superfitbabe

Now that 2016 is finally upon us, you’re probably very familiar with everyone around you making resolutions to be more efficient, to be more motivated, to change something, and of course, to make healthier lifestyle changes such as eating better, waking up earlier or exercising more. I think all of these are awesome–people should be investing their time and effort into health much more than they normally do; doing so takes care of so many investments that you won’t have to worry about later on, and you will feel, look and perform much better.

While I don’t have any concrete NYR’s for my own diet, I would like to make a little bit of changes in reflection to how I’ve been eating this past winter break. Yes, it’s a vacation and I should live it up, but I don’t have to necessarily go overboard. There were also some claims I made in the past where I seemed very determined to make a change, but I didn’t stick to it as planned for other reasons, which I will clear up down below. Below I’ve listed a bunch of changes that I’ve either thought about making myself on my own, or what I’ve seen other people doing and my thoughts. Anyways, I’ve broken everything down into bullet points to make things easier to read, so I hope that these all help!

• Transition into a plant based diet: You can probably tell by last week that I ate a lot of meat, eggs and Greek yogurt, and I have posted a few photos of food with seafood or dairy on my Instagram. I have the information, I have the knowledge. So why am I not taking advantage of it, might you ask? Well, it’s because despite everything I’m aware of, my body still craves for animal products. It’s said to be absolutely normal during the transition, and I want to be as in tune with my body as possible. Whenever I shoveled vegetables in my face and refused to touch a slab of meat, I’d still feel hungry no matter how much I overate. I also don’t want to make things harder for my family, especially my mother, who works very hard with what she does. When I found out that she put cow’s milk in her soup, I got very angry at her for doing so knowing that I was lactose intolerant. However, my out-lash was wrong, because she only put in a tablespoon’s worth in an entire pot. The world doesn’t revolve around me, and it never will. My general philosophy is that everyone is on their own journey. It can be as rapid as overnight or as lengthy as more than a year. Every step counts. There is no such thing as going backward, but only a delay.

• Bulking: Who wouldn’t want an excuse to eat 3000-4000 more calories a day, right? Not only that, you have the permission to eat fast food, candy, sweets, cheese, anything you ever want, without calling it a cheat and still considering it to be “on track”. It’s very easy for me to sneak in extra calories, such as more peanut butter, coconut oil, egg yolks, fruit, nuts, seeds, chocolate, grains and everything else with no trouble; BUT, it is also very easy for me to feel full. If you remember my experience with intermittent fasting, there were times when it actually didn’t take a huge amount of food to satisfy my hunger. Most of the time, it was probably because I drank a lot of water or tea, or just ate everything in a quick amount of time–which isn’t good all in itself. I looked into it further, and a lot of the guidelines recommended eating double or triple the amount of carbs, protein and fats you already do, which is actually very very hard if you get full easily! I don’t want to be bulking if that means shoving junk food in my face and making myself feel like crap. Plus, there has to be a legitimate reason why I would need to bulk, so I shouldn’t just do it for no reason. But who knows? I just might want a biiiiiiig bubble butt and some guns someday!

• Juicing: Recapping from my RAW Generations Juices cleanse, I wouldn’t do another one anytime soon. Juices, however, are delicious on their own as a supplement for smoothies or for a little refresher along with a meal. Otherwise, I don’t want to deal with the metabolic damage and horrid side effects after the cleanse.

• Intermittent fasting: I go much more into depth with this in a Tuesday Thoughts post, but I’ve actually had some pretty decent experiences with intermittent fasting, despite the hangry stomach pains, food comas, carb hangovers, obsession with what to eat, and other unpleasant side effects. Obviously, I won’t do intermittent fasting every single day, nor every week even, but I think it’s a very useful tool for me to use if I have a jam-packed schedule or a special occasion that also has a big, yummy feast! So intermittent fasting is definitely still in my pocket if I ever will need it. Plus, it’s great for an Indian buffet!

• Sugar detox: This sounded appealing…..for like, seven seconds.

• IIFYM/Flexible Dieting: To be quite honest, IIFYM sounds the most appealing out of all of the supposed “diets” I’ve seen around, because it is most catered to being a way of life. It is just so flexible that you can literally reach your weight loss goals by eating ANYTHING at all….so as long as they fit the numbers. I’ll get into more depth in a future post, but when I calculated what I needed to maintain my macros, I got some extremely interesting, some pretty whacko actually, results–almost similar to calorie counting. So I’m not quite sure if I’d actually do it or even if it’s the right route for me.

• Souping: Better than juicing, but no. On the other hand, butternut squash soup for dinner every day wouldn’t be too shabby.

• The 10,000 Calorie Challenge: It just looks way too difficult and risky to try it, as fun as it is to watch others on YouTube try it and to shove a huge healthy pizza in my face.

• The Eat-Chocolate-Every-Day Diet: Yep, got that in check 😉

Hopefully that explains and clears everything about what’s been going on in my food life! I’m really just continuing to eat intuitively, but also eating as wholesome with as little processed sugars, chemicals or weird additives as possible. That being said, it was the holidays and I didn’t restrict myself to anything I wanted to try, and it shouldn’t be that way anyways. Sometimes you just have to try new things, which includes new tastes, and then just get back on track the next day if you desire.

Food shouldn’t be something that’s tasteless, worrisome or nauseating, but it should be a balance of nourishment and pleasure; if you want to try something new and crazy, go for it, but don’t feel obligated to make a change if you’re already happy with your life.

What crazy diet trends have you heard about for 2016? Are you trying something new this year?