Going Green

Since Steven was born, Steve and I have been trying to be healtlhier in our diet and habits. We both want to be healthier in general and lose weight but we also want to get started on healthy eating and lifestyle habits to  have for the baby. We want him to grow up with around a healthy eating environment where foods that are good for you are the regular fare and not something you have to go out of your way to find. That's the idea at least :) We want it to be something like this: Doesn't that baby look happy about broccoli?

                                               

So to accomplish this goal, Steve and I recently joined our local Gold's Gym. We've been doing really well there and have been working out pretty frequently. I have a lot less time to work out so its been something like 3-4 days a week for me while Steve has been going pretty much every day. He is working with a personal traininer too and losing weight like crazy. Now, neither of us wants to look like this:

But we do both want to lose some weight and gain muscle. We basically just want to be healthier overall. In order to accomplish this, I've started to change the way I eat and what I eat. I've decided to try becoming a vegetarian. I am going to still eat fish and seafood so I guess technically that's a pescaterian.  But basically I am going to try to eat a lot more of these:

                     

This is something I've actually been thinking about for a long time. I've never been a huge fan of meat anyways and really only eat chicken and turkey on the regular. Some of our friends and family are vegetarians and it has always interested me what they eat and don't eat.  A few of them have lost a bunch of weight going veggie so that was a motivating factor for me too! So I talked to a couple of our friends and discussed what the eat and how they get in their protein, etc. I thought about how I could make this diet work for me. I need to make sure to get all the nutrition that I need to keep up my milk supply. I also researched about breastfeeding and being vegetarian and it looked like there were no issues so I figured why not give it a try.

I've actually always liked vegetables and fruits but just never at too many of them, mostly because I'm lazy and don't want to cook them but also because I was filling up on other things like meat and carbs. Steve was not the most agreeable to eating vegetables either, but now that he's agreed to eating healthier he has been asking me to make more vegetables with our meals. So it seemed like a great time to try out this new way of eating!

I decided not to do a true vegetarian only diet, because I'm going to eat seafood. I really enjoy fish and its good for the baby and good for me so I decied I would still include it. Plus, it will give me many more options of foods to make and help me ease into this new way of eating, instead of just going cold turkey (or cold tofu, ha!).

                                

So what am I eating? For breakfasts, I usually eat cereal or oatmeal, sometimes eggs and toast. Which is not all that different than what I was eating. Sometimes I will drink a protein shake with breakfast too just to make sure I'm getting enough protein in. I usually will have a morning snack of yogurt and a banana. For lunch I have been having lots of salads, bags of veggies, sometimes a vegetarian lean cuisine like pumpkin squash ravioli (yum) or lobster pasta (double yum), and usually an apple of another piece of fruit. For dinners I've been making lots of yummy things but usually either a fish dish with veggies or tuna salad, or a pasta with veggies. I also bought some ready made things from CostCo that have turned out be super yummy. We had zucchini, squash and pepper ravioli one night that was delicious and also citrus cous cous that was very good as well. I'm trying lots of new foods eating this way and that is a great thing since I really was too picky of an eater. I'm also trying new recipes and I will try to start posting them as I try them and let you know how they are. So wish me luck!