“I don’t have time to cook…”
“Healthy food is so expensive…”
Those are just two of the reasons we give ourselves to delay trying to adjust our way of eating in order to improve our fitness, and quite frankly, our overall quality of life.
I have not met a single person who feels worse in their day-to-day functioning when their nutrition is cleaned up, even a little bit. One of the things I’ve been trying to say to you guys is to start small…. but start.. and start now.
Does that mean eating one less meal at a fast-food place per week? Does that mean replacing pastas with veggies once per week? It doesn’t matter how big the change, but you can start the change now.
My usual breakfast when I make something at home will be eggs and a few other things. Ideally, I’ll pair 3-4 eggs with 1/2 of an avocado and maybe some veggies cooked in with them, but that doesn’t always happen. Sometimes, for my fat source I’ll throw in some walnuts or mixed nuts. Others, I’ll have some fruit instead of veggies for my carbs. Today I didn’t have fruits or veggies, but I did still have a jar of Rosa Mexicano Kitchen Salsa from a sample pack that my friend who works for them sent me (thanks, Maddy!). Magically, I was able to sub that in for my carbs! Crisis averted.
Check this out, though… a jar of salsa costs what, $3-4? A dozen eggs, let’s guess high and say $3. A single avocado, $2 for a nice one, I’ll guess. So for a single meal, it’s going to cost me less than $2. You know what else? 4 eggs, some big spoonfuls of salsa, and a cut up avocado will fill me up a lot more than a $3-5 breakfast burrito or a $5+ “Value Meal” at a drive-through place.
Delicious AND Nutritious! (and easy to make)
What about time? How long did it take me to make this delicious meal pictured above?
Let’s figure it out:
Getting pan and spraying with Pam- 7 seconds
Grabbing 4 eggs, cracking them in pan, throwing away shells- 15 seconds
Cutting avocado in half, scooping out 1/2 onto plate- 20 seconds
Check on eggs 2-3 times while cooking- 15 seconds
Moving cooked eggs onto plate- 10 seconds
Placing a few scoops of salsa on the eggs- 20 seconds
So what am I saying? For less than $2 and less than 2 minutes of your time, you can have a delicious and healthy breakfast in the comfort of your own home.
Obviously that’s just one example of one possible meal, but doing that for lunches and dinners can be just as easy to break down. Eating better food just takes a little bit better planning at the beginning, and then just like anything else, it becomes habit!
Check out this video that was posted on the CrossFit Journal a few days ago. It’s less than 7 minutes long, but it shows about what one woman was able to do in 8 weeks, just by cleaning up her diet, and CrossFitting 3-4 times per week. Eight weeks. Yet another inspiring story of someone who decided it was time to change their life for the better. I love stuff like this.
Smashby's Training Blog 
The biggest criticism I’ve heard for the Paleo diet has always been finding enough foods to eat, particularly for people are more selective in what they like to eat. Any suggestions for those of us that don’t like many different kinds of veggies, etc.?
So here’s my thing, when people tell me that they don’t have enough food choices or are bored with the foods on paleo, my answer to them is that they are being lazy. There are an unlimited amount of food combinations out there you just have to take the time to put them together. Check out this article from Robb Wolf:
Click to access thePaleoSolution_FoodMatrix.pdf
This is a food matrix 27 different forms of protein, 24 different forms of carbs, 5 different forms of fat, and 25 different spices. These aren’t even all the ones you could possibly use but with just choosing 1 from each column of these categories there are 81,000 combinations to choose from! If you ate 1 different meal per day that’s 221 years before you would see the same recipe again. If that isn’t variety and you get bored with that, then I don’t know what to tell you.