Practice What You Preach

While I am counseling a patient, sometimes they ask me what I had today for lunch or breakfast. Honestly, I'd love to say I'm healthy ALL the time, but *gasp* I don't think anyone is perfect.  So I try to follow a similar diet that I give to my patients, encouraging them to combine healthy sweetness from fruits with their meals to reduce the craving for desserts afterwards. Also, I am a horrible liar, so if I've eaten an unhealthy meal, I'll never be able to keep it a secret if a patient asks.  Therefore, to keep myself and my clients healthy, I encourage people to follow these three simple rules:

1. Include carbs, protein and nonstarchy vegetables with every meal. Start with filling one 9 or 10-inch plate with around half vegetables, then after you've already set the boundaries of how much food you can put on your plate, fill the other half with food: protein and carbohydrate.
2. Eat the majority of your carbohydrates from whole grains-- high fiber bread, oats, whole wheat pasta and tortillas, bulghur, buckwheat, millet or brown rice. If you limit carbs to 1/4 of the plate, this turns out to be around 2/3 to 1 cup.
3. Eat your proteins from primarily vegetarian sources (beans, lentils, nuts, seeds, or nut butters) or low fat animal meats (chicken, turkey, lean beef, bison, shrimp or fish). If you limit your proteins to 1/4 of the plate, this turns out to be around 3-4 oz, or around 24-32g protein. This is adequate for the majority of the population if it is done twice or three times daily (at lunch & dinner is most common).
4. Usually I snack on cheese and fruit or other dairy throuout the day, so adding it on the side of the meal becomes less necessary, and just added carbs.

So to help all those out there to have healthy diets, and to prove to myself and others that I actually try to follow my own advice, I provide you this account of my meals and snacks that I have been working on for a couple weeks now.  I've taken pictures of all my meals for the last week, no lies. Here, you'll see examples of healthy options, and less healthy ones, plus links to some of my recipes, showing how you can easily balance your meals with lean protein, high fiber, and plenty of vegetables, all in appropriate portions. Plus I'll give you some deliciously healthy snack options in further posts.

For breakfast, I usually eat a high fiber cereal around 4-6 days a week, or a toasted sandwich once a week.  The usual breakfast: 2/3 cup "Trader Joe's High Fiber Cereal," with 80 calories, 9gm fiber, and 23gm total carbs, added to that some ground flax seeds that I bought in a huge bag from costco (for my heart health), and some 2% milk. Altogether, adding up to about 320 calories. Another nice option for cereal is Special K, the "protein plus" variety.

Day 4 Breakfast-- I'm out of cereal! So here goes option two: My favorite bread is by Orowheat, and it is the "Double Fiber" version.  My sandwich contains spinach, a couple slices of tomato and a lite swiss cheese from the brand Jarlsberg (I often use lowfat mozzarella instead, but the bread and cheese I get from Costco, so they are quite cheap!). I drizzled 1/4 cup of egg whites over the top slice of bread and let it slowly absorb. I baked my sandwich on a heat-safe plate in the oven for about 10 minutes at 375 degrees.
236 calories, 34g carbohydrate, with only 26g net carbs, as well as 16g protein, and 4 g fat.

And here are my lunches. I got my portioned lunch containers in a 4-pack of different colors for $14 from easylunchboxes.com.

(Left)Braised lamb shank cooked with vegetables and potato, and a side of roasted beets. As you can see, half of my dinner plate was assorted vegetables-- some are a little higher in carbohydrate, but that's what I had available. Despite my goal for lean meats, I could not pass up that lamb, and the potatoes also which were lower fiber than recommended. Again, I'm not perfect. But at least I achieved one rule out of three (vegetables).
(Right) For lunch the next day I placed leftover lamb and starchy veggies and potatoes from the previous night's dinner in one half of my box, and in the other half a spinach salad seasoned with balsamic vinegar and some diced beets.

Searching through the fridge for leftover meat or protein, I finally settled for chopped tofu for 1/4 plate my protein,  a little steamed brown rice for my 1/4 plate whole grains, and the other 1/2 plate from a mix between broccoletti (a variety of broccoli), some tomato, and a roasted beet. I felt the meal seemed quite boring, so I added chili paste and tried to make my lunch into a happy face. :-) Sometimes, we work with what we've got!

1/4 steamed brown rice, 1/4c shredded boiled chicken, and 1/2 of that lunch was from vegetables seasoned with a little blueberries, balsamic vinegar, black pepper and olive oil. 

Protein is usually a problem for me to find something good, and now I need to go to the store, so my lunch consisted of mostly scraps I found in the refrigerator, freezer, and cupboard. So this morning I boiled some raw chicken tenders with a variety of my favorite spices, and cooked some quinoa with cranberries. The cooking process took around 20 minutes total for both items. and on the side, half of my plate was from chopped tomatoes and cucumber, and a strange-looking bell pepper; at lunch I sprinkled everything with chili en polvo (the tajin brand). 

Leftover steak from last night's dinner, basmati rice, and in the other half of the plate, a spinach salad with  roasted bell peppers and 2 TB guacamole. 

Seriously, I think you've got the picture: healthy vegetables to cover half the plate first. Add healthy proteins and healthy grains. Now the balanced meal is in place. Don't try low carb, the body needs carbs. Focus only on keeping control, and trying as hard as possible to keep these three items on the plate in similar proportions at least at lunch and dinner. Once you get yourself accustomed to thinking about vegetables, the rest comes easily, and soon you will have your meals under great control. Then we can move to focusing on snacking habits. :-) Happy eating!