Food Morphing

This has been such an amazing journey. I've mentioned before that when I was 246 pounds when I woke up in the morning, I HAD TO EAT!! I was grumpy and didn't want to communicate, until I could eat. Breakfast was my comfort food place. I loved a super big (like 7) stack of freshly homemade pancakes with butter and syrup. My mouth is watering as I type! Oh, how I loved my pancakes. I also would have loved to take a nap about an hour after consuming that delight, though. Well, I was thinking about writing more about the specifics of what I eat in a day and it struck me as I was going through in my mind what this day has entailed what a morphing my mind has taken. Here's what made that evident, I had cauliflower curry and quinoa for breakfast 2 hours after waking up! I would have laughed you out of here if you would have said I'd be eating cauliflower for BREAKFAST!

Here's the skinny on how my day went, in the food department. I had a banana about 10 minutes after I woke up because I was going on a run and my time has been slipping, so I thought instead of going on an empty stomach as I have been, that I'd try a little of natures sugar to see if that helps. Oh, Man! It did. My time was 1-1/2 minutes faster and I felt sooo much more energy. Here's the rundown, I woke up at 6:30am , had the banana at 6:40, ran from 7-7:35, then had the curry at 8:30am. On my running days (which are every other day) I serve my husband and myself a beet, cucumber, ginger, carrot, kale juice after my run. I drink it as I'm making my family's breakfasts so that it will get in my body before I dump other food into my digestive system. So all that to say, what a change in breakfast from before, not just time and food but my mindset! I'm not obsessive about my food. I don't get crazy when I haven't eaten. It's all just normal and good now.

It astounds me now how obsessed with food I was. Now, I'm not saying that for the first four months on Eat to Live I wasn't obsessed, I was. It is a transition time to get used to buying a lot of food that might go bad in a couple of days. I felt like I was always shopping and preparing. I've tamed that down a lot now. But please know that it takes a while for this to become normal. Plus, it's hard to mentally be ok that you aren't hungry after 3 hours. I had to get used to what my body needed and how it was going to tell me it was hungry. Got off track....lunch today was a leftover veggie 'stir-fry' in a tortilla. I made it a couple of days ago with red pepper, mushrooms, onions, garlic and a spinach salad with a sun-dried tomato dressing that I made this morning. I had watermelon for a sweet ending.

Sun-dried Tomato Dressing for Nutritarians
1 cup raw cashews
1 cup water
2-3 cloves, peeled garlic
about 1/2 cup dried sun-dried tomatoes and 1/2 cup soaking liquid
1 tsp basil

Soak the sun-dried tomatoes in boiling water for about 15 minutes. While those soak, blend the cashews and  the 1 cup water for about 1 minute in a Vitamix or other high-powered blender. (If you don't have one, just blend on super high speed to achieve a creamy consistency. Add the sun-dried tomatoes with the hot water and the basil and blend until creamy. Refrigerate until ready to serve and keep in fridge for up to a week.

Dinner was leftover red beans and rice stuffed collard greens. I put my homemade (homegrown) spaghetti sauce on top, so delicious! That was also my large salad meal. My family had spaghetti with meat sauce, so my collards look very similar and I served a salad too. After eating huge salads for 7 months, you'd think I would be sick of them, but I'm not. Changing dressing every 5 days helps. I start with a dinner size plate and cover it in green leaf lettuce, spinach and sometimes finely chopped kale. Then chopped peppers, tomatoes, radishes, cucumber 1/4 avocado and sometimes onions go on next. Beans are the next layer. Whatever fabulous dressing is the next step and last is sunflower seeds. So delicious. I look forward to it each day.

As you can see, I eat a lot of leftovers. I have 4 different dishes in my fridge that I made within the last week and have been eating off of them since. Did you know you can also pre-make quinoa and keep it in the fridge. I have yet to have too much, but if I did, I'm sure you can freeze it too.

Let me know if you end up making any of these and what you think and what you tweaked :)