Eating Healthy Yummy and On the Go!

by jen edmondson July 24, 2018

How Many of You Are Trying to Eat Healthy?

Photo of a cutting board with fresh health veggies onions, carrots and red leaf lettuce

Probably most of you! If not for aesthetic reasons, then most definitely for health reasons. As I age, I am trying to eat more healthfully and I have some tips to share with you!

My Eating Over The Years.

Throughout my life, while I have always had a huge appetite, I have always eaten moderately well consuming a wide range of foods. I love salad and veggies and cheese and meat about as much as I love candy, cakes and ice cream. Of course, a good authentic sourdough slice always makes my day too! Bottom line, while I ate both good and bad foods, and in large quantities, I thought for the most part I was balanced in my food intake.

Welcome to Old Age & Food Monitoring

Well, without getting into TMI about my health, I recently learned I was wrong. I had to have surgery last year on part of my digestive tract (this is just so embarrassing) and now I need to watch my fiber intake on a near daily basis.

At first I was journaling my food intake at every meal and it was getting exhausting! But then I was turned on to a phone app from my trainer friend Jordan at Purposefully Fit which makes tracking my food (and other health information) so so so easy!! The free app is called My Fitness Pal Logo for My Fitness Pal Phone App by Under Armour

by Under Armor and you can download It from the app store. This app tracks A LOT OF INFORMATION and aggregates it for you into a full nutritional profile for the day. (BTW I am sure it can do many other things, I just use it to track my nutrition). I simply type in my foods or I can link a recipe from online or, best of all, I can scan the bar code of the food product I consumed, and all the nutrition information is magically uploaded.

Well I now had this great tool plus I was increasing my fibrous foods like my favorite veggies and I was adding fruits of which I am not really a fan. Another awesome high fiber item I added back into my diet was oatmeal and I do like oatmeal. As a kid, I would make chocolate oatmeal with cocoa and sugar. (BTW, did you know cocoa is a GREAT source of fiber? 1 Tablespoon has 1.8 g of fiber?!?!?). So I started making this again and it was a real boon to my total fiber for the day! Most days, by 8:00 am I had nearly 1/3 of my daily fiber requirement covered! But unfortunately boiling the oatmeal, adding the ingredients, waiting for it to cool etc. was just way too much time for this “always-in-a-hurry” person.

TA-DA! A Miraculous Solution!

I had been recently seeing posts on Instagram and Pinterest about overnight oats that you make the night before and then the next morning, you grab and go! I decided to give it a try. Right out of the gate I found the most delicious recipe!! The recipes is from Wholefully.com, a fantastic source of really delish, easy and healthy recipes. (go check them out asap!) The post had a base recipe that had several flavor variations. I tried the chocolate peanut butter and was SO WOWED!!! It is thick and creamy and satisfying! It does NOT seem like you are eating something healthy!!! I tried the banana chocolate chip too and while it was good, I headed right back to the chocolate peanut butter one. The flavors in their blog post are as follows: Chocolate Peanut Butter, Carrot Cake, Banana Chocolate Chip, Tropical Fruit, Strawberry Cheesecake, Pumpkin Spice, and classic.

I did make a few modifications to the recipe for my own personal taste. Here is the recipe from www.Wholefully.com and my version side by side.

Classic Overnight Oats (Chocolate Peanut Butter)	Overnight Oats for Sugar-Addicts (Chocolate Peanut Butter)
WHOLEFULLY.com	EDMONDSON laughingfrogstudio.com
1/3 cup plain Greek yogurt	1/3 cup plain Greek yogurt
½ cup (heaping) rolled oats	½ cup (heaping) gluten free rolled oats
2/3 cup unsweetened milk of choice	2/3 cup whole milk
1 Tablespoon chia seeds or ground flaxmeal	1 Tablespoon chia seeds
½ teaspoon vanilla extract	½ teaspoon vanilla extract
2 Tablespoons natural peanut butter	2 Tablespoons Jiff smooth peanut butter
2 Tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder	2 Tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder
Pinch of salt	Pinch of salt
0-2 Tablespoons honey or maple syrup	1 Tablespoon honey + 1 Tablespoon raw sugar
	Mini nestles morsels

* NOTE: 1 Tablespoon raw sugar = 3 packets of raw sugar from a restaurant.

Ingredients for Edmondson version of Chocolate Peanut Butter Overnite Oats

You may notice mine is not quite as healthful, it has a lot more sugar (and there are lots of things to be said about sugar and how it affects the body). But for me the goal was to drastically up my fiber. If it was not palatable, I would not eat it. So there is sugar involved in my version in order for me to insure that I get enough fiber daily. But of course there are lots of alternatives to sugar like honey, syrup, agave, etc.

1 Tablespoon Raw Sugar for Edmondson Overnite Oats

So, I am telling you that you must definitely try overnight oats if you are trying to lose weight or trying to up your fiber for health reasons. And I wholefully (wink wink) suggest you start with www.Wholefully.com because they know what they are doing for sure.

Finally a Couple of Tips.

Wide Mouth Funnel a Must Have for Overnite Oats

Get a wide mouthed funnel! Just do it! Makes getting the concoction into the jars so much easier!
Don’t buy a jar! Use Ball canning jars you may have sitting around. Or how about one of those e jelly jars with the cute red gingham lids from Bonne Maman Jelly. A recycled Smuckers jelly jar will work too.
Make a couple of recipes so during the week you can choose from several different flavors depending on your mood that morning
When you are done eating it, fill the jar with water right away to let it soak – just trust me on this.
Make it more fun an elegant by using a vintage silverplate spoon!! We can even personalize stamp a spoon especially for you so that when you eat your oatmeal on the go, your spoon doesn’t get lost…..everyone will know it is yours because it will have your name on it!

Bonus Information Top Fiber Foods

I try to be sure to have at least one of these a day!

Avocado 10 grams – 1 cup sliced
Pear – 4.3 grams – 1 cup sliced
Broccoli – 5.1 grams – 1 cup boiled
Oatmeal – 4 grams – 1 cup old fashioned cooked (not instant)
Cocoa – 1.8 grams 1 Tablespoon
Sweet Potato – 4 grams – 1 cup cubed
Black Beans – 15 grams – 1 cup cooked
Chia Seeds – approx. 5 grams - 1 Tablespoon

In Conclusion (ha ha ha, just wanted to sound formal)

If you try our recipe or Wholefully's recipe, let us know how it went and leave us a comment. We're real excited to hear from you!

If you wanna see more recipes we have either created or tried, choose "Recipes" under topics above. But here is one straight away. When Did That Happen - I Suddenly Like Baked Beans

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