Rule Number One: There Are No Rules

Rules to Eating Healthy and Losing Weight?!?

Well... we don't think of them as "rules"... more like "guidelines" really. Here's a quick look at our approach to building a healthy lifestyle and getting ourselves back to a decent weight.

Our approach is sort of a combination of things we learned from the Nutrisystem style of eating, combined with a little bit of Alton Brown's "four lists" from a recent Good Eats episode.

Our basic things to remember is that you don't have to stop eating out. It's all part of the balancing act. We usually eat in because it's cheaper and we have more control of what goes into our food, but when we eat out, no matter where we go, there's almost always something that can be found on a menu that won't kill our entire month! :)

The stuff we've gleaned from Nutrisystem are:
-MOST Important Thing: Eat breakfast. Every day. Whole grain, dairy, protein, fruit.
-Salads are great to eat before lunch and dinner, and help fill you up. Watch the dressings, and we lean toward non-fat Italian or Catalina/French style rather than creamy dressings.
-For lunch and dinner, vegetables should be in higher quantity than meat.
-Fiber is what keeps you full. An eating plan high in fiber leaves you more satisfied.

Common breakfast items for us are whole grain bagels, lean ham or turkey sandwich meat, egg substitute, and nonfat yogurt. Sometimes we rock a little fat-free cream cheese and strawberry preserves on our bagel. Lunches are usually a healthy microwaveable soup, a couple of large carrots, sugar free gelatin, an apple or orange, and either a serving of pretzels or a 100-calorie snack pack. Dinner is usually a frozen healthy meal, and a nice serving of a vegetable like broccoli, brussels sprouts, or spinach. For dessert, we lean toward chocolate fiber-type bars, sugar free pudding, or gelatin. A good snack item we used to do daily was a trail mix of things like almonds, pretzels, raisins, etc. And of course, water, water, water.

Recently, we watched Alton Brown's new philosophy on Good Eats, involving "four lists". From this, we've decided that we're going to start trying to incorporate these new ideas:
-Eat one or two pieces of fruit each day, typically an apple or orange.
-Eat at least one whole grain item each day.
-Leafy greens, every day. Spinach or brussels sprouts are our faves.
-We will have a small handful of nuts every day, usually almonds.
-Carrots every day, usually at lunch, which are great to make you feel full.
-Green tea, every day. We brew our own and sweeten with Splenda.
-Try to incorporate oily fish like salmon or sardines at least 2-3 times per week.
-Sweet potatoes, at least thrice a week. Mmm... I love sweet potatoes.
-Limit red meat, and any pasta above and beyond what's in our frozen meals.
-No fast food, no soda.

That's about the gist of it. We're excited to see how these new ideas may work!

--Jay