Day 4: Pros and cons

I am not a person of extremes. I am a Libra (or at least I used to be, so they tell me), and I like balance. For me, a little dessert, a few packaged foods once and a while will not make me fat and not derail my health. So, taking on an “extreme” eating style is a major challenge! But, as it is supposed to be, it is eye-opening and provides an opportunity to learn.

Here are the pros and cons we’ve noticed so far about eating entirely whole foods:

Pros:

• When you have the munchies and feel like eating something (but aren’t actually hungry), you just don’t eat. Who wants to munch on grape nuts or triscuits? This might help a lot of people to keep from consuming unnecessary calories and gain weight.


• Teaching your children good eating habits. This is priceless to me. I know my kids will not be junk-food addicted, will be much less likely to have discipline and concentration problems in school, will feel good about their bodies since they will be healthy weights, and will pass on the same habits to their children.


• Whole food is more filling. I can eat ½ cup of granola with milk and feel satisfied for hours, or eat several Dunkin Donuts and feel hungry (and fat) within an hour. White flour just is not as filling as whole wheat / whole grains. It’s that simple!


• Eating a diet rich in real foods, you’ll never be any of these things: overweight, diabetic (type II), constipated, have acid reflux, and you will likely never have high cholesterol (with a few genetic exceptions).


• I’ve come across some great recipes that I otherwise would never have tried. Both the granola and the smoothies are delicious and we will certainly continue to eat them after this challenge (in place of junkier options, I hope). The recipes are at the end of this post if you want them.

Cons:

• The dishes mount up quickly! It involves a lot more cooking to produce meals of entirely whole foods. Staring at the mound of dishes in the sink makes me a little angry at our diet, to be honest! (And this is coming from someone who is already accustomed to cooking ALL of our meals – we almost never eat out and don’t eat frozen or packaged dinners.)
• It is more expensive than buying cheap processed foods with a coupon. Whole foods almost never go on sale, and there are no coupons for things that aren’t packaged! (However, this cost saving is nothing when you look at your significantly reduced health care costs of maintaining a healthy body and avoiding diseases like Type II diabetes, for example. Not to mention cheaper life and health insurance premiums).
• There are fewer choices for snacks (for kids). Fruit (dried or fresh), nuts, popcorn, a few crackers. What else? Seriously, I need some ideas for the next six days!!!
• Most condiments are NOT whole foods! Ketchup (national brands) are made with high fructose corn syrup, and the Trader Joes brand we buy has sugar. Almost all salad dressings have sugar (and a lot of strange ingredients). It takes more creativity and work to flavor your meals when avoiding these.

So here is what we got with our remaining $80 at Trader Joes. I blew through $160 really fast this week! Good thing we aren’t out of toilet paper or paper towels, because there’s no money left! (I did put aside $10 for 2 gallons of organic milk, which we’ll need soon.)

Here is what we’ve been eating:
Day 3:
Breakfast:
Brett & Claire – homemade granola (heaping ½ cup with 2% organic milk), OJ
Sydney & Pierce – whole wheat toast with natural peanut butter (one ingredient: peanuts), OJ, milk – they didn’t like the granola!

Lunch:
Brett & Claire – leftover cabbage & venison lasagna
Sydney & Pierce – whole wheat tortillas with cheese and black beans, cucumbers with hummus, fruit sauce, organic blue corn tortilla chips (3 ingredients)

Dinner:
Brett & Claire – Fritatta with potatoes, broccoli, onion and cheese, salad (with homemade dressing), whole wheat toast
Kids – disassembled frittata – scrambled eggs with cheese, broccoli, potatoes, whole wheat toast
Smoothies for dessert again! YUM!

Day 4:
Breakfast:
Claire – homemade granola (heaping ½ cup with 2% organic milk), OJ
Brett & Sydney – grapenuts with organic milk, OJ
Pierce – Cheerios with organic milk, OJ (yes, we cheated here. I tried to make him oatmeal, but it exploded in the mircrowave and I didn’t have the 30 minutes it takes to make him steel-cut oats and he wouldn’t eat the granola. And he’s skinny and I always worry about him not eating enough, so I broke down and got him some plain Cheerios).

Lunch – various real food combos.

Dinner: whole wheat pasta macaroni and cheese with salad (with homemade dressing again). I took a Martha Stewart Mac & Cheese recipe I love and substituted whole wheat pasta for enriched and whole wheat flour for white flour. I couldn’t find whole wheat macaroni noodles at the store, so we had to use spirals. It tasted pretty good, but I really prefer the macaroni noodles.

I am feeling much less hungry than on day 1 and 2. Much less cranky, Fewer chocolate cravings! In fact, I'm not even angry about not having chocolate tonight. Wow. And, after eating my heaping ½ cup of granola this morning I was very satisfied until after 12:30 pm. Usually I am starving by 11:30 am.

Here are the recipes we’ve enjoyed so far:

Smoothies:
1 ½ cups of organic PLAIN yogurt (with no sugar)
1 cup of frozen berries
2 bananas
Squeeze of honey (to taste)
Splash of OJ (this makes a big difference in the flavor)
Blend and enjoy! Serves 4.

Homemade granola:
See link to “100 days of real food”: http://www.100daysofrealfood.com/2010/04/04/recipe-granola-bars-cereal/