What I ate today...

[updated to include recipes]

Monika (a.k.a hormonewoman) at the InCyst On The Best blog started a feature today about what she eats. InCyst is one of my favorite nutrition blogs, even though its focus is on PCOS, there is much for all to benefit from. Back to the feature, Monika writes:

"I'd like to bridge the gap between dietitians and people who are not, by using this feature to show what realistic eating consists of. [...]

I want you to see that my life isn't perfect, and therefore my eating is not either. I do my best, always try to do better, and hopefully, 80% of the time, I make good choices, which include foods I enjoy eating."

Incidentally, last night I came across another blog called Eat Like Me by another dietitian, Cristin Dillon-Jones. Cristin blogs about what she eats, so that people can see a real-life account of what a real person eats, and when you blog about something like that every day, you're not going to be able to put up a front and pretend life is perfect. (Well, I guess you could, but that's not what Cristin does).
Then I reflected upon what I ate today and realized how I fell short of my "ideal". And I have more of these days than I'd like to admit. My first thought was to wait for a "better" day, but then I thought you should know that even I am a work in progress.
First, I think it would help you to know what some of my lifestyle health ideals are:

• To cook primarily from scratch
• To avoid highly processed and refined foods
• To eat more whole grains, fresh fruit and vegetables
• To purchase locally grown food, within reason. There's no way I'm gonna find bananas grown in NE Ohio ;-)
• To eat more meatless meals
• To enjoy physical activity as a lifestyle, not a task (I have the farthest to go on that one)
• To get a full night's sleep -- if you haven't already noticed from my profile picture :-)

So this was how my day went:

I made myself get up at 7:15 am. My alarm went off at 6. I've been trying to get back into the habit of waking up earlier, especially now that my kids are sleeping through the night. It doesn't help when I go to sleep after 1 am.

Breakfast
Grits with cheese
Snack
A mix of goldfish pretzels and cheese crackers
Lunch
Baked Beans (from a can) and rice
Snack
Chocolate animal crackers and some pretzels
Dinner
Black bean and sweet potato quesadillas. The beans, sweet potatoes, and flour tortillas were cooked from scratch. The tortillas contained unbleached all-purpose flour and oil (not whole grain). I also made the salsa from canned diced tomatoes.

• I drank either spring water or seltzer water throughout the day and with meals. I'd drink filtered water, but we can't get one installed and filling up pitchers is not as practical. We used to mix 100% juice with seltzer, but I opted to start buying fruit with our juice money.
• I really have a hankering for some cookies, but I don't have any around (other than the animal crackers. They don't quite hit the spot for me). Christina's chocolate chip cookies would really hit the spot!
• I think I took a multivitamin with half of the recommended amount (as opposed to 100% DV). I really can't remember if I took it. I tried taking Ginko for my memory once, but then I couldn't remember if I had taken it (lol!)
• I didn't count calories or measure portions. I know when I overeat something :-)
  
• What I ate was also served to my husband and children.

I wish I had...

• Eaten some sliced fruit
• Snacked on vegetables in addition to (or instead of) the refined-grain, highly processed snack foods
• Added a salad at lunch or dinner
• Baked some cookies :-)
• Drank a glass of milk, or eaten some yogurt with berries
• Gone to bed earlier
• Been more physically active
  

...but I did cook dinner from scratch and all meals were meatless. I didn't fill up on juice, but drank water. So in the end I realized that I made some good choices. It just seems easier to focus on the things I didn't do.

Well, it's past my bedtime. Here's for a good night's sleep.