Clean Eating

A friend of mine at church told me yesterday that she was amazed at how healthy I look and wanted to get my entire eating plan. I haven't been running in forever and I have to nap way more now that I have MS, but whatever. Most days I feel pretty good. I haven't weighed myself since early January...so, I'm kind of curious how much weight I've lost. 

Here's what I'm not eating:

• sugar
• dairy
• grain (wheat, rice, corn, oatmeal)
• gum (or anything) with aspartame 

So, my diet is somewhere between the Whole30 (if you're not familiar with that, read this: http://whole30.com/step-one/) and paleo (if you're not familiar with that, read this.

I think how I eat is closer to paleo because I do have the occasional bit of sweet, like honey and maple syrup. On the Whole30, you don't have any of that for 30 days. 

So, here are my go-to meals:

Breakfast: eggs and avocado or this great frittata done in a muffin tin recipe or this awesome muffin recipe or these awesome waffles. I throw in some almond butter if I'm feeling super hungry. 

Muffin recipe: I seriously make these nearly EVERY week. They taste phenomenal out of the oven with almond butter on them. 

Frittata recipe: These can be refrigerated for a week of meals—economy is the scale here, people. 

Waffle recipe: This is a Saturday morning treat for me, usually. I go to this website a lot for paleo recipes. She is a bit wacky...but, the recipes are wonderful.

Snacks: nuts, beet/ginger/greens/orange/apple/carrot juice/banana smoothies, more nuts, carrots, fruit, avocado

Lunch: leftovers from the day before, large green salad (mostly with this easy dressing), avocado and other random veggies.

Dinner: something paleo (I plan two weeks at a time...and I'm still fine tuning what I like and what my family will tolerate or like). 

Here are a few websites I found great recipes and the websites have useful info:

http://paleomg.com/

http://detoxinista.com/

http://www.elanaspantry.com/ (I believe this woman has MS)

http://paleopot.com/

http://nomnompaleo.com/ (AWESOME recipes here)

Also, I never cook or reheat my food in plastic containers. Storing them in plastic is fine.

I try to get organic meats, but my budget often doesn't allow for that all the time. Maybe once I am an empty nester or something I'll switch to all organic meat...or maybe I'll move to a farm in the country and raise my own. Wouldn't that be awesome? My city boy husband would be a great farmer.  

Exercise, you ask? I do lots of yoga (like 4x/week), walk and swim. Seriously...I'm not the same person I used to be with exercise. For me and exercise, less is more and my body is feeling stronger than ever...it's weird. 

Has clean eating helped you? Are you a fan of clean eating?