When it comes to the food I eat I find myself constantly facing the ebb and flow of healthy vs desirable. Going ‘cold turkey’ is not as simple as making it through your shopping list without deviating. I don’t live in a world of one: not at my house, at work, or with friends and family. It seems to be an obstacle that keeps resurfacing over and over again. I’ll go 2 days and not slip up once (proud moment for me) and then: WHAM! Catered office meeting, in-laws for supper, friend’s birthday, hormonal cravings, hubby wants take-out… how do you compete with all this? How do you take part without caving on your lifestyle?
Curb upsets to your healthy lifestyle with these tactics:
-Lunch Meeting? I always plan my week’s worth of ‘work food’ on the weekend, prior to our grocery shopping trip. I divide and pack as much as I can in an effort to free up time during the busy week when we’re running around. This means that my days are so organized that a lunch meeting, surprise or not, really gets in the way! Sometimes it’s as easy as eating before the meeting and avoiding the catering order or bringing my lunch with me and eating what I brought. Though sometimes lunch meetings find us leaving the office and I face the dilemma of having to skip my packed lunch, which I then won’t be able to fit into my very well planned week, and blindly indulging into a meal of who knows how many nutrient lacking calories. In this case I just have to do my best, pick the healthiest option I can find and eat a smaller portion.
-Lunch Meeting? I always plan my week’s worth of ‘work food’ on the weekend, prior to our grocery shopping trip. I divide and pack as much as I can in an effort to free up time during the busy week when we’re running around. This means that my days are so organized that a lunch meeting, surprise or not, really gets in the way! Sometimes it’s as easy as eating before the meeting and avoiding the catering order or bringing my lunch with me and eating what I brought. Though sometimes lunch meetings find us leaving the office and I face the dilemma of having to skip my packed lunch, which I then won’t be able to fit into my very well planned week, and blindly indulging into a meal of who knows how many nutrient lacking calories. In this case I just have to do my best, pick the healthiest option I can find and eat a smaller portion.
-Dinner party? Bring a healthy dish as a contribution to the meal. You can try a few tastes of the meal that’s been prepared or maybe you’ll luck out and it’ll be nutrient dense! Worse case scenario you can eat mostly what you’ve brought. The downside is that you risk offending your host how’s slaved away making the meal and was anticipating your enjoyment. I recommend being clear to your host prior to the dinner that you have dietary concerns so that they don’t feel ambushed or offended.
-Eating out? Find the out the restaurant a couple days prior (or pick the location if you can) and put the ground work in to choosing the healthiest options. Many places offer vegan/vegetarian alternatives which tend to be the healthiest options (e.g., garden salad, plain rice and steamed veggies, etc.) and one sign of a good chef is their versatility in the kitchen and their ability to whip something up to cater to any diet.
Jonathan Safran Foer, put it best in his book Eating Animals when he talked about the social food rituals, such as Thanksgiving, that find us going against our own nutritional, and sometimes ethical, beliefs. Should others cave to my healthier choices as it is what’s best for them? Why does it always feel that respecting the dietary preferences of others always leaves me doing the compromising? I do love my lifestyle (when I’m on track) but on the other hand I want other’s admiration, their compliments… I want others to enjoy my cooking! So while our grocery shopping lists these days are almost entirely: fresh produce, grains, beans and lentils (essential a plant based diet). I still find myself allowing the occasional refined or nutrient depleted food to slip into the cart as hormones and hubby’s dietary preferences sometimes get the better of me!
Right now I could walk you through my pantry and point all the poorly nutritional food that we’ve wasted our money on in the past. For example I have instant oatmeal in the cupboard right now, from a moment of weakness when I chose convenience over nutrition. In my healthy life style ‘instant’ plays no part but I don’t want to just throw it away and by holding on to it and refusing to eat it I’m saying “I’ll cave eventually and then I’ll eat it.” So to get over this I’m taking the instant oatmeal and adding a package or two at a time to a pot of the healthiest oatmeal I can make full of dried fruit and nuts and the best quality of oats. I know that this isn’t the best thing for my healthy but I’m a big believer in good, better, best and in the crimpling effects that stress on your health (like the stress of throwing away food that you spent a lot of money on).
A couple ways to use up the nutrient lacking foods in your pantry
(and gain some room for the nutrient dense foods!):
(and gain some room for the nutrient dense foods!):
-Short and sweet – Want to use up a lot of food in a hurry but don’t think your diet can afford the hit? Use up white flour and sugar by baking yummy sweets or refined noodles and canned tomato sauce on some pasta. Then spread the love to all your friends, family, and co-workers; you can take it to a party, host your own, or simply pass it around at work. Either way they’ll enjoy the tasty treat, be thankful, and help shoulder the burden of using up your least healthy foods.
-Slow and steady – Want to use up the nutrient lacking food in your house with the least amount of impact on your health? Try slipping a little bit into your cooking once every so often. Just like with the instant oatmeal, try adding a little of the refined white rice into your wild rice, a little at a time lessens the effect on your nutrition.
