Eat to Live

Have you ever found yourself up in the middle of the night watching a P90X infomercial? No?

Ok, let me give you an idea of what it’s like:

Tony Horton shows you how easy it is to look like a beach God/Goddess while about 1,000 buff, gorgeous people give testimonials about how they went from flabby, couch sitting, beer drinking fatties into gorgeous, toned, muscle-covered beauties. They even have before and after photos of themselves…in bathing suits.

I get sucked into this infomercial just about every time it comes on and it always peeks my interest. Considering that our wedding is a little over 5 months away I really wanted to start getting into better shape so I reached out to one of my old high school friends who had done P90x after having her third baby (yes, her third baby and she still looks as gorgeous as she did in high school!).

My goal was to find out if  P90x was really realistic for someone who hasn’t been to the gym since oh, I don’t know, October, could do P90x and not die. She shared that P90x is challenging and requires a lot of dedication – you work out six days a week for an hour or more.

But, this post isn’t about P90X. In the course of telling me about P90X my friend (shout out Diana!) mentioned that she had read a book called Eat to Live and that it had changed her perspective on food and helped her lose weight after that third baby. Being a glutton for any sort of diet/nutrition book, I looked it up on line, found out it wasn’t another fad diet, and went to Barnes and Noble that night to pick it up.

Read Eat to Live for more info on a nutrient dense diet

The Eat to Live plan is based on eating a diet that is primarily cooked and raw vegetables and unlimited amounts of fruit, with limited animal fats, oils and processed foods. The book is full of studies and numbers on the effect of eating a mostly vegetarian diet. There were some really positive studies about this diet’s effect on cancer, heart disease and auto-immune diseases. Some people have even reversed heart disease and auto-immune diseases. Being someone who suffers from an auto-immune disease, I am delighted by the idea of getting back to being really healthy, having to take less medication, and the idea that weight loss is a possibility.

Eat to Live has a strict six week plan that requires you to eat no dairy, limited amounts of meat, hardly any oil, and tons and tons of fruits and veggies. After the six weeks, you can slowly add things back into your diet while watching how they affect your body and weight. It’s a lot like an elimination diet.

First Week’s Results

After a week on Eat to Live, I can honestly say that I noticed differences in my body right away. I didn’t feel as much anxiety, I slept better and I didn’t have any stomach issues (ahem, nausea, heartburn, indigestion, upset stomach and diarrhea – thanks Pepto Bismol for that nifty jingle that I can’t get out of my head).

I lost 2.4 lbs. and Travis lost about 4 lbs. We did cheat – having steak one night and going out for a weekend breakfast. The funny thing is that after eating the heavy breakfast we felt kind of gross immediately after. It wasn’t a good feeling so while we enjoyed the breakfast we were glad to have cheated and felt the difference in our bodies.

Recipes

I found that cooking more vegetarian meals is a new challenge. I’ll post some recipes later, but here’s a quick list of what I made last week:

• Vegetable Soup (made with eggplant, cilantro, brown rice, kidney beans, and a whole lot of veggies)
• Grilled Eggplant
• Vegetarian Chilli (made with butternut squash, black, kidney and pinto beans, celery, mushrooms, and carrots)
• Spiced apples in the Crockpot
• A whole lot of salads

The Challenges

A week without refined carbs, sugar and dairy left me craving one thing and one thing only. Cheese. Probably didn’t help that we watched an episode of the Best Thing I Ever Ate on Food Network and the topic was cheese. Other than that, I didn’t find eating this way difficult. I like fruits and veggies.  I was never hungry and watching the scale go down was great motivation. More to come on this as we tackle the next five weeks Eating to Live.