How I Eat

About a year ago, I'd be pretty embarrassed sharing how I eat day-to-day. I didn't know the first thing about modern western nutrition, I never, ever cooked for myself or ever drank any water, I'd go from an insanely intense workout straight to fast-food take-out, and my body definitely suffered for it. I had made some amazing strides athletically in 2009, but the following year, I completely stalled out no matter how hard I trained.

After Lean Eating

Some friends, whose opinions I trust in these matters, kept mentioning Precision Nutrition, an eating program/style developed by a bunch of sports scientists and nutritional coaches and run mainly on the Internet to much success. Twice a year, they run an online, twelve-month coaching program called Lean Eating, for anyone wanting to get lean and learn and practise sound nutritional habits.
I snapped and signed up for the 2011 cohort, and over the course of the year ended up slowly turning my whole nutritional lifestyle upside-down (oh, and getting a little bit ripped on the side).

So now for the most part I:
- cook 90-95% of my weekly meals
- buy exclusively whole foods and cook from scratch
- buy organic and/or free-range ingredients
- have learned to identify and prepare and enjoy more than five vegetables
- pack all my lunches, both for work and for off-routine days
- spread a bunch of small meals throughout the day
- no longer have a concept of specific foods for breakfast, lunch, or dinner
- eat mostly protein and veggies and some healthy fats
- reserve starchy carbs for rebuilding muscle after a workout
- avoid snacking by only eating complete meals
- drink down about six to eight cups of water
- keep sugary endurance food to a minimum
- fuel my workouts with amino acids instead
- don't waste food by letting it die in my fridge
- have been reducing my reliance on meat as a protein source
- have started tasting my food while cooking as opposed to assuming it'll be awful anyway
... and I never leave the house without my fork!

Now, one final problem with how I eat is that ... I am not a cook. I don't come from a cooking family, and no offence to my parents, but they routinely prepare the same five bland meals made of the same few meats and very limited vegetables. All I remember of my childhood after we moved to Canada was processed or junk food, take-out, and sugar, sugar, sugar.

As a result, I have very little confidence in the kitchen, but this past year, I've decided not to be afraid of trying to cook anymore! Turns out I'll eat nearly anything as long as it's nutritionally-sound, although there have been a few meals so catastrophic that even my disdain for food wastage could not save them. My main problem other than lack of experience is that I apparently can't follow written recipes. As an artist and visual-learner, I can deal with photo-logs of food and food prep, but written instructions make me crazy, and I usually give up and just throw stuff together.

So far I have found the following ways of cooking that usually produce fair results:
- The Stir-Fry: recklessly throwing whatever main ingredients I have as well as essentially every spice in the cupboards and seeing what happens
- The Roasting: usually made of root veggies strewn under some heavily-seasoned chicken and confined to the oven for a while
- The Omelette: my first triumphs were in the egg department, and I can now whip up any one of like five different styles of omelette (nevermind the ingredient variations), and many more other eggy dishes for all occasions
- The Soup: a rarer treat, but again involves throwing in whatever is around and letting the hot water do its best
- The Slow-Cook: a recent addition to my repertoire (my roomie was so proud of me) - it works because ... you just throw some stuff in and go to sleep

I'm still quite apprehensive about serving my concoctions to other people, but I have developed a few trusty favourites that I'm pretty sure will not result in homicide:

The Pizza Omelette

- The Cauliflower Shepherd's Pie, which layers saucy ground beef with my fave root veggies (carrots and beets), and is topped by mashed cauliflower, as I don't usually eat potatoes anymore [from a video by chef David Greensmith of Essential Meal Delivery]
- The Butternut Squash Peanut Soup, aka Princess Butternut, which is mushy and sweet and spicy and just a dream to eat
- The Pizza Omelette: my pièce de résistance, where the crust is just egg poured out like a pancake, topped with tomato sauce, cheese, and whatever veggies you please. It looks, feels, and tastes like a pizza, and as a pizza addict who has had to quit that particular delight, it fills the void so well.
- ... more to come as I learn!

Originally posted: February 2012