Yesterday was my first real day of intuitive eating. I actually tried to intuitively eat on Friday as well (recaps can be found here and here) but because the night ended with a meal + drinks out, I had no way of counting calories anyway. In the past, if I went out to a restaurant that did not provide nutritional info, I didn’t count calories that day. What’s the point of estimating? I’m sure I would be way off anyway. A meal out is always a bit of an indulgence anyway, so the best one can do is make good choices and the final calorie content will be what it will be. By the way, this statement may sound contradictory to this post, but it’s not. I still believe that restaurants should provide us with nutritional info so we can make informed decisions but if this info is not available and you believe the experience of a meal out may still be worth “the unknown” then make the choices you’ll be happy with at the end of the night and enjoy it! That’s my approach to eating out 
By anyway, I digress… yesterday all of my meals + snacks were prepared by me, so it would have been very easy to calculate exactly how many calories were consumed. But in line with my recent decision to stop calorie counting and attempt to eat intuitively, I resisted the urge to weigh my food and plug it all into Sparkpeople and just went with my gut. Let me tell you… this is going to be hard! I felt hungry a lot, and I didn’t know if I was hungry because I didn’t eat enough or because I just like eating all day long 
It was so strange not to have the reasurance of “math” telling me how I really feel. I had a bunch of snacks throughout the day and tried to make healthy choices. At the end I was happy with how the day went. I have no clue how many calories were consumed, but I know I ate well and treated my body with respect. That’s all I can ask of myself at the end of the day 
So here are my eats… how do you think I did?
Breakfast starred this new almond butter (for me) that my friend Katie swears by:
I made 1/2 cup of oats with 1/2 cup of organic skim milk, 1/2 cup of water, 1/2 banana + a handful of golden raisins… and topped it with 1/2 of the packet you see above.
The almond butter was slightly grainy (not necessary a bad thing) with a clear maple flavor. It was nice but I’m not in love. I think flavored nut butters are just not for me. What can I say, I’m a nut butter purist and a Barney Butter junkie
Oh and this sweet giant date jumped into my mouth too
Then I went to work and packed up a huge salad to go… farmers market mixed greens, strawberries, raspberries and gooseberries + herbed goat cheese and a few pecan pieces. I dressed it with 1T of Annie’s balsamic vinaigrette when lunch time arrived.
So many fun goodies in there!
I ate it with 1/2 of Food for Life 7-grain english muffin to add some complex carbs to the mix. The other half of the english muffin was consumed later as a snack with remainder of hummus (I didn’t end up needing the laughing cow cheese):
More snacks! Eaten over 7 hours or so…dinner was late!
KIND bars are one of my favorite kind of bars, and the yogurt coating is so good. It’s quite sweet though (especially since I haven’t had much white sugar lately) so I decided it was my dessert for the day. I think that’s a good compromise – having things with white sugar just once a day. The huge chunks of almonds in the bar (you can’t see them here, but trust me, there are WHOLE almonds in there… yum!) were awesome! Love KIND bars!
Dinner came out really well. I was starving when we finally came home after our Costco + shopping trip, but was determined to make a home cooked meal. On the menu: bbq chicken, red skin potatoes + sauteed spinach. All 3 came out so well!
For the chicken, I followed this recipe from the Cooking Light magazine for barbecue chicken with mustard glaze. I used boneless chicken breasts instead of bone-in chicken thighs since that’s what we had on hand (and I like leaner cuts of meat anyways) but otherwise followed it to the T (we use organic ketchup btw, regular ketchup contains HFCS – yuck!). I loved how a few ingredients made real bbq sauce! So cool Look at that juicy sauce… mmm.
The red skin potatoes I stabbed with a fork a few times and microwaved for 3 minutes. Then I cut them into little pieces and sauteed them with garlic and fresh rosemary. Hearty, healthy and delicious!
Lastly for a side of veggies, I sauteed some baby spinach with EVOO and garlic. My husband requested fresh cucumbers as his side dish but I like warm sides with warm entrees. This perfectly rounded out the meal
I didn’t eat all the chicken (trying to listen to my body!) so as a result, soon after dinner (despite being super full right after) I was hungry again. I waited about an hour (we were watching a movie) and finally grabbed a peach chobani (unpictured) to calm my stomach. Ok, now I was done 
By the way, the movie we watched was Milk. A little graphic at times, but very good (I can’t believe it was a real story… crazy!). Have you seen any good movies lately?
