This used to be a simple question to answer.
The eating program I am following right now permits me to eat as much meat as I want, only as much vegetables as I have meat, and a bit of cheese for flavoring. To a lot of people that sounds pretty restrictive, and in some ways it is. Anything fried is right out, with the exception of chicken wings, because most fried things are either breaded or a starch. Baking takes attention, because I can't use breading on anything, so I do a lot of things with sauces. Casseroles are odd without their starch components. There aren't a lot of "convenience" foods available that don't include some form of breading, so I don't have a lot of ready to cook items in the freezer.
See what's happening here? I'm being forced to cook mostly fresh foods. I'm being manipulated into planning my meals. I'm either going to go out to eat WAY more than I should, or I'm going to exercise my brain and figure out how to get a decent meal at home in under 30 minutes that doesn't involve the word BURGER.
It's not a complaint, exactly. It's a realization that I've spent far too much of my life relying on those prepackaged foods, those boxes and cans and plastic bags that seem to live forever in my pantry and freezer.
I posted a while back about how much crap/food I removed from the pantry when I did my big purge back in August. I used to think I had about 2 or 3 months worth of "food" in the house, when all I really had was a metric ton of sugar and starch. Now I look in the half-empty pantry, and then in my freezer, and realize as long as I can figure out what to do with cans of tomato sauce and chicken breasts or tilapia, I can eat for a couple of months. Well, I will have to thaw out a turkey and a chicken at some point, but the real point is there IS food in the house. It just takes planning to make it a meal.
What's for dinner tonight? I'm trying a Beef "Enchilada" casserole, substituting whole kernel corn for the corn tortillas, and layering it a bit like Shepherd's pie. (I am allowed to eat corn, but only on the cob or taken off the cob.) I'm not sure how this is going to come out, but if it works I'll post it. I know the sauce has some flour in it (after all, I made it) but there are carbs and sugars in other sauces and it would have been the same if I'd bought a can of it, except the can would have been full of other things I don't want.
(After Dinner Note: The casserole was tasty, but there was too much sauce. It came out more like a baked chili. Eric and I both agree it needed a starch component, such as rice or pasta, to really fill it out. Less sauce next time.)
A journal of my trip from self-loathing to self-acceptance, interspersed with random acts of wierdness.
A little about this blog
I wasn't born fat. I didn't even live most of my childhood as a fat kid. It wasn't until I started going through puberty that I started putting on weight, and it really wasn't until I got into college that I started packing it on. Fat certainly doesn't happen overnight, and it doesn't go away overnight, either. I'm on a journey to accept myself for who I am, accept my body and its' flaws, and move toward becoming a healthier person overall.
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