About
Welcome to Devour Nutrition!
Jessica is a PhD, with degrees in Biochemistry and Chemistry. She loves gourmet cheeses, all things spicy, dogs, and swimming in tropical waters (but she’s terrified of fish).
Rafael is a doctoral candidate in Biochemistry, studying proteins in the brain that help regulate metabolism. He loves baseball, beer, and attempting new, complicated recipes on weeknights.
Both of us are Precision Nutrition Level 1 Coaching Certified.
As a couple we LOVE food, whether it’s meals at home, new restaurants, or vacations where most of our time is spent trying the local cuisine. We don’t think that you should have to ask the question, “should I eat something delicious or something nutritious?” Instead, we spend our time in the kitchen creating recipes that are both.
Why Did We Start This Blog?
We both consider ourselves to be health-conscious individuals. These days, that statement can mean a million different things. To us, health-conscious means we:
- Love to be active both in and out of the gym. We get excited about beating personal bests in the gym, but also about grabbing a well-earned selfie at the top of a peak or end of a new hiking trail.
- Enjoy a variety of foods. There exists many delicious things in the world, and nature has spread nutrients around to a myriad of them.
- Try to eat whole, minimally processed foods for the same reasons as above. It’s incredible how much complexity is in a single piece of fruit!
We love to eat well and cook. Having both done years of late night take-out and sad frozen dinners, we now find ourselves at a point in our lives where we want all of our meals to be fun and delicious. During our busy work week, we don’t want dinners too fussy, and it’s useful if they make enough for lunch the next day. Bonus points if we get to learn a new recipe or technique. Triple bonus points if Rafael can have dinner ready before midnight while messing around with said new recipe or technique.
The meals that we eat also support our modest fitness goals, whether they involve losing a few pounds before a beach vacation, or beating our pull-up record that was set in high school. In an effort to find interesting, new, and delicious recipes that also support our fitness goals, we have come across a few themes or trends we don’t like. For one, many times a recipe uses a single “power food”. Through its consumption, we will rid ourselves of toxins, melt away body fat, and shave off 5 minutes from our mile times. We can ignore outrageous claims if the food is good, but these types of recipes always are disappointing. They can be huge calorie bombs, lack any appreciable amount of protein, or are faux foods trying to mimic something like pizza so you can eat “guilt-free” (we don’t care for that phrase!). Then, there is the dreaded Bro-Meal: toss some random vegetables in a pan, add about a pound of chicken and/or steak, and if it’s post-workout, sprinkle with protein powder. Maybe you’ve seen it, and hopefully you haven’t eaten too many.
Alternatively, the meals here are what we love to eat, have fun cooking and learning more about, and don’t take up so much time during the day-to-day grind. Mostly, they are also light(er) meals that contain a bit more protein than average to aid our lifestyle and fitness goals. We don’t discriminate or vilify food groups or macronutrients (we love carbs). We also make dishes that don’t fit into the “light” category, and those meals have their own separate section in the blog (The Other 20). It’s not that we think those are “bad” or “unhealthy”, but just not everyday meals for all sorts of reasons. At the end of the day, we want to eat well, and want to do that with real, nutritious food…and sometimes the occasion calls for cupcakes and cocktails.
If you can relate to anything here or are just looking for a little variety in the kitchen, we hope you will try some recipes on the blog and say hello!
