What to eat...what to eat....

Today I'm going to share what I eat in a typical day. Please note several things...I'm by no means the greatest eater...I eat whatever I want (sort of)....different things work for different people...find what works for you!

I don't like the word "diet", and I don't consider myself to be on a diet. It's really important to look at it as a lifestyle. Diets come and go, we "cheat" on diets, we "fall off the wagon", we "can't eat that" on a diet. A diet is like, "I'm going to go on a diet so I can wear my bikini"...so then what happens after that? You are just going to eat crap in a bag because it doesn't matter any more? It's a LIFESTYLE people, if you reprogram your brain this way, amazing things will happen. I promise. 

So as I've said before, I'm a calorie counter. Yes, it's tedious and annoying, but after a while you get to know how many calories are in things and it's extremely helpful when making that decision on what to put in your body. I use two apps for this: LoseIt!, and my fit bit app. Yes, I actually log calories into two different apps. Call me crazy. They are both great, but both very different. With the Lose It app, you log both calories and exercise. You tell it your goal and your current stats, and it tells you how many calories to eat. Easy peasy. We burn calories ALL day long, even when you are sleeping, this is where the fit bit app is awesome. It tracks this for you, so I don't need to log my activity or exercise with it because it already knows. You also tell this one your goals and stats and it also tells you how many calories you can eat. 

With Lose It, my daily budget is 897 calories. With my fit bit, it changes all day long, based on my activity and what I've burned. It's actually a lot more, because of this. I tend to stay around the 890-900 range though, even though according to my fit bit, I can eat a lot more. Remember you want to burn more calories than you are taking in. Did you know that you have to burn about 3,500 calories to lose ONE POUND? Crazy right? This is why it's so important to be active! And keep in mind, different size people burn different amounts of calories doing the same thing. The bigger you are, the more calories you burn. 

Ok, enough of that. 
Here's my day so far (screenshots from my Lose It app)
For breakfast (and I eat this pretty much every single day), I have an egg and 1/2 a flatbread sandwich "bun". The egg is about 90 calories, and the flatbread is 50 calories. That's my 140 calorie breakfast. Oh, and don't forget the water, I had about 16oz of water.

(I worked out after breakfast, you can read the details about my workout here). Here's how it looks tracked with my app. According to this app I burned about 212 calories (which means I can eat those calories later in the day if I so desire). Woo Hoo!

For Lunch today I had tuna (with a little bit of light mayo) on a flatbread wrap. I also snacked on some tostito chips as my daughter was having them and I didn't want to be rude and not have any ;) Sadly, the serving size for these chips is 150 calories for 11 chips, 11! So I had about 6 chips. See what I mean about keeping track. Just sitting down and popping open the bag, an average person could easily consume about 300-400 calories, just from mindless snacking. Water for lunch, 24.7 oz (that's my bottle size, it's not like I'm that crazy of an ounce counter). So many people consume way to many calories in drinks alone, this will absolutely have to change if you want to see any results. I promise. Just a glass of pop (or soda) at lunch can be over 200 calories. Yikes.

I do all my grocery shopping at Aldi's, as I think I've mentioned before, lucky for me they have some really good choices to live a healthy lifestyle. The Fit & Active stuff is awesome. I choose these flatbread wraps because they are only 90 calories and have lots of fiber.

 Look at the difference in calories between the flatbread wrap and a normal burrito wrap (and they are about the same size):

210 calories or 90...hmmm

Here's how my fit bit app looks: 

See, I can still eat 919 calories according to this one, and only 674 according to the other. 

Here's the activity it tracked for me.

Here's where the fit bit can also be a little off. It logged 32 minutes, which is about what I did in cardio (35 to be exact). But then I lifted for an additional 20 minutes or so. It doesn't exactly capture that, since some of that I'm sitting, or my arm is still so it doesn't know how bad ass I'm being. The nice thing is, you can manually add things like that if you want. Sometimes I do, other times I don't care. So today my total workout was just about an hour, which includes my stretching.

Here's how it looks with my calories:

I think you can probably tell when I was at the gym.

So it's not dinner time, but once it is I will post whatever I'm having for dinner as well. 

What about snacks?

Yes! I eat snacks! It's important to eat several small meals a day, vs huge meals and nothing in between. This keeps your metabolism going strong, and keeps you from overeating later on.

For snacks I usually have a stick of light string cheese (50 calories). Or 1/2 a cup of cottage cheese (that's the serving size) - that's 80 calories. 

I also bought these awesome protein bars from Aldi's. I usually have half of one, as they are higher in calories and are meant to be meal bars. But if I only ate one for a meal I don't quite think it would satisfy me. Makes a great snack though! And you can't be mad at that protein! And they actually taste really good!

I snack on other things too. And I AM human so if you think I can give my kids a yummy snack and not sneak a few you are wrong. Animal crackers...cheese..more cheese. It's just all about quantity, I'll eat a little piece of cheese, not a block of cheese. Veggie chips...crackers...cheez-its. Seriously I do it. I just do it small ;)

(sidenote: Just after this I helped myself to the last piece of crazy bread in the fridge...there was my afternoon snack - 100 calories)

Dinner!

So today I made Sour Cream Noodle Bake (see it here on my Pinterest Board). I've said before, I make "normal" meals, I use low fat for mostly everything, and I watch how much I eat since a lot of what I make I would not call "healthy"! 

Here it is from the board:

Here's mine (sorry no flower)

I use ground turkey for anything that calls for ground beef. I use lowfat cottage cheese, sour cream, and shredded cheese, and I even scored on lowfat egg noodles from Aldi's :)

By doing that, this comes to about 330 calories per serving. Not bad!

And last but not least, you can't forget the veggies!! I LOVE steamed veggies and try to make them at every dinner. I said try. Broccoli, cauliflower, and carrots are my fave. I add a little Parmesan cheese for a little added fun. Sometimes I log these, something I don't even bother since it's 25 calories a serving, and I have no problem "over"eating veggies ;)

So here's the rest of my food for the day.

Over my budget, but not really since I had my workout today. It really helps to get that in there!

Also, I can't stress enough, make sure you drink lots of water!

I drank my 24.7 oz bottle of water just while making dinner.

Here's my water for the day so far, and this was by 6:30pm. I highly recommend you track your water, whether you just write it down, or use an app on your phone. Drink that water!

Last but not least...for some extra "activity" - play music and dance around while making dinner! Seriously, do it! The kids were out for a walk so I turned the speaker on loud and just danced around the kitchen while things were cooking. Keep it moving people!

If this interests you and you'd like more on what I eat daily, I'll keep posting!

Remember that everything is a balance, go ahead and eat that pizza, but also go ahead and be active and burn those calories!

P.S. - I just ate a bite of an ice cream sandwich. Delicious, and the world didn't end. (and a bite is much different than the the entire sandwich!)

balance balance balance

Adios!

EmK8