Eating the Rainbow

image found here

Well Phase 2 is a bit more challenging than I thought it would be. Essentially it's only fruits and vegetables so no more rice milk, rice, beans, etc. (Though we have included nuts and quinoa.)

It's really brought up the fact of how much we bury our food in sauces, butter, and salt! I'm learning to taste and enjoy the actual vegetable so that's a plus.

Some of our meal highlights:
*Nick made these fabulous roasted tomatoes over quinoa along with butternut squash, asparagus and red pepper. It was quite delicious and the plate was so colorful - like eating the rainbow. (I'm realizing I should have been documenting these dinners with pictures... oh well, I suppose that's the motivation that we'll have to have these dishes again!)
*Overall, we've done a lot of stir fries over quinoa which include carrots, onions, garlic, broccoli, kale - yum!
*Monday night was the most challenging, however, because we got last minute tickets to the Mariner's game (and it was a beautiful night to go) -- we had a good filling stir fry for dinner - and knew it would be hard to pass up baseball food so we came equipped with home made guacamole, green peppers, almonds and medjool dates. Though those are all delicious things they just didn't compete with the loaded hot dogs, garlic fries, popcorn, nachos, ice cream and beer that kept attacking our senses...sigh, but we stayed strong and ate our own snacks. And though I craved those things I don't really crave how I feel after I indulge.

Yes, this phase has been the most challenging and limited, but I still am feeling great. I am not hungry throughout the day, I've mastered the protein shake using water (and not rice milk), the first couple days were a bit disgusting until I figured out how to get them back to smoothie consistency... and I have so much more energy and clarity at work. I've powered through some projects I was dreading and have caught up on my weekly to-do list (It's only Wednesday! Wahoo!)