healthy laps

That’s right…after about 5 months of not having any meat, I gave in.  I ate chicken at lunch today.

Now, don’t get me wrong – there is nothing wrong with eating meat.  Personally, I have never loved meat, and even poultry made me a little quesy.  It makes me feel sluggish after eating it.  So a few months ago, I decided to cut it out of my diet to see how my body responded.

I responded well.  I added in more beans and other forms of protein and fueled my body in a way that worked for me.  I felt great!  I feel great!  For the past few years, I really think that the only reason I ate chicken was because it was what we made for dinner every night.  Once I started to really get into cooking, I realized that I can make so many fabulous vegetarian dishes, that I was never missing the meat.

I never wanted meat after that.  I craved fresh vegetables and beans.  I loved eating big salads with veggies, nuts and cheeses.  I still love that.

Recently, however, I have been wanting chicken.  I’m not sure why.  Maybe because my eating has been a little sub-par due to not making grocery shopping a priority or maybe because I haven’t been eating as much protein.  Whatever it was, I wanted to see how my body responded to the chicken after so long without it.

So, today I took a leap and ordered chicken on my salad!

I only ate a small amount to make sure everything sat well in my tummy – so far so good.

But, let me tell you what I discovered – I did not love it, by any means!  I want to continue to be open with myself and eat what my body wants.  I would choose a vegetarian dish over meat any day, no doubt.  But if my body thinks that I want chicken, then I might give it a little chicken every now and then.

I have never considered myself to be a vegetarian, but I do eat a mainly vegetarian diet.

I eat fish every so often, especially in the summer and sometimes want tuna fish, like last night.  I want to eat what my body craves, so even though I don’t see myself making a chicken dinner any time soon, I am happy with my decision today! 🙂

The best part about having a blog, is that I can look back and actually see when the last time I had chicken was!  Check it out:

• I had a bite of chicken back in March.
• I ate BBQ chicken pizza back in February.

So cool!

Anyways, enough rambling about my meat eating…on to my eats for the day.

Breakfast was fun.

2 scrambled eggs with a cinnamon raisin bagel

It felt like the weekend with this meal!  I loved it.

For lunch, I headed to Panera Bread and ordered the Fuji Apple Chicken Salad with no cheese and the dressing on the side.

Served with a baguette, this salad was delicious and very summery.

I love cheese, but sometimes I order salad’s without it.  If the salad already has a lot going on, which this one did, then I don’t need the cheese and extra calories.

This salad and baguette really filled me up, so my afternoon snack was light – yogurt and cherries.

After work, I headed out for a run.  Just a quick run tonight (30 min ~ 3.5 miles) + a 10 minute cool-down walk because I was hungry for dinner!

I heated up some Trader Joe’s Tomato Soup & a Grilled Cheese and had dinner within minutes!

Mmmmm…simple dinners are perfect for the summer!

Filed under: Eating Laps | Tagged: dinner, eggs, Running Laps, salad |