So here are some lean eating tips that I came across a while ago, that I have tried and totally approve of because I noticed a difference not only in my energy levels throughout the day, but I also lost weight. So YAAAY!
Eat eggs for breakfast. It's a lean way to start your day, and I think it is good especially if you are active. Eating nuts are a good, lean protein, as is fish. Try doing five small meals a day (like 3 larger meals and 2 snackish things is what I do). No carbs after your afternoon snack--aka no mac and cheese, pesto, or spaghetti for dinner. If you have a hard time with this, just switch around your meals- cook your pasta the night before and take it to work with you to eat for lunch. Or if you have the luxury of a day off, or are awesome enough to work at or from home, you can make it fresh at home. Something that we like to do in my household is cook a giant thing of either leek and potato soup, or butternut squash soup and have those for dinner instead of pastas. Well, it's something that I like to do that I have nonchalantly enforced in the house. Otherwise we have fish and a salad for dinner. If not fish and salad, chicken and salad. Sometimes we eat sandwiches, which kind of breaks the no carb rule, but I think there are worse things than breads (like copious amounts of pastas).
However, if you are like me and you like food, you will slip up. Honestly, who cares if you slip up? You have no one to blame but yourself, so you can do what you want, you just have to remember that you are keeping yourself in line. So if you want to loose weight and look all kinds of impressive that is great; if you want to eat fetuccini for dinner every night, you WILL ABSOLUTELY not get the results that you want. Unless you're metabolism is god-like, in which case you are probably not reading this anyway.
And of course life happens, so chances are on the weekends you will slip up and carb load during dinner. I think as long as you stick to your basic rules five days a week you should be fine. Again, this is only a personal opinion, I don't know what your lifestyle and habits are like.
Something else that I've done recently is when I get snacky I find a vegetable to munch on. They are pretty filling, and low calorie. Plus they are full of minerals and vitamins that your body totally loves. I was once told that if you have all the basic colors of the rainbow on your plate, you will get all your minerals and vitamins that you need. I don't know if this is actually true, but it gives you a colorful way to cook. For example, if you have your (green) salad, and your (red) tomatoes, you can add some (orange) carrots, eggplant, which is purple (if you are into that, I'm so not into eggplant), or you can get a slice or three of all the bell peppers and basically get the rest of the colors. The bell peppers come in yellow, orange, red, green, and purple! I've never had a purple one so I'm unsure of what it tastes like, but the yellow and orange are my favorite because they are sweeter and I like eating those like an apple. They really are a great snack. Anyway, there is plenty more advice I can give on food, but that would make this blog forever long, and I'm actually kind of hungry. So I am going to go drink some water and if I am still hungry, find some dinner!
Ta-ta!
