My Typical Day

A few people have been asking what a "typical" day looks like for me, so I've decided to come up with an average day. What I eat, what I do for exercise and some of the boring mundane things in between! I also have to admit that I'm a grazer (which I honestly think is healthier than eating three giant meals!!). One essential that I keep with my constantly is my water bottle. I basically drink only water throughout the day, with the exception of sometimes a decaf coffee (with a touch of milk) or herbal tea (plain) for breakfast. Water is super super important for your body! I usually have 3 or more litres a day!


Breakfast: Although I know its the most important meal of the day, I've really never been much of a breakfast person. I feel nauseous if I put anything other than water into me until I've been awake for a few hours.
Anyways this is what I often eat for breakfast

• A smoothie (check out my post on smoothies here) 
• Yogourt with granola 
• 1 fat free or law fat yogourt cup with a large handful of sugar-free granola or oats
• Banana with peanut butter
• Oatmeal with berries and honey
• Cereal with skim milk (I really like Cheerios, Mueslix, Special K, Oat Squares...)
• Water

Lunch: Lunch usually happens at school for me, and since I am horrible at either getting up early enough to pack my lunch, or being efficient enough to pack my lunch the night before, its often a bit random. What we do though is ensure that we have lots of healthy foods and snacks at home so I'm not tempted to grab a bag of chips or something equally unhealthy. Overall we try to keep our house free of "unhealthy" foods, so there really are only good options!

• A sandwich of some sort, usually on pita 
• meat, lettuce, veggies, mustard & sometimes cheese
• egg or tuna salad made with mustard or vinegarette dressing instead of mayo
• all natural PB with homemade jam or local honey
• A piece of fruit
• apples, bananas, berries, peaches, nectarines, bananas...
• Carrot or celery sticks
• A "treat" like healthy homemade muffins, homemade granola, 100% fruit bars, 100% fruit snacks 
• Water

Supper: Supper is one of my favourite meals of the day. My husband and I love cooking together, so we often get creative and experiment with food ideas! The best part is trying to come up with healthy and nutritious meals together!

For supper we try to keep at least half of our plates as veggies. To clarify this, we count potato and corn as starches, so they don't count. A typical plate is 1/2 veggies, 1/4 - 1/3 protein and the rest a starch. 

• Meats: we like to keep this varied, but we never fry things in oil, we usually bake or broil or "fry" in chicken or vegetable stock. We make the majority of our sauces from scratch, and try to use store bought and pre-made seasonings as little as possible. 
• Chicken breast
• Pork loin
• Steak
• BBQ Ribs 
• Roast
  
• Vegetables: we like to vary this, otherwise it gets boring, and there are so many to choose from! We do use a lot of frozen vegetables in the winter especially (as we can't exactly harvest our own under 3 feet of snow!)
• Peas
• Green beans
• Spinach
• Broccoli
• Cauliflower
• Carrots
• Asparagus
• Zucchini
• Squash
• Yams
  
• Starch: We like to vary this as well, and try to keep our starches healthy by limiting the oil & butter that we put into them! I usually limit how much starch I put on my plate, and never let it go over 1/2 cup (with the exception of when we cook pasta, I usually have about 1c cooked)  I almost never eat potato since I'm not a huge fan, and prefer to put more complex starches like Quinoa or brown rice on my place. 
• Corn
• Baked or mashed potato
• Brown or wild rice
• Quinoa
• Couscous
• Lentils
• Beans (like chickpeas, red beans, kidney beans etc)
• Whole wheat pasta

Snacks: I love to snack. I usually start eating lunch as soon as I have eaten my drawn out breakfast, and make that continue until I start cooking supper. This doesn't mean that I eat 17 bowls of cereal for breakfast or 9 sandwiches for lunch, it just means that I eat a small bit at a time. So my snacks often consist of my lunch, and I really try to keep things healthy! I like things that I can just snack on the best, and actually hate sitting down for lunch or breakfast throughout the day.

• yogourt
• pita or melba toast with peanut butter 
• celery/carrot sticks
• cheese &  meat with melba toast
• leftovers from last night's delicious supper

Sweets: I have a huge sweet tooth, and cannot resist dessert. My solution is to have a lot of healthier options for dessert at home. I usually have fat-free frozen yogourt in the freezer, that way if I want a sweet dessert, I can reach for that rather than fill a bowl with ice cream. I also keep a lot of home baked healthy treats around (I often make larger batches and freeze them). That way I can feed the sweet craving, but still keep my health in check! That being said, I do indulge in some dark chocolate and wine every now and then. I still enjoy some bad things every now and then! 

More recipes to come!!


-J