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Inspired by Lucie Fink from Refinery 29’s Try Living with Lucie, I decided to do something a little bit more interesting this week: since I got the chance to go home during the earlier weekend, I got the idea of eating healthy for 5 days (because that’s the days worth fresh foods I could bring back) to try out what it’s like to change up my diet once in a while. I also had 2 of my bottom teeth extracted during the weekend, so it would be difficult to eat the usual foods that the dining hall serves! This change was also because I felt like I haven’t been consuming enough greens from the dining hall because they usually serve vegetables like white cabbage in soups, and it’s really difficult to try to ask the dining hall lady to give me more vegetables. I decided to take this matter into my own hands by bringing my own fresh greens!
I substituted white rice in the dining hall for brown rice, porridge or quinoa, I added more fresh vegetables like carrots and broccoli into my diet, I consumed more proteins for breakfast, I drank a lot more water, and I made a lot of soups! But because I don’t usually have free blocks before lunch to go back and cook, I decided to stick with the dining hall lunch, keeping in mind to cook some vegetables after class to compensate for the lack of greens for the previous meal.
Here’s a detailed breakdown of what I had for the week:
MONDAY
Breakfast:
Crunchy muesli in milk
Lunch:
Dining hall food + Vegetable soup with broccoli and carrots
Dinner:
Mushy brown rice with tempeh
Miso soup with mushrooms and fresh seaweed
Because this was the first day I had to cook meals by myself, it was quite difficult to think of meal plans and rationing how much food I can consume in a week. The dinner was completely unplanned: I just had to make do with whatever there was in the fridge and on the table. The miso came as a pleasant surprise: one of my friends found out I was cooking for the week and offered a bag of ingredients to make miso! It was surely a godsend because I didn’t bring ANY soup stock – just salt to make ALL my soups, and I was starting to get worried.
TUESDAY
Breakfast:
Peach and strawberry parfait
Lunch:
Dining hall food + Steamed broccoli and carrots
Dinner:
Vegetable soup with cloves, star anise, and anise seeds
Mushy brown rice with Cili Padi Chicken (from the DH)
Because I had Greek yogurt in the fridge, I decided to try to make something I’ve never made before – parfait! It tasted really good: the way the crunchy muesli blended in with the soft and fluffy Greek yogurt was certainly a good way to start the morning. As for dinner, I only had the mushy brown rice because it was already late and I didn’t manage to cook much. I brought the mushy brown rice to the dining hall in a bowl and ate it with the vegetables and cili padi chicken served at the dining hall. The soup was a real surprise: because I didn’t have many ingredients, I had to experiment a lot with stuff I could find around the house! I ended up getting inspiration from tea. There was a can of The Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf’s Chai spiced tea sitting on the table, and I read through the ingredients to find out they had cloves, star anise, and anise seeds in each of the tea bags! I cut open one tea bag and filtered out the ingredients I wanted and added them to the soup. Surprisingly enough, it turned out really yummy!
WEDNESDAY
Breakfast:
Brown rice porridge with vegetables and tempeh
Lunch:
Dining hall food
Dinner:
Quinoa with Sambal udang chili rangup
Dining hall chicken
I cooked the porridge on Tuesday night so I wouldn’t have to rush to have my breakfast and run to class in the morning. The porridge was a surprise success – I have never cooked porridge before ever in my life, and it actually turned out well. The porridge wasn’t too watery, neither was it too sticky. I ate it with tempe to add a little bit more flavour to the porridge, and also as a way of adding protein to my breakfast. It was also my first time eating quinoa, and it really does taste interesting. It has the texture of grains mixed in rice, and it’s crunchy, but it’s tasteless. To me, rice has a very distinct taste, but quinoa has none! I enjoyed the chewy feel of the quinoa, paired with the crispy sambal udang.
THURSDAY
Breakfast:
Boiled egg and Miso soup with mushrooms and fresh seaweed
Lunch:
Penang Seafood Curry Laksa Maggi (not part of the plan)
Snack:
Quinoa with Sambal Udang
Dinner:
Dining Hall food
By the time it was Thursday, I got really tired of cooking and eating healthy. I realized that the more I tried to control my eating, the more I started to crave for unhealthy foods that I don’t usually like! I woke up at 6.45 in the morning, and the first thing I did was boil an egg for breakfast. I thought that would fill me up, but I was craving for more miso! I made a bowl of miso soup before heading off to class, but the whole time in class I was envisioning a hundred and one different ways to cook my Maggi. It was absolute torture! I sped off to my room after class and made the noodles straight away. The hot and spicy taste of the soup was so tantalizing to my taste buds, it was a great relief to have the Maggi visions stop T.T Even though the Maggi tasted good and managed to fill me, it didn’t have the nutrients that I needed. By the time class ended at around 5, I was shaking and shivering when I went back to my room. I made some quinoa and sambal to fill me up before dinner. I realized that I really couldn’t keep this on or else I would end up eating a lot more junk.
FRIDAY
Breakfast:
2 boiled eggs
Lunch:
Dining hall food
I’m glad that Friday lunch was the last of ‘healthy eating’ woes. I’ll continue eating at the dining hall for the rest of my meals.
FINAL THOUGHTS
Personally, I’ve always been the type of person who just eats anything any dining hall throws at me, but I subconsciously stay away from fatty foods or fast foods because I never grew a liking for it. Generally speaking, I believe I’ve eaten balanced meals all my life, and I thought this change would be easy, or maybe fire up the health freak deep inside me enough to turn this into a lifestyle. But after experiencing this for (almost) 5 days, I don’t see myself changing into this lifestyle anytime soon. Why? First of all, it’s a real hassle to have to cook for myself every day, especially since I have classes all wedged together that it’s difficult to even find time to walk all the way back to my room! Secondly, I end up craving for unhealthy foods even more, and the more I try to control it, the more I end up eating: which is a terrible vicious cycle to be in! Even though I eat quinoa for snacks and all, I still have to eat a lot more than I usually do to stay full. Thirdly, I don’t go back every weekend, so it’ll become really difficult to stock up on foods once they finish. Besides, there’s only so much food you can have in a small fridge that you’re sharing between 2 people. The worst part is: some fresh foods like the vegetables and eggs can’t be kept for long, so that means I’d have to go out every weekend just to maintain this lifestyle. Fourthly, there’s not much variety in the type of foods that I can make. I had to eat broccoli and carrots for the whole week that I got bored of them. It may have been easier have there been more choices like spinach, long beans or Kailan, Fifth, it became difficult to decide how much of what I should eat in a day because I’ve been too accustomed to the idea that a balanced meal consists of rice with veggies and chicken: carbs, fibre, and protein. Substituting these with things like quinoa and tempeh for protein might take some time and A LOT of discipline to get used to. I might try to incorporate more quinoa into my diet in school, or try to change into this lifestyle after I graduate from boarding college, but in the short term, I don’t see myself doing it every day.
Having said that, this brief 5 days of changing up my eating habits have also led me to change other things for the better too! For instance, I’ve started sleeping and waking up earlier to make breakfast, and that has given me more time in the morning to relax while the sky is still dark and while everyone is still sleeping. It’s like I have a head start in the morning relative to everyone else! This change has also made me more energetic and less sleepy in class because I have enough rest to take on the day. Besides that, I’ve also been taking a lot more fluids: be it through drinking plain water or soups, or eating vegetables; I feel like I’m more hydrated throughout the day and it’s done wonders for my skin. I’ll incorporate this into my daily diet by drinking more fluids daily so I can reap the benefits!
Have you tried going on a ‘better eating’ diet of your own? Share your experience!
Hello mandalyn
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