It has been several months since my last blog entry. In the five years of the blog, I have never taken such a break from writing about food, and I missed the blog quite a bit. After a while, I started to think that I did not have much to contribute to the food and health world. But a lot of people told me that they missed reading the blog every day, which meant a lot. Now that I have more things to write about, I am back.

Over the weekend I watched Julie and Julia with a friend. I love this movie, and I love Julia (as most readers of this blog know). It reminded me how fun the blog was and how it was nice to have a project to work on.

Back at the end of February I joined Weight Watchers to get back to my “race weight” for running. I did not find Weight Watchers nearly as successful as I did when I first used it back in 2006 or 2007. I think one reason I did not have as much success this time around is because I had a lot less weight to lose. I lost three pounds on the program, which is great – but I still have a few pounds to go. I found that following the plan I was hungry a lot and it made working out a lot more difficult and it made running long distances almost impossible.

It also took away almost all of my enthusiasm for food. I love food and I enjoy nothing more than cooking and preparing wonderful food for my friends and family. Weight Watchers really put a damper on this and I did not find food fun anymore. Today I cancelled my membership, and I have brought the blog back to life. I hope that by doing these two things at once I might be able to achieve a couple of more pounds of weight loss, and rediscover my joy of food!

I also started another project today. Several of my friends have found success in a five day ‘cleanse’ and I talked to them about what they did for that period of time. I do not know if calling this project a cleanse portrays the correct image – because it is not a thing where you just drink water or grapefruit juice all day every day. This program you take out a lot of food from your diet for five days (dairy, soy, wheat / gluten, sugar and processed foods basically) and you still eat plenty of things. Organic chicken, organic fruits and vegetables, brown rice, whey protein, grass fed beef, almond milk, oats, quinoa, olive oil, nuts, beans, and many more foods. You are by no means depriving your body. I have also heard of similar plans like this called “clean eating”.

I started eating “clean” this morning. I hope to follow this eating pattern until Friday at 5pm. I woke up this morning really excited to start this new way of eating. I had prepped a lot of food last night. I started off my morning by making a smoothie:

The ingredients in the smoothie were: spinach, strawberries, blueberries, a handful of raw oats, ice, water, a scoop of vanilla whey protein, and a splash of almond milk. It was not a pretty color – but it tasted really good!

I was surprised how satisfying this smoothie was. I did not need my morning snack until 10:50 this morning! The morning snack was a small banana:

I was very excited when it was finally time to eat my lunch today. I got my salad and dressing out of the refrigerator twenty minutes before I wanted to eat it. The fridge is very cold at work, so I figured taking the chill off the salad might be a good idea. I was really looking forward to this salad:

I prepped the salad last night and made my own dressing. The dressing was a couple of splashes of balsamic vinaigrette, a dash of olive oil, a smidge of sea salt, and a couple of twists of freshly ground pepper.

The salad was a mix of spinach, arugula, cucumbers, tomato, carrots, 3 ounces of chicken breast and a sprinkle of sunflower seeds. (The seeds were a great way to add crunch because I always love croutons in my salad – I missed them less due to the seeds.)

At 2:45 I had an apple with a tablespoon of peanut butter (I love that you can eat nut butter in this clean eating idea)

Tonight for dinner I am cooking up a piece of halibut, some brown rice and a bunch of vegetables for dinner. I will be sure to post a dinner picture at some point tonight or tomorrow.

Well, I am signing off for now. Be well, readers!

**Please note that I am not recommending this clean eating to readers. I am not following a specific program, and I am not a nutritionist. I simply like the idea of eating non-processed foods for a short period of time and would like to share my experience with you. I am not suggesting this way of eating to anyone who might read this blog.