Catching Up

So I was cooking Jamie Oliver meals fast and furious... and then I fell off the planet.  As I fight the continuous battle to balance all of my roles and hobbies (mom, cook, wife, maid, social organizer, health nut, blogger, reader, etc) I found that writing here has taken a backseat while I focus on other priorities.  But while reporting back my progress and thoughts has gone by the wayside, I assure you my drive to be healthy has not.

In fact, while I've been checked out of the blogosphere, I had some really great progress!  First off, I got on a really long streak of eating healthy.  This was going on even through my last entries, as I was cooking J.O.'s amazingly wholesome meals.  I was eating almost nothing processed, nearly no junk food, and tons of fruits and veggies.

Then, after having my weird near-black-out experience just over a week ago, I decided to shelve the excuses, rearrange my schedule, and do whatever was necessary to get my butt to the gym.  And you know what?  I got to the gym FIVE TIMES last week.  I did five days of cardio (two on the stair climber, two on the elliptical, and one running on the treadmill) and I did one day of weight lifting (an arm workout - yay!).

It turns out 1:00 is the perfect time to hit the gym.  My son rarely sleeps past 12:00 and his next nap doesn't come up until 2:30 or 3:00.  I have just enough time to squeeze in an hour from 1:00 to 2:00 and I did it every day last week without issue.  I worked my zones exactly as I was supposed to and even did it while reading, thanks to my new first-ever Kindle, which allows me to make the font size REALLY BIG so I can still read when I'm jogging.  It was awesome to not only get in five hours of cardio but I also got in five hours of reading!  Its a mommy miracle!  I feel like I contrived five hours of time out of an impenetrable schedule.

But, while I had a few good weeks of eating, followed by a great week of working out, I still faltered in making good eating and good exercising happen together.  Easter derailed my zen disposition with the healthy food (as holidays seem to do).  We had two Easter dinners between which I had a piece of pie, a piece of cake, a piece of cheesecake, and two cookies.  They weren't huge servings - I just tried a little bit of every dessert that was homemade.  (What can I say?  As a cook and baker, I hate to leave someone's hard work unsampled).  Then I got into my bad frame of mind.  I already ate a bunch of junk, so what's a little bit more going to hurt?  I made buttermilk pancakes and bacon for breakfast.  Well, if I've gone that far, one bad dinner won't be noticeable amongst all the already ingested badness, right?  I went to Smashburger and got a chicken sandwich (with cheese, bacon, and mayo) and some fried onion strings.

Anyway, at least I was exercising while this dive was occurring, so it had some counter-balance.  But its time to bring my splurge into check.  I haven't calorie counted in about a month, but today I did my calorie counts and went back to eating well.  Its imperative that I make sure a splurge does not become a habit.

But that's not the end of the story.  Of course just when I start to build some momentum, life as a full-time caretaker intervened.  My baby boy got sick.  And sick kiddos mean no going to the gym.  I can't be exposing all the kids at the child care center to the feverish nausea that my son seems to sadly be harboring.  I'm not totally hating the trade off.  My son, who rarely likes to cuddle, has just been snuggling in my arms all day today.  I'm savoring it.  I could nestle his sick little body against mine all day long.  But, unfortunately, it also means we're going to have to set the gym aside until he gets better.

While my physical momentum is going to have to pause, I need to make sure it doesn't stall out.  I'm trying to keep my mind engaged, and keep my attitude revving, so that the instant he seems better I am ready to get back out there and exercise.

My Biggest Defeat

Whew.  Today was a tough day for me.  It started off nice.  I got to sleep in (which was good because I was up a lot with my daughter last night).  Then I had a nice breakfast of whole wheat toast with peanut butter and some plain Greek yogurt with granola.  I chugged down some water, got my exercise clothes on, then met up with my trainer.  She's been the only thing keeping my "official" workouts happening.  Outside of my meetings with her, I have pretty much let exercise go to the way side.  Its part of the on-going struggle to balance all things.  When lots of attention gets paid to one area (like, recently, my kids) another area tends to slip (like exercise).  But today I could really feel how much my body's efficiency and performance has deteriorated because of me not keeping up an exercise routine.

Here's what happened.  We did our warm ups, and by the end of them I was huffing and puffing and not even able to keep a conversation going - I was breathing so hard.  Clearly, my VO2 capacity (how well my body processes oxygen) has suffered from my lack of cardio.  This is not a good start.  Then we got into the weights.  I was having to move much slower than normal to keep proper form while doing the exercises.  My strength felt like it had gone down and my energy level was lower than I'm used to.  About 2/3 of the way in I started getting light headed.  Then I started to get little black flashes in my vision.  I was approaching a black-out.  This was really not good.  I had to cut it off early and wrap up our session with time to spare.  We both agreed, it was not a good idea to continue to push my body when it was clearly struggling.

Its not like we were doing anything harder than usual today.  But my body was having to work harder to do a normal routine.  My whole workout my heart rate was high, pushing right at my aerobic threshold.  I was sweating, burning tons of calories (I burned 400 in just 45 minutes of exercise).  It was clearly an intense experience for a body out of practice.  And it was not a pleasant experience.  It felt like my biggest defeat ever in the strength and activity portion of my goals.

Not to be one to sulk over defeats, I did what I always do - I'm taking it as a wake-up call that if I want to continue to make building strength a priority for me then I need to actually work at it, and practice.  No more excuses, no more waiting until a better time.  I am over-due for getting exercise back into my daily routine.

My membership at Lifetime Fitness expires at the end of this month (even though I quit they require one month's notice).  So I'm not starting my membership at the community center until May.  That means I'm still stifled by the requirement of needing to set an advance appointment to go to the gym.  So today I called them up and made a two hour appointment for Monday.  One hour for cardio, one hour for weights, right after lunch when I'm pretty sure my baby boy won't be napping.  (And if he makes a freak change in his schedule on the day I made the appointment, I guess we'll just have to find a way to make everything work together).

Time to get back on the wagon!  Here's hoping this is the time I make it work.

JO's Meals in Minutes: Day II

I just finished another amazing meal from Jamie Oliver's book, Meals in Minutes.  In my last post I mentioned I was going to cook meals from Jamie's cookbook for the next week and blog about it here.  I like Jamie's cooking because it is based on whole ingredients with minimal processing.  This book claims to have recipes that can be prepared in 20-30 minutes, but I'm starting to think only a chef like Jamie can make these meals in that time frame.  I like to think I know my way around a kitchen pretty well but yesterday's meal took me 45 minutes to prepare, and today's took me an hour even.  That's how much time I normally spend making dinner, so I'm not put-out by it at all, but it would have been awesome to put down some gourmet dinners in 30 minutes or less.  What sounds too good to be true, probably is.

What is good though are these recipes he's devised.  Today's meal was just as great as yesterday's, yet for entirely different reasons.  I liked today's meal because it had a lot of flavors that were new to me, and I found appreciation for it even though it was unfamiliar.  Here's what I made.

Stuffed Focaccia

This recipe starts with a store-bought loaf of focacccia, for simplicity's sake, because we can't do everything from scratch if we're trying to prepare dinner quickly.  To make this, you put the loaf in the oven for 15 minutes at 300 degrees.  While its warming, you chop vegetables.  A lot of vegetables.  And not the kind you're probably thinking of.  This focaccia is stuffed with roasted red peppers, capers, sun dried tomatoes, marinated olives, cherry tomatoes, a chile pepper, and a handful of mint leaves.  Jamie's instructions were kind of funny.  He said to put all the ingredients on a cutting board and then chop.  And it makes one enormous pile.

When your chopping is done you put all the veggies in a bowl, hit it with a slug of extra virgin olive oil (EVOO), squeeze half a lemon into it, then scrunch it all together while mixing by hand.  When the focaccia is done you cut it down the middle and spread your veggie concoction inside.  Sprinkle with some parmesan cheese and you are good to go!

There are some ingredients in this where I had pre-conceived notion of what to expect.  For example, I very much heart sun dried tomatoes and olives.  So I think I expected it to taste like that.  But the roasted red pepper was definitely the dominating flavor.  I've eaten red bell pepper plenty of times, but never roasted and never from a jar.  The first few bites of this sandwich I wasn't sure I liked it, but I think that's my knee-jerk reaction anytime something tastes new and different.  By the end I really liked it.  I wrapped the leftovers in plastic wrap and am hoping they will still taste delicious for lunch today.

Prosciutto Celery Root Remoulade

This recipe remind's me of yesterday's prosciutto and cantaloupe in its appearance.  Take three slices of prosciutto and ring it around the edge of the plate, then put something in the middle to compliment it.  In this case, that middle slaw is comprised of one celery root, one pear, one half of a red chile, and a handful of Italian parsley.  I'm not going to lie: I had no clue what celery root was before I made this dish.  I've never eaten it before (that I'm aware of) and had zero expectations, other than I was hoping it would be good because celery root (as I mentioned in yesterday's post) is damn expensive!  In case you're a newbie like me, here's what celery root looks like:

To prepare the celery root, you cut off the greens then slice the root ball into wedges.  Then you peel it.  For some reason, when I read that I was to peel it in the instructions, I imagined peeling it like the way you peel an onion.  But no.  You peel it like the way you peel a pineapple.  Which to me means, cut off the outer layer with a knife, because this sucker is tough!  Peeling implies a simplicity that just wasn't there with this root.  Once I had it into "peeled" wedges things were much easier.

I set up my food processor with the grating blade and put it the root, pear, chile, and parsley.  Then I moved that mess into a bowl where I added a teaspoon of Dijon mustard, a teaspoon of whole grain mustard, 5 tbsp of EVOO, and 2 tbsp of white wine vinegar.  I mixed it with my hands to make sure all the pieces got coated, then scooped it into the center of the prosciutto plate.

I wasn't sure what the taste would be, but after a few bites I would describe celery root as having the texture and consistency of a carrot, but it tasted a little less sweet - probably more the way a parsnip tastes.  Overall, it was not bad when added with the pear, chile, and oil and vinegar.  Then taking bites with a bit of the prosciutto made it very delicious.  As with the stuffed focaccia, I wasn't sure what I thought at first, but by the end I thought it was quite good for a raw veggie dish.  And again, another reason why I love Jamie Oliver's approach to food preparation.  This dish gets us eating raw fruits and veggies for dinner in a way that seems not only palatable, but enjoyable.  We're optimizing the nutrition and keeping the foods as minimally processed as possible.

Dressed Mozzarella

This is exactly what it sounds like.  Take a big piece of mozzarella.  Spoon some pesto on top and spread it around.  Drizzle with EVOO, squeeze a dab of lemon juice on that, then sprinkle with Parmesan.  Pesto and mozzarella each hold special places in my food palate - they are both delicious no matter where you use them.  So putting them together was just a delicious, easy perfection of a side that had never occurred to me to serve before.  This side was fast to prepare - less than five minutes total.  Although it would have been more than that if I did what JO instructed in the recipe, which was to make our own pesto.  As nice as that sounds, I don't have the time.  So I just bought a jar of it at the store (and it was heavenly in its own right).  

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Meals in 20 minutes?  Not hardly.  And it would've taken me even longer if I had made my own pesto or grated my own cheese (both of with Jamie instructs us to do).  But I was still able to prep everything in an hour or less, and that's what matters most to me.  I find cooking to be fun and exciting, especially when I'm preparing dishes like this.  So its a quick 60 minutes spent in my kitchen.  It gets my brain engaged doing problem solving, mutli-tasking, and creative work.  I love it.

One thing that surprised me about this meal was how much my baby boy devoured it!  My husband and I were joking with each other about how snobby it sounds to say, "Our baby is eating roasted red peppers with focaccia, fresh mozzarella and pesto, with a celery root and prosciutto romoulade."  Seriously?  Who feeds their baby this stuff?  Oh yeah, me.  It was cracking us up and we were having fun, and I won't deny I was happy to see my baby eat a variety of new veggies.  It won't be long before the pickiness sets in, and I know it.  My two year old wouldn't touch any of this.

Tonight I have a date night with my husband.  We're going to shop for goodies for the kids' Easter baskets, grab some dinner, then head to the Repertory Theatre to see a show.  Therefore, no cooking of Jamie Oliver's meals tonight.  But I'll have another round to make tomorrow night, and I'll share that one with you, too.

Cooking Jamie Oliver

Over the past year or so my husband and I have been slowly making our way through the TV show "Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution."  Its a show about a British chef who comes to America to try to make our eating habits healthier.  He petitions to make school lunches more nutritious, helps fast food restaurants figure out how to serve healthier fast food, and teaches individual families and children along the way about the joys of home cooking.  Its amazing and inspiring and if you've never seen it I recommend giving it a go.

Outside of the TV show Jamie is a professional chef and he's published many cookbooks.  His approach to food and nutrition seems to mirror mine, so I grabbed one of his books at the local library and decided to thumb through it to see if any of his work interested me.  And boy did it ever!  I picked up the book Meals in Minutes.  It claims to be written for people of any cooking ability (beginners to advanced) who feel they can't cook their own meals at home due to lack of time.  In the book he has already assembled whole meals (usually a main dish, two sides, and a dessert) which he claims will only take 20-30 minutes to prepare.  The recipes all look gourmet, and while they're not all expensive to prepare, some of them have ingredients I've never bought before (like celery root) that ended up being a bit pricey ($8.00!).  He owns up to this in the introduction when he says, "I didn't set out to make this a budget cookbook.  There are meals in here to satisfy the foodiest of foodies."

I'm not the foodiest, but I am a foodie.  And because his recipes looked so exciting and ideal to my diet, I decided to splurge and have fun this week, and prepare a week's worth of dinners from Jamie Oliver's cookbook.  Last night was the first meal.  

** Just a note: anytime I mention olive oil in these recipes I'm always using extra virgin olive oil, a cleaner, purer, healthier oil choice than plain olive oil.

Mustard Chicken (recipe here)

This chicken was a breeze to make.  It was cooking in the background the whole time I was preparing the sides.  All you need to do is sprinkle some chopped rosemary on the chicken (fresh or dried), plop a teaspoon of dijon mustard on each piece, and drizzle a little olive oil over it.  You massage those three ingredients into the chicken until each piece is coated, then you put it skin-side-down into a skillet with olive oil.  After its cooked for 18 minutes, you flip it over, add 4 cloves of crushed unpeeled garlic, some trimmed and sliced leeks, and a splash of white wine.  5-10 minutes after that, when the chicken is done cooking, you add in 1/4 cup of heavy cream and a tablespoon of grainy mustard, warm through, then serve.

The leeks through me for a loop.  I've never bought or prepared leeks before, and I should have researched it ahead of time.  I was right in the throws of preparation when I got to the step that said, "Trim leeks and slice into thin strips."  To which I thought, "How the heck are you supposed to trim a leek?"  But then when I looked at the leek I realized it really just looks like an extra large version of a green onion, so I prepped it in the same way.  I think I did it right.  As soon as I added the leeks into the pan it created a pool of moisture, and added a wonderful subtle flavor to the sauce.

And that's what I liked best about this main dish.  For a mustard chicken, the mustard was not an overwhelming flavor.  The wine, the leeks, the rosemary all infused with the mustard and just created this mouth-watering sauce that complimented the moist chicken perfectly.  It was divine.

Zucchini and Bocconcini Salad

I can't find a link to this recipe so if you want it you'll have to run to your own library and get Jamie's book.  This was such an interesting way to prepare zucchini.  You take a vegetable peeler and just peel down the zucchini until you have thin ribbons.  Then you add a few marinated mozzarella balls and the bulk of the salad is done (see? easy!).  Actually, the most work came in preparing the dressing that goes over it, although even that only took a moment to make.  To prepare the dressing you put a handful of mint leaves, half a red chile, and zest from 1/2 of a lemon onto a cutting board.  You chop it all up together into really fine pieces, then put it into a bowl, add a few tablespoons of olive oil, then squeeze the juice out of that lemon half and stir.  This dish, as fancy as it looks, seriously took only a few minutes to prepare.  I was in awe.  

And it tasted good, too!  I've never really eaten zucchini raw, but this is a great way to do it.  The ribbons are thin enough that the raw factor was barely noticeable.  And if you took each bite with a bit of a mozzarella ball then you really didn't notice that you were eating raw zucchini.  It was very delicious.  The mint and chile pepper dressing gave it just a touch of zing to really make it a unique dish.

Prosciutto & Melon Salad

Again, no link to this recipe is available, so go get the book if you want it.  But this side dish is a great example of why I like Jamie's cookbook.  Every meal finds a way to incorporate fruit, which I love!  There's no reason why fruit shouldn't be a part of every dinner and its refreshing to see a way to do it where you're not just chopping it up and serving it in a bowl.

This dish was incredibly fast and easy also.  I started by putting three slices of prosciutto on a plate, creating a circle and leaving the middle open.  In the middle I put scoops of cantaloupe.  You then drizzle balsamic vinegar over the cantaloupe (this is where I started getting concerned... I was having a hard time imagining what balsamic and cantaloupe was going to taste like).  Then you make a dressing on the side.  The dressing contains a handful of basil which you grind down into a paste with a dash of salt, then you add a few tablespoons of olive oil, juice from half a lemon, and whatever juice was left in the bottom of the melon after you scooped it.  You then take a few whole basil leaves to garnish the salad, pour over the dressing, and then eat.

Did I say eat?  I meant gape in astonishment at how good these flavors meld together.  I could've eaten this all night.  I never would have thought prosciutto, cantaloupe, balsamic, and basil could compliment each other so well but seriously - this was the best dish of the whole night.  Hands down.  An instant favorite for me.

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After day one of cooking from Jamie Oliver's book I have to say I'm impressed.  Everything in this meal is made with whole ingredients, all the fruits and vegetables are raw (more nutrients!), and even the dressings are made from extremely healthy ingredients.  The only bad-for-you ingredient in the whole meal was the 1/4 cup of heavy cream.  And you know what?  When you split 1/4 cup between four servings, its ill-effect is really moot.  This was a tremendously tasty, guilt-free, healthy meal.

It did take me 45 minutes to prepare, from the time I set foot in the kitchen to the time I set the plates down on the table.  But I also did it while watching my two children (10 months and 2.5 years old) which made me all the more proud of my accomplishment.  It really wasn't too bad.  For as fancy as the dishes look, the chicken required little tending, and the side dishes were quick to prepare.  I made them entirely while the chicken cooked.

Tonight I'll be trying Day 2 of cooking Jamie Oliver's meals.  Its a vegetarian meal, and I'm super excited to see if it is just as tasty as this meal was!  I'm sure I won't be disappointed.  I'll post that meal tonight or tomorrow so you all can see it, too.

My Cruise Control is Working!

If you've read past entries of my blog you know that I am meticulous when it comes to my exercise and nutrition.  I track everything I eat, weigh myself everyday, log calories burned from exercise, and plot my workouts.  I do it because I feel like I otherwise lose my path.   My experience has been the moment I stopped doing any of those things, I'd suddenly be over-eating and under-exercising and in no time flat my weight was creeping back up again.

But the truth is, that's not the way I want to live.  As far as I'm concerned I've signed up to be healthy for life, and I don't want a life of meticulous calorie counting and weight plotting.  It would feel restraining, and contrived.  My goal has always been to get to a place where a healthy lifestyle just comes naturally, and I think I may have finally reached a place where its working!

I haven't counted calories for several weeks now.  Which isn't to say I'm not reading nutrition labels or thinking about it at all.  No, instead of entering every little speck of food I eat into my phone to keep a running sum, I just keep a very rough estimate in my head.  Its not precise, but it keeps me in the ballpark.  I've tried to do this before and it didn't work.  The mere fact that I wasn't counting exactly would somehow become a license to sneak a snack.  Or two.  Or three.  And so my problem develops and I go back to counting.

I think what is making this time different is the amount of vegetables I'm eating.  See, my problem is that I like to eat.  Even when I'm not hungry, sometimes I just want to munch on something.  But vegetables are so low calorie that I can eat tons - and fulfill the urge to eat a lot - without blowing my waistline. I've never eaten as many vegetables as I do now.  Not only am I benefiting from their low calories, but I also get to reap the benefit of their dense nutrients.  Its a win-win.

But the way I really know that I'm succeeding in this world where I don't count calories is that I've been able to fit in the junk on special occasions and not let it derail me.  Take this past weekend.  I went to a very fun and beautiful wedding where I drank loads of wine.  Loads being 5-6 glasses.  Surprisingly, I wasn't tanked, but I got very tipsy, and I'm sure I consumed half a day's calories just in the wine alone.  The next morning, I somehow drug myself out of bed at 6AM and hauled my daughter out for an early morning Easter egg hunt.  We were meeting up with my parents, and it seemed like a special occasion, so I picked up Dunkin Donuts on the way there.  Upon arrival I enjoyed 1/2 of a glazed donut, 1/2 of a double chocolate donut, and some super delicious cheesy eggs my dad made.  And yet, despite these indulgences,  I was barely impacted.  Why?  Because everything else I'd eaten that week was healthy.

It really is true, what you read: if you can make your diet 90% good, then 10% bad isn't going to take you down.  This was demonstrated when I weighed myself on Sunday.  Truth be told, when I stopped counting calories and stopped putting so much meticulous attention into every facet of my health, I also stopped weighing myself everyday.  I just sort of forgot (another place I want to be - not caring so damn much about the scale!)  I was astonished, elated, flattered to find myself at an ultra-new low: 133.4 pounds.

133 - that's ridiculous.  And amazing!  Of course, its not all about the number.  I'm not out to lose weight to the end of time here.  But it is indicative of the overall trend - I have more energy, I see unhealthy pudge disappearing, and I feel strong as muscle replaces fat.  My real goal is to be active and eat nutritiously, and if weight loss is the by-product of that then I will be more than happy to celebrate!

I hope I can keep this up.  Truly, this is a place I've always wanted to be but have never achieved.  I kind of have a "too-good-to-be-true" feeling about it - like it'll derail at any moment.  But I'm also feeling motivated by it!  There's nothing like seeing (and feeling!) your success to make you want to keep it up.

Personal Conviction, Corporate Change

I saw this article last night and thought I'd post it as follow-up for those of you who read my post on lean finely textured beef.  CBS News is reporting that Beef Products Inc, who I researched, quoted, and talked about in my article, is suspending its operations at three of its four plants.  That's a huge drawback in production of LFTB, but is also not surprising given the number of restaurants and grocers who have said they will stop purchasing these trimmings.

Click Here to read the Article

I, personally, have never advocated taking "bad foods" out of our supply chain (whether its LFTB or high fructose corn syrup or trans fats or whatever).  We live in America which is the land of freedom and choice.  And just as we give Americans the right to choose to harm themselves through other negative habits (such as smoking cigarettes or excessive gambling), they have the right to choose to harm themselves through bad diet.  I'm not here to tell people how they should eat.  I'm only here to advocate the benefits of making the healthy and mindful choice.  I'm also here to advocate for giving consumers the education and information they need to make informed choices (if they care to do so), and for giving our children the education and experience they will need when they, someday, start making these decisions for themselves.

That being said, I love any progress that makes it easier for me and others to eat better.  Its amazing to see the power of consumer demand.  If Americans collectively decide that they are not going to purchase a product like LFTB anymore, and the economics become tilted in a way where companies stop producing the product because its no longer profitable, then that only makes me happy.  I am happy for any change that makes the population as a whole healthier, particularly when the change was ignited by the population itself.

For me, personally, its a great manifestation of a quote that means more and more to me everyday.  Mahatama Gandhi said, "Be the change you want to see in the world."  In situations where we may feel powerless as one single individual to impart change upon a behemoth, complex system, focus on the one thing you do control: yourself.  If enough people live according to their own principles, exacting change only upon their own actions, their individual commitments contribute to a group collective, and suddenly all those single individuals who felt so powerless become the change.  They become the revolution.

Revolution in terms of our health, including the way we eat, has been on my mind a lot lately.  In particular, what that word means and why I keep seeing it used to describe the crusade to improve our nation's diet and lifestyle.  Its given me this idea that I've been kicking around the past few days, about a change I want to make...

...but since its midnight and I'm once again late to bed, I'll have to tell you about revolution in a future post.  Be on the lookout, and goodnight.

Accidental Vegetarian

An interesting thing occurred to me towards the end of last week.  I was thinking back on my week, thinking about what my meals had been and whether I was doing good (no doubt I was determining if I'd eaten anything bad yet so I could tell if there was still room for a splurge meal of some kind).  As I was reflecting I suddenly realized that I had only had three meals the whole week that had meat in them.  And that's kind of unheard of for me.

I have always built my meals like this: pick a meat (main dish), pick a side (vegetable), pick another side (anything).  Meat for protein, vegetables for nutrients, and a free side for bread or fruit or veggies or sometimes nothing.  However, as part of my effort to eat better, I'd been trying to look for more opportunities to eat vegetables, and when I did eat them I was trying to increase my portion size.  In fact, while I was still building my meals around a meat main course, I was trying to make my vegetables twice the size of the meat.  I was also challenging myself to try to get protein from other sources - mostly beans since I already eat a lot of dairy.

My conscious effort towards vegetables got amplified when I recently watched a documentary titled Forks Over Knives.  It was a great documentary - right up there with the more popular Food Inc.  Forks Over Knives explores our relationship with meat and its impact on our health.  Their argument is that many of the diseases that are associated with this country's obesity crisis (such as diabetes, heart disease, and even a couple of types of cancers) can be prevented or reversed by foregoing all animal products and eating a diet of whole food (grains, fruits, vegetables, legumes, etc).  The documentary pours through numerous studies and interviews several experts who attest to this correlation.  They examine some fascinating studies of populations where meat is either not consumed or was removed for a period of time, and show how simultaneously disease rates plummeted.

It really got me thinking - not as much about the benefit of removing animal products from our diet but more about the benefit of adding in whole foods.  And so with this information I felt compelled to add vegetables, beans, and nuts into my diet even more.

Then something happened without me even realizing.  I stopped choosing to eat vegetables because I was trying to be nutritious and I started eating vegetables because it sounded appetizing.  In reflecting back on my week's diet I realized I'd been doing this a lot.  Lentil soup and salad.  Caprese paninis.  Greek salads.  And then, the meal that really brought it home for me and actually sparked this realization.  My family was ordering sandwiches and none of the meat varieties I usually get sounded good.  What was sounding good?  A veggie wrap.

My vegetable wrap.

It was spinach, portabello mushroom, roasted red peppers, tomato, onion, fat free cream cheese, and low fat spicy mayo - all wrapped in a whole grain spinach wrap.  That sounded better to me than a turkey sandwich.  I got it and a side salad and had a delicious meal of all veggies and one wrap, a sensible 330 calorie lunch and you know what - I was so full.  I ate the wrap and then dug into my salad and somewhere towards the bottom of the bowl I was having trouble finishing it because I full.  I never knew that could happen on vegetables alone.

This is so mind blowing folks.  This seriously takes my transformation from fast food junkie to health conscious eater to a whole new dimension.  I was not trying to enjoy a vegetarian diet, it just sort of happened.  And somewhere along the way I've found myself preferring it at least half the time.

Now this does not mean that I am disavowing meat.  I don't think I could ever scorn filet mignon from my life.  Or bacon.  Or chicken.  Or burgers.  Not happening.  I still heart meat.  I am just realizing that I can still like it in smaller portions, with lesser frequency.

And I think that's a great thing.