Leo Babauta: what i eat
I overate a bit during the holidays (gasp!), and also had a series of visitors in the last few months who helped me to eat a lot of great food … so I’ve decided to cut back on my eating for awhile. It just feels better when I do that.
So now I eat 4-5 small vegan meals (not that small meals are important – it’s just convenient for me) composed pretty much of these items:
- Protein: Tempeh, tofu, lentils soy yogurt and soy milk. Also a vegan protein powder (Plant Fusion), which I just do out of convenience (I get enough protein without it).
- Veggies: Kale, spinach, broccoli, carrots, squash, garlic are my main choices.
- Fruits: Apples and blueberries mostly.
- Seeds, nuts & oil: Raw almonds and walnuts, ground flaxseeds, olive oil. Sometimes avocadoes.
This makes shopping and meal prep pretty simple. My shopping list is small.
My day looks like this:
- Around noon, eat soy yogurt, blueberries, almonds and flaxseeds.
- After a workout, I drink the soy milk and vegan protein powder (mostly hemp, pea and brown rice proteins).
- Twice during the day (mid-afternoon and early evening) I eat tempeh or tofu. For example, tempeh with kale, garlic and olive oil. I might add lentils to that. Or a tofu scramble with greens, carrots, zucchini, onions, garlic, olive oil.
- When I’m hungry I’ll have an apple and a handful of nuts. Usually twice a day.
Why wait until noon? No big reason. For awhile I experimented with intermittent fasting, didn’t found it made a big difference but liked the convenience of eating in a smaller window. What I learned, though, is that eating breakfast isn’t as important as we normally think — we’re just fine without it. And so now I have a more relaxed attitude about when I need to start eating.