Let’s talk about “healthy”

There’s a lot of ads showing up in my feed on facebook lately about “healthy diets”. It’s all over the menu at restaurants “healthy choice”, “heart healthy”, “healthy this” and “healthy that”. It’s enough to make me want to scream! And then, we see in magazines “eat this and lose 20 pounds in a month” and ” with this diet you can be swimsuit ready!” and all kinds of claims (some of them substantiated some not). 

There is some fight to it as well. Every group insists that their diet is “the one true diet”. I’ve seen it get downright ugly as well. The paleos say that grains are evil. The vegans say that meat is evil. The calorie counters say that calories are evil. The low-carbers say that carbs are evil. Each group has their thing or things that they eschew. 

What if I were to tell you that there is no ONE TRUE DIET? 

 

 

But what? 

 

I believe that each person has their own “healthy diet”. What works for one may not be best for others. Some people do very well on a low carb diet. Me? If I don’t get enough carbs I am liable to go to jail for murder. Some people do very well on a vegetarian diet. Me? I can’t get enough protein without eating meat because many of the high protein veggies either irritate my gut (beans!! and grains/gluten!!!) or stall my weight loss when eaten in quantity (taters!). 

So where does that leave us?

EXPERIMENT!!

Find out what is YOUR healthy. 

Take 6 weeks and try something new. Define the parameters of your experiment. 

Decide what you want to test. Personally I prefer small changes. It’s easier to find WHAT made the changes if you only change a thing or two at a time. Then perform your experiment. Record your observations. How do you feel? What’s your energy levels? Have your measurements changed? (I have shared how I track goals in another post. Also if you would like to know what measurements I track, let me know and I will write a post on how to measure and what I measure.)  If so, how? Has your strength/endurance changed? If so, how? 

Over the last ten years I have come up with my definition of healthy. For me I eat grain (except for limited corn) and gluten free 100% of the time. I allow limited dairy (in the form of REAL cheese or cream less than three times a week). I don’t eat processed foods, because it’s difficult to find processed foods that are gluten free. I allow sweets (mainly in the form of chocolate) under certain parameters (during a hike or major bike ride).  I don’t count calories because I find it tedious. I don’t worry about food because I know if it fits within my parameters it will work for me. 

But what’s healthy for you?

I don’t know! You are your own laboratory. I find 6 weeks to be a great time frame for finding results. It is long enough to see results (both positive and negative). It’s short enough that if you totally HATE the changes you’ve made that you don’t have to stick with it. 

If you would like help to determine your parameters for experimentation, drop me a line and we can chat!  

Root veggies au gratin and bacon wrpped tilapia

For the Ranger mini challenge this week we have been tasked to get rid of some of these blasted rutabegas. They are taking over the island!! All these stinking root veggies! We also found some wild boar and since I had to sit out the mileage portion of last weeks  mini challenge I spent a lotta time on the shore fishin (isn’t that what every girl does when they gotta sit out??) 

So I propose some Root veggies au gratin and bacon wrpped tilapia 

(I don’t know how that boar and fish got into those wrappers… they um… MAGIC!) 

 

(not my art)

Start by preheating the oven to 350. Although it doesn’t matter if you don’t. It would just take a few more minutes to cook.

Au gratin Sauce

1/2 c heavy whipping cream

1/2 wheel gouda

a couple pats of butter (I think I used like 2 T)

those tiny peppers that came from my garden (optional) seeded and minced

 

 

chop up the gouda and put it in the pan on low to melt

 

while that gets all melty and great and super nom chop up the root veggies

 

I used 

1 1/2 turnip – peeled

3ish carrots

2 big parsnips 

some radishes

a sweet potato (this had been previously a BAKED potato… but this would work out fine too if it was raw) 

 

it will thicken. It gets all gloopy and great  just keep it on low on the stove while you do the next thing

 

eh you have to forgive my photographer. He tends to not understand actually being able to tell what’s going on in the picture. 

 

 

That’s better. See that cheezy stuff still simmering over there? It took a while. 

 

For this part wrap the fish in the bacon. Our favorite is catfish but the store was out so this is tilipia. This is the HARDEST part. 

 

When I was done wrapping the bacon the cheese mixture had thickened to amazingness. 

 

Mix it in with the root veggies. I put a little more butter because it didn’t mix well and I wanted to make sure it didn’t stick. 

 

Then put the au gratin veggies in the oven. For 20 min. Sit down and start your blog. 

 

(strawberry ale is OPTIONAL but recommended)

 

 

After about 20 minutes it will stir NICELY. Mix it all up and stick the fish in. 

 

 

Pretty much EVERYONE in the house kept wanting to look in the oven!

 

After about 10-15 minutes give it a turn and let it cook for 5-10 more minutes.

I finished it up on broil on high for about 3 minutes to crisp up the bacon. 

 

 

That’s a Zombie cutting the peppers for to have on the side. 

 

Ummm… this

 

 

 

yeah… I ate it all… there are ZERO leftovers… the kids actually scraped their plates and it was amazing… 

 

 

the non paleo-ish among us had cake for desert. You can thank the one with the hair for the really awesome clean kitchen in the pictures.