Day 12 | Clean Eating Challenge

Today was a fun-filled day of clean eats! Doesn’t it just feel great when you know you are filling your body with food that is good for you, helps you have energy, think clearly, and feel… full, but not too full?! Yesterday was a “not hungry” day. Today was a “hungry” day for sure. I think that is a big part of getting to that place where you have a healthy relationship with food – learning to listen to your body and your hunger. To eat when you are actually hungry and when you aren’t hungry, you don’t eat just to eat.

We woke up semi-early today, 6 AM and hit the gym for a killer workout, thank you Miss Valerie, which by the way, I am hoping to get an Action Hero Babe follow-up video soon with my results from the program. Walked home from the gym… quickly, since it’s was pouring this morning… and made a hot bowl of yummy eats.

Breakfast

Today was one of my faaaavorite days. We were down to scrapings in the sunflower seed butter jar, so you know what that means – empty nut butter jar oats! This one had my name written all over it.

Last night, I made the steel cut oats (see how to make here) and made a similar version to yesterday’s, only I topped it with kiwi, and put the whole 1/2 banana in as the oats were cooking.

• 1/4 cup (40g) steel cut oats
• 1/2-3/4 cup water
• 1/2 banana
• 1/2 tsp cinnamon
• 1 tsp stevia
• 1/4 cup cottage cheese
• 1/2 kiwi

Tip: I leave the pinch of salt out when I add cottage cheese, because most cottage cheese brands have a lot of sodium, so it doesn’t need the extra pinch.

Just so you know, I actually double the above ingredients when I make it, since I am making it for Ryan and me. Then I usually give him more toppings like nuts, shredded oat cereal, bigger scoop of nut butter, things like that to give him more calories.

So good. Since I read the book, The End of Overeating, I realize it’s good because of the sugar, fat, salt combo of the banana and a little sugar cane in the sunflower nut butter, plus the fat from the nut butter and the cottage cheese, plus the salt in the nut butter and the cottage cheese.

Also had a mug of French Toast flavored coffee (with vanilla stevia and Organic Pastures raw whole milk) not pictured because I thought the oats looked so cool on their own.

Snack

I debated on whether or not to do a smoothie or yogurt and fruit, and I decided on Greek yogurt and the last pear, because the pear was calling to me. Delish.

Lunch

For lunch I had half a sandwich, made with ezekiel bread, low-sodium no-nitrate pastrami, 1/2 oz of muenster, tiny little bit of low-fat mayo (have half a jar in the frig I want to use up), and spinach. I spritzed the outside of the bread with a little cooking spray, and heated it in a pan with the meat and cheese, then added the mayo and spinach after it was done.

I don’t know why, but it looks like the sandwich’s tongue is hanging out in this bottom pic. LOL.

On the side, I had a baby honeycrisp apple with about a tbsp total of almond butter. Kinda looks bigger than it actually was.

Dinner

When Ryan got home, he was snacking on a few south of the border flavored pistachios and I had a small handful as we chatted.

Then we got working on dinner. We had leftovers of the thinly sliced beef sirloin, so we decided to have that with red peppers and mushrooms, over roasted acorn squash.

First, I got the acorn squash roasting in the oven the same way I did on Day 9. Then I added about 1-1/2 chopped small red peppers and about 10 crimini mushrooms, also chopped, to a saute pan with a spray of olive oil. I hit that with a little salt to get the peppers to release their water.

After the peppers had softened, I added the left over sirloin, with about 1/4 cup of low-sodium beef broth and a sprinkle of this seasoning mix that a friend gave us.

To be totally honest, I’m not sure what is in it. I am guessing salt, pepper, garlic powder, onion powder, rosemary… he gets it in bulk from some special place. It’s really good so he gave us a baggie to take home to cook with. It’s like he’s our spice dealer or something.

Then I turned it down to low, to simmer until the squash was done.

When the squash was done, I peel the skin and those little vein/strands off. Ryan prefers to use the scoop method instead, and scoop the squash out rather than peel.

I had about 3/4 of one of the acorn halves, plus maybe 4 oz of sirloin.

This was so yummy. Oh yeah, and I did add a tincy sliver of real butter, to the squash before I added the sirloin mixture.

An hour or so later, as we watched this video from Tim Ferriss and Kevin Rose (great top 3 travel spot recommendations), we had the vanilla plus almond butter version of dessert.

This weekend I am hoping to work on a new dessert recipe that I’ve had sitting here on my desk. Yesterday I was thinking, hmm maybe I need to spice up these food journals with things that would make it more exciting. Then I decided, no… they want to see how I eat, so I am going to show them how I eat. This is me.

We were going to go out tonight, but then changed plans, which is good for me because staying home means less temptation to eat non-clean food and/or have alcohol. Happy Friday everyone!

Check out more from my Countdown to Christmas with 25 Days of Clean Eating Challenge.