Sunday, February 11... Day 11 Conclusion

This was an interesting assignment for me because I had to be purposeful in my eating and preparing for 10 days. Usually we do prepare food at home but often it is easy to eat out for ease of time. I was excited to start this challenge because of the things I was hoping to learn. I did learn to read labels and be cautious of portion sizes. Our future plans are to continue with planning out the meals for the week at a time and to eat better whole foods and to stay away from carbohydrates.

Saturday, February 10... Day 10: Date Night

Tonight since it was day 10, we took a break from cooking and went out for date night. We tried to be aware of what we were eating but we also wanted to enjoy our dinner. I'm not going to lie, I ate lobster and steak with a side of steamed vegetables and a baked potato. It was delicious! A few things that we noticed is we were full much quicker now that we've been used to eating at home and having better portion control.

I went online and found the nutritional value for the steak but couldn't find it on their website for the lobster. However looking at how bad the steak is in calories and sodium is shocking! Honestly I was thinking eating a piece of meat wasn't so bad for you, boy is that a misconception.

Friday, February 9... Day 9: TGIF

Tonight my wife and I grilled pork chops and corn on the grill. This was a quick easy meal to grill before heading into work. This particular meal was also inexpensive and didn't take long to prepare and had minimal clean up. We took pork chose and sprayed each side with avocado oil and sprinkled them with Mrs. Dash seasoning and grilled them until desired completion. For the corn we sprayed them with avocado oil and salt and pepper wrapped them in tin foil and grilled them while the pork chops were cooking.

Thursday, February 8... Day 8 Getting Closer to the Finish Line

Today I took a salad and sliced up the chicken from the previous night to put on top, this was so easy to do, it was time saving and money saving. Salads are great because you  can make it as simple or elaborate as you would like and there are some really great prices on vegetables. I purchase our vegetables at Food City, there we can always find great deals on cucumbers like 6 for a dollar, peppers for 50-75 cents a piece etc. We find a lot of chain grocery stores have pricey vegetables.

Wednesday, February 7... Day 7: Grilling Day

Wednesdays are like my Sundays, because I only work on Thursday and Friday nights. I like to cook out on Wednesdays and then have a dinner I can take to work with me on Thursday night as well. Tonight I cooked chicken and vegetables on the grill accompanied with a big salad. This meal was really good and easy to reheat for an additional meal the next day. Tomorrow I will slice the chicken and put it on top of the salad for a grilled chicken salad.

Tuesday, February 6th... Day 6: My wife could get used to this

With my wife being sick and me having to blog our food I'm having to do a lot of cooking, and let me tell you she isn't complaining one bit, she's enjoying it. Tonight I made a dish from our emeals recipes that I've talked about in a previous post. I made Beef Kofta, this was something I had never had before but my wife thought it sounded like a dish from Pita Jungle so I gave it a try. It was really good. The only thing we altered was the recipe called for 2 meat patties inside the tortilla and we found that was a little overwhelming so we did one meat patty.

This was the first time we have ever cooked with chickpeas. The chickpea salad was very good and prompted us to do some research on chickpeas. The first thing we found was they were good for blood sugar control (bonus for my wife), as well as it helps us to feel fuller longer because of the high fiber content. Here is the link to the article we read on chickpeas Amazing Chickpea Info, we actually decided we will start adding chickpeas to our diet more often.

 

Monday, February 5... Day 5:Another one bites the dust

Well our oldest son came home sick today and tested positive for the flu. That means he's home all day with my wife and toddler and between cartoon watching we heard a lot of complaining of hunger (I wouldn't doubt if some of it is boredom). I ran to the store and stocked up on fruit and made this fruit salad, then I portioned it out for them in the fridge in small Tupperware containers so when they got hungry they could grab one to snack on.


1 crate of blueberries
1 crate of blackberries
1/2 crate of strawberries sliced
2 cups of grapes sliced


Mix all together in a bowl, keep refrigerated.

Blueberries are loaded with vitamin C, Zinc, vitamin e, magnesium and much more. The blackberries are loaded with tons of vitamins as well as antioxidants to help fight the flu. Researchers recommend to eat a half a cup a day to boost your immune system and ward of the flu during flu season. Flu Fighting Foods

Sunday, February 4...Day 4: Super Bowl

Today is a day that many families and friends get together to celebrate the super bowl. Its a time for chicken wings, cheese dips, pizza, and other processed foods. Today my family has chosen to eat healthier foods. Since my family is still sick we didn't invite any family over so it was nice to prepare a healthier meal. Recently we subscribed to emeals, this service provides recipes catered to our food preferences. We were able to select low carb recipes, and change things around to our liking.

Saturday, February 3...Day 3:The Flu

Yesterday my wife was diagnosed with the flu and our toddler woke up with the flu this morning. I was worried how I was going to cook meals today and take care of my wife and son while entertaining our 6 year old. Thank goodness for the crock pot!! I just put all the following ingredients in the crock pot .

1 chuck roast, cut up celery, carrots, mushrooms, onions and I prepared a cup of beef broth. Throw it all in the crock pot and put it on low and set it for 8 hours.

The challenge has been OK so far, I find it is difficult to follow at work because I work night shift. So I have to be prepared and bring food with me. The cafeteria is open at night from midnight to three am and their options are typically something fried from the grill or the salad bar. The salad bar doesn't look too good at midnight. Also I usually drink monsters or coffee all night so that's an adjustment, but I'm sticking to drinking plain black tea. Luckily I only work two nights a week. 

Friday, February 2nd... Day 2:Work Day

Today I made these egg bites. I found the recipe on Pinterest and modified it a little bit. The recipe is as follows:

9 eggs, 1/2 cup of cottage cheese, a sprinkle of cheese and diced green onions.

Preheat oven to 400 degrees, coat a nonstick muffin pan with coconut oil, and distribute the onion in each muffin tin. Bake for 5 minutes. Add 1/4 cup of egg mixture, salt and pepper and stir each tin carefully. Add a sprinkle of cheese and bake for 15 minutes. 

These were very good and a knock off from the ones served at Starbucks, so that's money saving as well! These held up good in the fridge. Next time we will use our silicone muffin cups as they were hard to scoop out. 

The challenge so far has been fine, it's just learning to read a label before popping things in my mouth. Once we purge the house of all the food items that aren't the best for us it will be much easier. 

Thursday February 1st... Day 1:Start Day!

Today is Thursday, February 1, 2018. Day one of our challenge. Our family has committed to changing our eating habits by participating in the standard challenge while trying to incorporate whole foods. Our first dinner was Tilapia. This meal was easy to prepare.

We chopped up fresh onions, fresh green beans and fresh grape tomatoes! We coated them in a splash of olive oil and a sprinkle of Mrs. dash seasoning. We put the Tilapia in tin foil, added our vegetable and a slice of lemon and sealed up the foil like a pouch and bake at 350 for 30 minutes. My wife and I enjoyed the fish. A bigger challenge for us will be getting our two young kids on board with this eating style.

The Why???

Hello, My name is Cory Collyar and welcome to my blog. My family and I are going to blog about our food changes as we take the fed up challenge. Originally we watched fed up and we were shocked about the sugar content found in the everyday foods we were allowing our kids to eat. Even more shocking was the role government played in our foods. With recent health concerns with my wife we decided to change our eating habits. Our goal is to eat whole foods that we prepare at home and eliminate any sugars, high fructose corn syrups or any added sugars. I encourage you to watch the movie Fed Up (the trailer is shown below) if you haven't and visit their website Fed Up Movie for more information.