two and then pour some coffee in my facehole.

 

After a few sips of coffee I move on to my smoothie. I’ve been drinking a smoothie for breakfast for about a year. I’m still not tired of them, so I’m going to continue with my smoothie trend. My original smoothie recipe can be found here and another recipe can be found here.

After I get to work I put more coffee in my facehole. On Thursday it was Starbucks Tribute blend VIA with a Splenda, because I’m healthy like that.

Snack

Around 10am I start to get a bit hungry, so I pull out the trail mix and enjoy. I buy this at Costco and even measure out the 1/4 cup serving, mainly because I’d eat the whole bag if I could.

Note: that’s probably about 1/3 of what I brought. Yes, I ate it all.

Lunch

My lunch varies from week to week. This week I made an enchilada casserole, inspired by the Oh She Glows cookbook. It’s mostly vegan, except that I did top it with cheese. Really, how could I not?

Since the picture of it in my container for work doesn’t look all that appetizing, here’s what it looked like when I made it.

Also, Reese’s mini eggs for lunch dessert.

Snack

For my mid-afternoon snack I brought some Greek yogurt. I’d previously been having granola bars, but I found I was pretty hungry before I ran, so I experimented with something higher in protein. I think it worked.

Just before 4pm I was a bit hungry, so I also ate an orange knowing it would be easy to digest in time for my run.

Pre-Run

Once I get home from work I basically walk in the door, change and go straight for a run, be it outside or a treadmill (Thursday was a treadmill day). I mix up my Vega Pre Workout Energizer, slam it back and head to the gym.

And here is where the rest of my day when completely off.the.rails. I noticed a niggle when I started running, but I know it takes my body a while to warm up, so I didn’t concern myself with it much at first. I stopped after 1 mile on the treadmill to do a quick stretch. Once I reached two miles and the niggle was a bit more than a niggle, I knew I wasn’t going to make the full 15km.

And….at that moment my phone rang (I use my phone for music when I run). It was my friend who had has a horrible day at work and was going to be stuck working ridiculously late. I decided to skip my plan of eating a healthy omelet and grab a beer and sandwich and meet my friend for dinner.

Dinner

T’was not quite what I had planned and I completely forgot to take pictures, so here are generic picture of a sandwich and a beer.

Sometimes life just happens.

Snack

After chatting for a bit, I headed home (it’s about a 20 minute drive home) and snacked on a date stuffed with PB because they are oh, so good.

I also made myself a pot of tea and watched Grey’s before crawling into bed.

Water

I started the day off by counting the water I drank, but forgot to mark it down every time I filled up my cup. I’m guessing I probably had 2 cups before leaving for work, about 70 oz at work, 2 cups while running and another litre (at least) after my run. I realize my measurements are all over the place, but guesstimate it to be about 3L. Or so.

Most evenings I also have tea and that’s another 750mL of liquid in my belly.

Since its Wednesday and I posted about my daily food, I’m also going to link up for What I Ate Wednesday, but I don’t expect this will be a totally regular thing 🙂

I also decided to log my daily food into My Fitness Pal. I still don’t count calories, but I think it’s good to sometimes check in with what I’m eating. I’ve noticed some weight gain and I think tracking my food for a day or two (since I pretty much eat the same thing every day) can be helpful.

Since MFP tells everyone to eat 1200 calories (and that’s a freaking joke) I calculated my BMR from the formula in this post and it tells me my BMR is between 1219 and 1287. That’s what I burn just laying in bed. Once I factor in sitting at my desk I burn 1585 to 1673, and that doesn’t even consider the calories burned from a run. Now, it was a bit of a crapshoot because I don’t exactly know my body fat, which is why I calculated it as a range. Also, since I pretty much just sit at my desk all freaking day I went with the mostly sedentary multiplier, even though I also run frequently.

So, based upon this, I’d say I’m probably consuming enough calories. That said, if I’m hungrier one day, I’m going to eat more. It’s as simple as that.

Tell me: Do you eat differently on the days that you run?