REAL Feel-Good Foods

As you may already know, I’m currently on a Personal Spring Cleaning Challenge – getting rid of the dirt and grime from the past year, and making room for growth and development in the upcoming year. The flowers are bloomin’ and so am I.

All of that to say, I’ve decided to go on a Netflix Diet, which has really helped me maximize my free time, but that’s not all I’m up to with my spring cleaning. I’m also trying to clean up my eating habits. Here’s the thing: if you know anything about me, you know that I’m a Mexican food addict. (I don’t say that lightly, I’ve literally had it for lunch four times this week. If you know any good 7 step programs, please give me a phone number to call.)

I digress.

The biggest change in my eating habits are to only eat feel-good foods. I know by definition – I checked with urban dictionary, don’t worry, my sources are accurate – “feel good foods” are the cheesy, greasy, starchy foods we all love and adore. Well, I’m redefining that in my life. I’ve been eating (within reason – let’s not get crazy here) relatively healthy meals for the past several weeks, but I haven’t been avoiding my favorite go-to fatty, greasy restaurants.

I still make it to the hibachi express; I order chicken, steak, and shrimp with no rice and extra veggies and split it in half and save the rest for lunch the next day – because WE ALL KNOW they give you like 100 meals in one Styrofoam container. (I don’t skip the yum-yum sauce because I don’t HATE MYSELF – fun fact, it’s actually called Yami sauce I learned the other day so imagine how much of an idiot I feel like for calling it ‘yummy’ sauce my whole life, good GRIEF what a fool I am – but to be real, it’s QUITE yummy, so it’s a sensible title, maybe? *cringe*)

I (clearly) still make it to my favorite greasy Mexican food place (if I could understand that moderation is key to this one then that’d be amazing, but I’m not that far yet in my Mexican food spiritual journey). I just order a shredded chicken taco or two and call it a day (also chips and queso because again, I don’t hate myself).

I even have banana pudding at church every once in awhile on Wednesday nights – my favorite dessert. I just have a cup of it. Plus those are the Lord’s calories so they don’t count.

None of this is really in (much) effort to lose weight or look differently, but because good GRIEF I feel so much better and productive in my daily life if I eat more veggies and protein and less starchy fatty things.

The salmon, quinoa, and spinach at the top of this post (it’s a salad plate, folks – my portions aren’t actually that gargantuan, that would defeat the purpose entirely) was a dinner that I cooked myself in like, what, 30 minutes? It was so tasty, made a lot for leftovers (if you cook multiple salmon fillets at once, HEY guess what, more dinners for you later down the line), and when I finished eating it, I didn’t want to sink into my couch and watch 6 hours of Netflix and fall into a food-induced Thanksgiving Day coma. I do believe I was inspired to walk a pup friend that evening instead of watch Netflix.

Here’s the thing, I’m not here to tell ANYBODY how to live their lives. For multiple reasons:

1. I don’t always listen to my own advice (yikes, I know)
2. I’m pretty sure nobody will actually read this (maybe my mom will – hey, mom!)
3. I’m the kind of girl who’s 30 minutes late to the thing she has to be at and is putting on her eyeliner on an on-ramp into Atlanta traffic so clearly I don’t know what I’m doing with my life at all (sorry you had to read that, mom….)

But what I will say is this: I am a much happier and positive person with less grease in my food, I am much more inspired to exercise (haha, not that I actually am exercising, because I’m not. But the inspiration is there, so that’s a start?), I’m not sluggish at work, I sleep better at night…. I’m thinking I might be onto something here.

If I lose ALL other forms of motivation, I can at least be inspired by the happy pup below who recognized his surroundings and realized we were on the way to the dog park and almost lost his lentils with pure joy and excitement…

Take a gander at this precious boy:
WARNING: You will have to endure my aggravating baby talk if you watch this video of my precious pup, but I think he’s cute enough to be worth it. Maybe? Let me know.

Love the life you live and eat the foods you love, but do so in moderation – you’ll love yourself for it!