Belated Lifestyle Changes

I know everyone else wrote their lifestyle posts at New Year's, but I'm a bit of a slowcoach. I've been mulling over certain ideas for a few weeks now and, as I write this, realize I have already implemented most of them, but I just had't been ready to codify them.

• Chose healthy fats.
• Eat more fruits and vegetables, grains and legumes.
• Buy grass-fed and/or organic meats.
• Buy wild caught fish of discoverable provenance.
• Focus on local ingredients.
• Drink more water.
• Consume less caffeine.

It's nothing groundbreaking, really. And nothing I haven't tried before. Just eat more real foods, blahdyblahdyblah. But I want to give it a real go and make a success of these thar lifestyle choices, because I haven't felt "really" or even "very" good often lately and my skin is frequently aflame with unhappiness. So. There's that.

You might think this would mean a more rigorous adherence to Weight Watchers and you'd be right ... and wrong. Calculating Points+ for every recipe I make is not only time-consuming, but also just plain annoying. So, I've given up tracking Points+ and am trying the "Simply Filling" technique. This means I eat exclusively from the Power Foods list without counting the Points+ values of those foods. I determine portion sizes and there are no Points+ to track unless I eat foods not included on the Power Foods list. So, lots of the things I want to be eating and no math unless I eat chocolate cake. Or avocados. Or olives. Or plantains.

I don't completely agree with the Power Foods list -- avocados are way better than fat-free mayonnaise (imho), but I can eat as much fat-free mayo as I like. Fruit juice must be counted, but a six-pack-a-day of diet soda is okay. Plantains are calculable. A boatload of sugar-free gelatin is just fine.

What does this mean for Savory Tart? Probably not much. I'll still be here, flinging flour around the kitchen and talking about food, but there will be less talk about bacon and 2012's month of grilled cheese madness is unlikely to be repeated. And you may anticipate a decided uptick in semi-hysterical "OMG! I bought this reallyweirdfruit/vegetable and I don't know what to do with it!" posts.