Cleaning out my Diet - Top 25 Superfoods

An evening to myself... ahh, doesn't happen too often, my boyfriend's a poker nut and is out gracing the tables as I type this :-)

So, I'm sat here watching/listening to MTV2... so far I have been treated to guns 'n' roses, pearl jam, vintage blur , rage against the machine and now some awesome smashing pumpkins :-) All with a cheeky glass of red wine (a very small one, mind) as my Carlsberg 0.5% lager has run out, boo :-( it has truly become one of the staples of my diet as I'm trying to lay off the 'real' stuff!

I really should try and cut out alcohol, at least during the week, but I don't really drink much to be honest and baby steps eh? I'm not sure I can commit to eating an entirely clean diet! 8-O not just yet anyway ;-)

So, enough of the waffling... I've decided to trial some muscle and fitness mags to see what I think of them. In the past I've only ever tended to buy Men's Fitness magazine as Men's Health is a bit too all-encompassing, fashioning itself more as a counterpart, or complement to the 'healthy' mags us girls get, with more of a focus on style and male emotions, with actual fitness and strength training seemingly appearing as an incidental aside. That saying, the men on the front covers are pretty hot

Yes, I am that shallow ;-)

hehe, no seriously, my 'point', if I actually had one, was that I could definitely take Men's Fitness more seriously as there is/was more training tips and less moaning about erectile dysfunction

god, that sounds like my spam folder!

Anyway! Right, I bought Muscle & Fitness magazine the other day, as well as Ultra Fit. Less impressed by the latter as the 'women's fitness' section just seems to have some woman prancing about doing star jumps and skipping rope... hmmm.. That said, they do have a lot of info about cycling, triathlon, and a bit of strength training thrown in to boot - fancy! Will have to read it in full and get back to you on that

Muscle & Fitness I am very impressed with, however... despite the really scary looking body builders featured in the ads! I like the fact that their homepage title goes "...the Bodybuilding Magazine for fitter, stro..." and then stops... it's almost like my blog title... c'mon!

So, they've got some great articles, including one on the legend that was Bruce Lee.

But the article that really caught my attention was one on nutrition... a subject that I've always had a huge interest in - I wanted to become a dietitian after thinking what a fabulous job the one at King's College Hospital did after I gave birth (13 years ago next Tuesday!), I was in for 2 weeks as my son was quite premature and was ravenously hungry, she was just fantastic, I was so impressed.

I ended up in IT, for my sins, oh well! Still always been (probably a little too) interested in the food I consume, hence why I've used Weight Loss Resources for the past few years... okay I have strayed to other sites but have always come back to WLR, it satisfies the huge food geek in me!!

So anyway, the article starts:

THE USUAL SUSPECTS
We've listed the top 25 foods that should be a regular part of your training table.

EATING CLEAN GETS A BAD RAP.
When people see you have a decent-size pair of arms and a six-pack, they typically assume you live on a diet of dry chicken breasts, unseasoned sweet potatoes and the occasional side of broccoli. The perception is that the foods necessary for building and maintaining muscle are bland and repetitive. But a strange thing happened when we started to compile a list of the best foods for the body-conscious: we realised we were spoiled for choice – it's hard to cap the list at a mere 25. That's a testament to how varied a muscle-building diet can be. Or, more accurately, it's a testament to how accepting this lifestyle is. Yes, there's a lot of hard work involved, both in and out of the gym, but your reward for training hard is eating almost anything you want – as long as you time it right. Jelly beans (after workouts), onion rings (on cheat days) and a juicy rib eye (on low-carb days) can all fit into an eating programme designed to get you big and ripped. The 25 foods presented here, listed alphabetically, aren't the only foods you're allowed to eat; they're merely those that should most often line your shelves and feed your muscles. Bon appétit...

I'll list the top 25 foods featured, grouped into categories (because I'm nice like that)

So, in no particular order:

Meat
Chicken Breast
Rump Steak

Fish
Salmon
Tuna

Dairy
Eggs
Cottage Cheese

Grains
Porridge Oats
Quinoa
Wholemeal Bread
Brown Rice

Vegetables
Spinach
Sweet Potato
Broccoli

Fruit
Grapefruit
Apple
Banana
Watermelon
Blueberries

Nuts and Legumes
Walnuts
Peanut Butter
Black Beans

Drinks
Green Tea
Coffee
Gatorade

Healthy Fats
Olive Oil

It's worth buying the magazine yourself to see the individual articles on the different foods. Each one is given points out of five for its fat burning properties, muscle building capabilities and convenience (grab and go) factor

Aside from Gatorade... which I cannot understand, and am a bit dubious of, everything listed makes sense... and I'm super excited to see that peanut butter has a place there (apparently, being high in mono-unsaturated fats it is not only heart, but also waistline, friendly - rock on!)

So, what I plan to do is embrace and incorporate these 'superfoods' into my life and diet... welcome, oh superfoods, to the bosom of my fridge (and cupboard(s)!)

the (rather) good news (for me) is that 99% of the foods listed are already firmly ensconced in my diet, although not given the priority and due attention/exposure that they obviously so fully deserve!

In brief (yeah right, I hear you say), yesterday I had brown rice, salmon and broccoli (remember that!), today we had quorn escalopes with sweet potato and carrot mash as well as mixed spicy beans and broccoli, jolly nice it was too - even my son loved the mash, commenting on how filling it was as well as tasty!



OMG Radiohead - Creep - has just come on... swooon
Saw them last year in Victoria Park, heavenly

Sorry, I should really wrap this up as my glass of wine is nearly empty and it really really shouldn't be refilled...

So yes, plan is to
1) cook with these foods
2) devise/plagiarise (kidding!) recipes
3) and then write/bore you to tears about them.

Care to read? (actually, if you've made it this far down the page I'm really impressed!)

I shall start with Quinoa... which represents the only food on the list that I've not ever eaten

watch this space x