Phoenyx is keeping it real!

It's been a month and a half and I've gained a stone (oops!) but finally I've found my mojo! It's meant a radical change. I'm no longer "dieting", I'm eating healthily. I know it's a cliche, but dieting in the traditional sense just wasn't working for me at the mo - I seem to have got hung up on rules, and ended up in an insane binge / diet cycle, with the binges getting larger and more frequent. So no more.

I was particularly inspired by the 100 days of real food blog, where the only food they've really cut out long term is processed food. I'm not going all the way (yet) as I'm more 80/20 (still have one coffee a day with sugar in, for example), but I may do! I'm also cutting down on the amount of meat I eat, mainly because it's either from an unknown (ie factory farmed) source or it's hugely expensive.

So the rules I'm following most of the time are:
- no processed food (hard to define in this day and age, but I'm going for only food with ingredients my gran would understand!)
- mainly plant based diet, including animal products only when I know their provenance (eggs from chickens in the garden get the thumbs up)
- limited natural sweeteners only
- eat when I'm hungry
- monthly weighing (now that's going to be tough!)

And I'm just going to see what happens. I'm going to post my menus on here to see how it all evolves!

Day 1:

late night at work

8am 2 x cranks wholemeal bread, almond butter, pear
4pm homemade lentil and butternut squash Dahl with brown rice
6pm 1 slice cranks wholemeal bread, hummus, carrot sticks
9pm pear, handful of almonds
through the day: black coffee, herbal tea

f&v count: 6

Day 2

8am 1 slice wholemeal toast, hummus, boiled egg, black coffee with 1 tsp sugar
1pm 2 boiled eggs, cucumber sticks, hummus
4pm 2 satsumas, handful of almonds
6.30pm brown rice pasta, lentil dahl
7.30pm small handful almonds, grapes
9pm 1 slice wholemeal toast, hummus, chopped tomato

feeling v snacky this evening, but stuck to the plan. I reckon it'll take a few days to adjust to not pigging out on chocolate of an evening, and what I've eaten must be better than that! Trying to keep my portion sizes down too, even if it means eating more regularly.

Fruit and veg count for today (not counting pulses!) 7... Not bad.