Damage Control
In order to turn this bus around I decided this morning to get on the scale and face the music. It’s not all that bad but it’s not good either as it’s not really going in the right direction.
As you know I tend to hover around 80 KG give or take one or two in either direction. Clearly the emotional eating or binge cookie in my face smashing is not doing a huge amount of damage as I’m still active. But … active as in the bare minimum and not the amount that I would like if I had a good balance of work – free time – sleep. The number: 81.6 KG.
So what am I whinging about? I’m whinging because I’m letting things slip out of control daily, I’m letting all of the stress and frustrations make the decisions for me rather than doing what I know is right. No harm in a cookie, right? Well, there is when it’s a 300+ calorie cookie that I’m eating every day (if not more than one). And there is harm when you are eating that cookie even though you told yourself that you weren’t going to have one, no matter what. There’s harm when I’ve eaten what feels like half my body weight in almonds because “well at least they are healthy”. The behavior is what I don’t like and the behavior is what needs to change.
I’ve actually logged into MFP again today and started logging my food. And… I have practically nothing left for dinner. This is the frustration part. Trying to eat healthy and in moderation, having all my fruits, veg, watching my carbs, even trying to limit my dairy intake (I am still convinced that I have a slight allergy to dairy), but I still need to refine this. I did have two soy lattes today and I could have just had one. So I found one thing where I could say 130 calories. That’s not going to help me with dinner. How do I change and not be hungry?
What I ate:
AM: smoothie: 250 mls almond milk, spinach, juice of one half of an orange, a small beet, an apple, a banana and some ginger, double tall soy latte, 3 rice cakes, 2 eggs, 1TBL of unox sauce (it’s a sort of mayo/mustard sauce), 2 cups of coffee on the commute
Lunch: two chicken thighs marinated in sweet soy, olive oil, lemon juice, spices and approx. 60gr of thinly sliced sweet potatoes
PM: apple, salad of romaine lettuce, 2 tomatoes, cucumber, red onion, yellow pepper, olive oil and white wine vinegar. Skim French quark with 70g total blueberries and raspberries, 10g almonds and 15g hemp seeds, double Tall Soy latte, Tall mint tea
3 bottles of water (1.5litres) over the course of the day
So I could cut out the soy lattes. I had approx. 1 TBSP olive oil in my chicken and 1 TBSP in my salad. I’m not a huge fan of cutting out fats, rather I believe that we need fat to keep our bodies running smoothly (am I wrong??). I could cut out the unox sauce, and replace just with mustard. But the rest? Tell me, tell me what you would do differently, how can I achieve eating well and not feeling hungry and still have some calories over for dinner?
Part of the random eating as well is due to hunger. I just give in at some point. I have long days and need to not feel like I’m going to pass out at any second. I know there is nothing wrong with being a little bit hungry, that I won’t die, in fact I probably won’t even pass out, I may just get a headache, right? The thing is, and I really don’t know why (I’ve thought about it and analysed it and still can’t figure it out), I just really can’t stand being hungry. I’m not talking peckish, I mean that emptiness in your stomach and the low blood sugar feeling. I know that part of what I need to do to fix the problem is just eat what I have (in other words, the veggies that I tend to carry around for days) instead of buying something because it’s better (or rather tastier).
So, while I’ve gone over today (because as of writing this I still haven’t had dinner, I’m still on my way home from work), I am at least turning the car around to get back on the right road. Hope I don’t run out of gas or get a flat tire on my way back.
How do you stay within your food limits daily? Do you think that my complaining about eating cookies in unwarranted? That a cookie a day keeps the doctor away?
4 Comments
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Hi, Renee – here’s what I’m hearing from you – let me know if I’m off:
–You feel like you are eating healthy foods, but the portions are off. That causes you to either grab a readily available clean foods snack, but you overdo the portion. Or, you just go for the cookie.
–Dairy doesn’t work for you, so you have trouble with protein intake.
–You are trying to track food and use MFP, but you seem to run out of allotted calories at the end of the day.
You are looking for:
–Quick foods/go-to snacks that you have readily available in a pinch
–You love fruits/veggies
–You want to eat healthy, but not go hungry.
I use mynetdiary.com to log my foods, mainly because I like it better than MFP and it helps me track my macros (carbs, protein, fat). I used mynetdiary to log your foods from yesterday and here’s the rough estimate:
2176 total calories
201 g carbs (40%) – 36g are coming from the soy lattes. The rest from f/v and rice cakes.
94 g protein (19%) –mostly from eggs and chicken (good protein!)
89 g fat (41%) – mostly from oil and eggs (good fats!)
My observations – take them or leave them
–At your current weight, I would say that you need about 1800 calories per day. (Your weight in pounds X 10.) You can give or take with that number based on your activity level or how fast you want to lose. But, I would really try to stick with 1800 as your baseline and drop or raise by 50-100 calories until you find your sweet spot of losing weight, yet feeling satisfied.
–Your carb level is actually perfect at 40%. If you’re working out you definitely want to stay in that 30-40% range. However, your protein is really low at 19%. That should be more like 30 and drop your fat by 10%. I’m all for the good fats, but increasing your protein will help those amino acids increase, help build muscle (which burns fat) not to mention keep you feeling full longer!
–Food-wise – I think the good news for you is that the soy lattes aren’t hurting you (though I don’t know the sugars on those?). Personally, I would ditch the rice cakes. Quick snack, but they do nothing for you. What about replacing that with Ezekiel topped with agave or smoked salmon?
Other snack ideas that can be prepped and taken with you – hard-boiled eggs, lean chicken or turkey, edamame, greek yogurt (with 7g of sugar or less), cottage cheese, black beans, shrimp mixed with couscous, turkey chili, etc. If you are craving cereal, try to stick with no sugar (like GrapeNuts) and add fruit.
You are doing GREAT on your fruits and veggies! For the fat, the olive oil is all good health-wise, but maybe just reduce the portions a bit to get the fat grams down and replace with balsamic vinegar or the like.
So, maybe try something like this:
CARBOHYDRATE PROTEIN FAT
GRAMS per day 202g 135g 50g
CALORIES per day 810 cals 540 cals 450 cals
I wouldn’t say hard and fast. My number one rule is never go hungry. If you need dinner and you’re at 1800 calories, you need to eat anyway!! Just keep it clean. Keep on keepin’ on!!!!!!
what an amazing response! thank you so much Heather! I think I’m very close to being ready to make changes again and I’m super appreciative of your comment.
I do the same thing about eating too much early in the day and then having nothing left for dinner. It’s something I struggle with. My suggestion might be to not change what you’re eating, but how much? Maybe 1 egg instead of two? 1 thigh instead of 2 and replace with a huge salad?
Thea, thank you so much for the suggestion. I have been avoiding the issue pretty much and now I’m ready to face it again.