a peek inside the fishbowl

I won’t be filling up this space every day with Sugar Fast Plus posts because that would be a dreadful yawn (for me and for you) but I made it through day one (!) and wanted to jot down a few thoughts.

First, thank you for your supportive comments, tweets, and emails. It means a lot to me that you are supporting me and my quest for good health.

Second, exercise. You may have noticed that I didn’t mention it. That’s because I’m not exercising very much above and beyond what I normally do. I walk quite a bit, and I’ve recently restarted the 100 push up challenge (website here) because I realized that I never felt better than when I was doing my pushups. Also, and I am feeling extremely guilty about this, but I actually have in my hands a customized fitness program that was designed for me by Sarah Zahab (a great lady who I once wrote about here) and I haven’t been doing it. I have fallen off the fitness wagon BIG TIME and I need to find my mojo again. I hope to get back on once these two weeks are done.

Third, I printed off a calendar for the month of January in order to better track these next couple of weeks. Yesterday has a big blue checkmark on it. Yay!

Fourth, should I tell you what I ate yesterday? I won’t do this every day (as I said, BORING) but I will paste it in here for my own record (and my mother’s, because she is appalled at the fact that I’ve cut out bread). You will see that it’s a bit vague, because I’m not weighing or measuring.

HERE YOU GO MOM.

• Two mini crustless quiches (recipe below) 
• clementine
• latte made with 1% milk, no sugar
• vegetable juice
• hard-boiled egg
• lunch: salad of mixed organic field greens with chopped apple and almonds, oil/vinegar dressing
• 1 x celery w cream cheese
• banana
• large handful of popcorn (air-popped, lightly buttered).
• small handful of salted peanuts
• Dinner: bacon wrapped pork tenderloin, field greens (oil/vinegar dressing), green beans with almonds sauteed in olive oil, roasted onion and carrot
• a cup of hot vanilla (milk with smidge of vanilla, no sugar)

Sugar free! All day!

What I really wanted to talk about today was breakfast. We all know it’s the most important meal of the day. What can we eat that’s bread and sugar free… when those two things figure so prominently in our diets?

I made a batch of these spinach crustless quiches on Sunday and it turned out to be a smart thing to do.

(Recipe adapted from South Beach.)

You will need:

• cooking spray
• 3 large eggs
• 1 package frozen chopped spinach (10 oz.)
• 1/4 cup diced red peppers
• 1/4 cup diced red onions
• 1/4 fried pancetta
• cheese (I didn’t use any because I replaced it with the pancetta for a salty bacony flavour. But you can toss in 1/2 cup of shredded cheddar if you like.)
• a couple of drops of hot sauce (optional)

Heat oven to 350F. Spray 12 muffin cups with the cooking spray or use foil liners. Don’t skip this step otherwise your quiches will stick. (Thank you Mark for scrubbing out the muffin tin afterwards.) 

Heat spinach (from frozen) on high in the microwave for about 2.5 minutes. Dump in a sieve and squeeze out as much juice as possible.

Mix the spinach with the remainder of the ingredients (it will look mighty spinachy … I might use an extra egg next time) and fill the muffin cups with the mixture, distributing evenly between the 12 cups.

Bake for about 20 minutes. Eat two for breakfast, refrigerate four for the next couple of days (two each morning) and put the rest in the freezer for future breakfasts.

ETA: I’ve been thinking and reading a lot about weight loss related resolutions. A lot of what I’ve read out there is rooted in self-loathing. i.e. “I hate my stomach/thighs/etc.” I prefer to approach health and fitness from the perspective of LOVE instead of hate. You must exercise and eat well because you LOVE your body. eat a beautiful salad and treat yourself to an expensive purchase of fresh blueberries because it’s a treat and you deserve it. Perhaps your chance of success is better that way. What do you think?