Tag Archives: iron

What I Ate Wednesday: Photo Fail

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Alright so it’s been a while since my last What I Ate Wednesday post, and I was hoping that I could do it successfully today but of course I didn’t take enough pictures! Blast

Regardless, I’m still going to tell you what I ate. Because I can.

Breakfast was a super rushed bowl of oats and a cup of coffee, I actually only had a few sips of the coffee.. I was running really late.

In the oats went diced apple, peanut butter and these amazing free samples of flavored brown sugar that I got from a food show. I could eat it straight.. I mean, I may-or-may-not have done that already..

I only had a half-day at my internship, so no free hospital lunch today. In an effort to not buy a salad from Panera on my way home, I talked myself into dippy-eggs.

eggs

Spruced up a bit by serving over sautéed broccoli and onions. Plus coffee and toast.

For a little afternoon pick-me-up I had two Oreos. I made the mistake of bringing Andrew to the grocery store with me and I swear he’s like a 4-year-old kid sneaking food into the cart. Did you know that there is 150 calories in only TWO Oreos?? Plus I can’t pronounce half of the ingredient list. Mmmmm.

After a much-needed 4 mile run, I was soooo ready for dinner. I had put a pot roast in the crockpot before I left in the morning, and it was making the apartment smell so heavenly all day long.

Naturally, I forgot to take a picture of it but it was SO easy and so good. I just stuck a 1 and 1/2 pound top round (a leaner roast cut than most) in the bottom of the crockpot, seasoned it with S&P, rosemary and thyme. Then poured in 2 cups of beef broth and added baby carrots, a quartered onion and tri-color potatoes on top, set it to low and let it go for 10 hours. You could easily do this with a couple of chicken breasts too.

Speaking of beef.. remember how I thought my iron levels were a little low? Well I didn’t get any blood tests done, but after a few weeks of really ramping up my red meat consumption, I do feel better and have more energy. I think it was a combination of low iron levels and maybe eating a little too much sugar earlier in the day.

And that is exactly why I love nutrition. I didn’t need a doc to tell me anything, and I didn’t need any drugs to fix it. All I did was adjust my eating habits and voila!

Now please enjoy Annie’s ugly Christmas sweater :)

Have you recently changed with your eating habits? For what reason?

Sunday Funday

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Thanks so much for all your comments on my post yesterday regarding iron, I knew I could count on you guys for some solid input!

As for now, I’m going to play around with my diet a little more rather than taking a supplement. If my symptoms of fatigue continue, Ill definitely see a doc and run a blood test but I do truly believe it’s low iron. Also, vitamin C is a huge support in iron absorption and after dissecting my recent diet a bit more, I realized that I’ve been pretty low on that too.

A thick and hearty bolognese sauce over whole wheat pasta was my quick-fix for beef last night. I usually use a half pound lean ground beef when making pasta but I used a whole pound this time. Beefy.

Anyway, today I slept in even later than yesterday.. 10am! It’s so sad, in college I thought that was waking up at a decent time on the weekends, now it makes me feel like I wasted the day! What has happened to me…

When we were finally up and moving, we set out to run some quick errands. But of course, had to stop at Einstein’s for some coffee first. Pumpkin latte please! Andrew was also craving a bagel sandwich.

He called me a weirdo for taking a picture of our coffees, so I snapped a picture of him stuffing his face. HA. Punk.

After running around to Target, Publix and CostCo… (which, by the way, remind me to NEVER go to any of those places the weekend before Thanksgiving.. what was I thinking?) we head back home for a hefty day of cleaning. Along with everything else, we cleaned out the fridge and, well, it was bad. On the bright side though, I now have much more tupperware to use.

Now I’m working on a batch of baklava.. my signature dish for the holidays.

But that’s perfect for me to share tomorrow for a Monday Munchies post…

Have a good night everyone!

How did you spend your Sunday?

Where’s the beef?

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Yay for the weekend!

After sleeping in until around 9am this morning, Andrew and I got up to go on a little 5k training run to get ready for the Turkey Trot coming up this week! I definitely know I can do it, but he had never ran more than 3 miles before so he was looking to just finish strong.

We saw the cutest baby ducklings about half way through our run. I just had to stop and take a picture, but the momma duck started quacking at me so we got away quick after I snapped the photo.

It was really sticky and humid out since it rained pretty hard last night, so the run was a little tough.. but we finished! Andrew was so proud of himself. He has always hated running, so this is huge for him.

After chugging some water, I got to work on breakfast.

Broccoli and cheese omelet, topped with Siracha of course. With coffee and toast.

I’m feeling pretty good today after a solid nights sleep, a good run and a big breakfast.. but for some reason this week I was feeling very fatigued and just “off”.

I’ve actually been feeling like this for a few weeks now, and I initially thought it was the time change. But I’ve been getting a decent amount of sleep every night, and waking up hasn’t been an issue for me. Then I started thinking about other factors and realized that even though I’ve been eating balanced meals, my red meat consumption has declined quite a bit in the past month or so for a number of reasons.

This leads me to believe that my iron levels are low. I don’t think I’m anemic, because I have never had issues with anemia in the past, but I do know that fluctuating from your normal levels of specific nutrients can cause physical changes in your body. And iron is one of those sensitive nutrients. I do still get iron from other sources since I eat spinach almost daily, but I used to eat some type of red meat a few times a week, and now I hardly eat it at all.

So I could either start taking a multi that has iron or I could just eat more red meat. Normally I would just say more red meat because I’m a believer in eating whole foods for the nutrients you need rather than getting it from artificial sources, but the cost of beef is going to skyrocket soon. Why? Think of all the drought we had here in the US this past summer. All of the corn and grass that normally feeds our cows was in very little supply. And you can figure out the rest…

Anyway, this whole debacle has caused me to rethink the way I eat. Maybe I should just totally stop eating red meat? I don’t think I would truly miss it.

What do you think? Do you eat red meat?