IrieDiva’s meal plan: It’s a lifestyle

A year from now you’ll wish you’d started today. Life begins at the end of your comfort zone.

A few of my favourite sayings. A lot of people have asked me how it is that I’ve managed to lose so much weight. Everybody wants to know what magic pill I’m on. I’ve tried a few, but none worked as well as changing my lifestyle. It didn’t happen overnight, the first time I really saw true results was some 4 months later. It takes commitment and it takes serious changes. A few small changes, maybe they’ll be big ones for you, but something has to change. There aren’t any shortcuts or magic pills. But it’s not as hard as you think it is, I am no goddess of willpower trust me. I just wanted it bad enough. You have to want it innately.

Christmas 2010

The above was on Christmas day. I remember putting on a dress to go downstairs for dinner. My husband came in the room and saw me in the dress and left. I came downstairs in this roomy black top and leggings instead. He asked me what happened to my dress. I told him the strap popped. But that wasn’t it. I was uncomfortable in the dress. It was too tight and my belly looked a hot mess. I’d grabbed for it because I wore it out a couple months before and I looked good enough so I thought it was a sure shot instead of having to go through my closet trying to find something cute and comfortable and depressing myself with everything that wasn’t fitting. You see how these things stay in our minds? He probably doesn’t even remember this conversation.

Christmas 2011

I hate this pic. I couldn’t continue like this. I tried to comfort myself saying that there was nothing wrong with being big, but I wasn’t happy with myself. I was never skinny as an adult, but I was never this big. This isn’t who I wanted to be. I finally wanted to do something about the way I looked bad enough to commit to one small thing. The one small thing brought on such a huge difference in me that it motivated me to do more and here I am today.

The one small thing was to simply have a green smoothie for breakfast each morning. I’ve written about it extensively here and here. Please, have a look as soooo many people ask me so often what it is that I’m doing to lose the weight. Where do I get my veggies? Here. These people deliver, making everything so easy for you.

I lost 4lbs this week. I indulged way too much over the holidays that I really thought I had put on back a whole lot of weight and lost my endurance and so I went really hard this week trying to detox and get ready for hitting my goals this year. I want to work on slimming my arms and losing my gut and I know that will be no easy task so here’s what I did:

New Years Day (Tuesday)

I made 60oz of green juice. After a night of NYE debauchery I wanted to start with a little detox to flush my system of toxins. It is the best hangover cure, trust me. I blended one whole clamshell of greens with fruits and drank that the entire day. In the evening I had some chicken with some sweet potato and finished off my juice before bed. Even though I was drinking all this juice, I forced myself to drink water as well. The water is what is gonna carry all those toxins out of your body that the green juice is releasing.

Wednesday

Green juice in the morning

Green tea mid-morning

Large Chicken soup for lunch, no dumplings.

I did Jillian Michaels 30 day shred DVD level 1 in the afternoon when I got home from work.

Cottage cheese with blueberries, strawberries, wheat germ, flaxseed meal and a drizzle of honey as a post workout snack.

Grilled chicken and brown rice for dinner with another cup of green tea. I headed out to emancipation park after that for a jog/walk. I incorporated a bit of HIIT into my routine. The track is 500m. I walked one lap, slow jogged 400m of the next lap and sprinted as fast as I could for the remaining 100m of that lap. Repeated this 3 times for a total of 6 laps and then power-walked 4 more laps to complete my 5k.

When I came home I had a handful of nuts.

Thursday

Green smoothie for breakfast.

Green tea mid morning

Grilled Chicken and brown rice again for lunch

I had the same cottage cheese snack when I got home, it was so good the day before. You can switch it up here though and have oatmeal or unsweetened greek yogurt with your fruits. Or simply just fruits. Another favourite combination for me to have here is apple or cucumber slices and hummus. Sounds weird but try it! We’re supposed to get at least 5 servings of fruit each day, I estimate that there’s 2 or 3 in my morning green smoothie so I try to have more in the afternoon. Just remember your flaxseed and wheat germ and get some chia seeds and goji berries from any health food store to add to these mixes as well. They are nutritional powerhouses. These can be expensive though so buy them when you can. Skip one time eating out and get them. Treat yourself to some good health every now and then.

Friday

I had an omelet with sausages and cheese. Cooked in coconut oil. I thought I should mention here that coconut oil is the only oil I use to cook with. Here’s why. Skipped my usual toast. Had some green tea.

Made a green juice that was so yummy even munchkin was sipping and she normally does not like the green ones. I make hers with blueberries or beetroot to change the colour and sweeten them. I’m not afraid of natural sweeteners in moderation, as long as she’s drinking that handful of greens.

It had mixed greens, kale and spinach with frozen mangoes and strawberries using freshly squeezed orange juice as the liquid. With ground flaxseed of course. It was so yummy it didn’t even need any honey or sweeteners because of the frozen mangoes.

I had a salad with grilled chicken later. Lots of grilled chicken right? I grilled 5 chicken breasts at the beginning of the week so that I wouldn’t have to worry about cooking this week. I just cut them up and threw them in my salads and with munchkin’s sides.

I tried my hand at making chicken burgers on my grill for dinner. Chopped onions, green peppers and different powdered seasonings mixed in with some chicken mince. I had an eggplant in my fridge as well so I sliced it thick, put olive oil and salt on it and threw it on the grill too. It became the buns for my chicken burgers. It was quite yummy, I’ll do that one again.

I got hungry again in the night and I had plans to be out much of the night so I made myself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

That’s it! I crumbled a leftover chicken burger into some potatoes mashed with cottage cheese and had that for breakfast this morning and I’m about to go and make a green smoothie as soon as I hit publish right now.

This coming week will be filled with more grilled chicken lunches with steamed carrots and broccoli as sides. I always have one piece of sweet potato, some brown rice or an oatmeal smoothie with banana, blueberry and peanut butter 30 mins before I workout to make sure I have enough energy to power though.

I’m not professing to be any kind of expert or tell you to do what I do, I’m just telling you what worked for me. There’s no need for any hcg, herbalife or any kind of quick fix that can’t be sustained forever. When those cycles are over, what will you do? Train yourself to eat properly and get a bit of exercise in and you’ll be the healthiest you without much thought. I haven’t been sick in over a year now. 🙂

Indulgences are allowed, but be careful of what your indulgences are and just how much you’re setting yourself back. My cottage cheese mix with honey always satisfies my sweet tooth craving. So does the banana ice cream recipe. Find healthier ways to indulge so that you don’t set yourself up for failure. I have pasta maybe once per month and I eat way too much brown bread. I’m trying to cut down on that, there’s no way I’ll flatten my stomach with that in my diet. But I say that to say that I’m not depriving myself, I do eat what I want. I’ve just trained my mind to want healthy and to find healthy ways to make yummy things. Like coconut flour pancakes! Yummy!

Another tip, wherever you spend the bulk of your time, include motivation and resources there to always stay focused and to get ideas. I love instagram, so I follow a lot of nutrition and fitness accounts. I’ve gotten tons of recipe ideas and fitness tips there. If FB is your thing, like a bunch of good health pages that give real tips. Same for twitter, google plus, rss, kindle books, whatever it is.

Sometimes I see stories cross my timeline of old people professing to have lived long full lives without eating healthy. I say to myself that it would be so easy to just not give a thought to all this and just eat what I want. But, for everyone person that has been lucky enough to go through life like that, there’s a million more riddled with cancer, heart disease and numerous other sickening stuff that I am terrified of. I don’t want to end up with cancer. I’ll do what I can to try and prevent it. Eating carrots instead of carrot cake with cream cheese icing sucks donkey balls sometimes, but having cancer sucks even more.

Hope this helps. 🙂