What in the world are we eating??

I tried to get Diana to be a guest writer on this topic today.  But we were unable to pull this off.  The next logical question is “What are you eating??”  My answer:  GRASS.  Lots and lots of grass.

Untrue.  There are two things about how we are eating:  We are eating more healthy foods, and we are eating breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince, and dinner (well, like a prince, too).

A typical morning will find me making a two egg omelette out of Harris Teeter egg product (it is really good, and I have tried others that ARE NOT), turkey sausage crumbles from Jimmy Dean, and 1/8 cup of Sargento Chef Blends 4-State shredded cheese.  Along with that, I have a bowl of Special K Fruit and Yogurt blend OR Banana Nut Cheerios.  Diana fixes an oatmeal with nuts, honey, cinnamon, and craisins.  If we have to vary from this general menu, I try to keep my total breakfast calories between 400 and 500 and the MyFitnessPal app will help with that.

LUNCH finds us not eating out as much as we used to, but if we do it will be at a restaurant where we know we can find something healthy and low calorie.  We find healthy menu items at Chick Fil A, Subway, Wendy’s, Scholtzky’s, McAlister’s Deli, Lizard’s Thicket, and probably another place or two I am forgetting.  Again, I try to keep this meal around 400 calories and use the app OR the restaurant nutritional information as a guide (the app will allow you to enter foods from a restaurant not in their database).  MOST DAYS we eat at home and eat leftovers from supper, or make a salad with Baby Spring Mix from Sams, grilled chicken, feta cheese, and a vinaigrette dressing.  If I eat that for lunch, I will also eat an apple or orange to make sure I am getting close to 400 cals.  Also, we have a chicken salad recipe Diana found on the web that uses Greek yogurt, a little low-fat mayo, salt, pepper, and craisins.  I try to boil a chicken and keep some of that in the fridge too.

DINNER again finds us not eating out as much, but if we do we use the restaurants above.  I am now trying to make sure dinner is NOT the largest meal of the day.  One of the things I have always done before (I think it is a RULE in the South) that we have a BIGGGGG supper.  I try not to have a huge supper and not to eat anything after 7pm if possible.  Some of the things we eat for supper are:  A LEAN hamburger with low fat cheese, grilled chicken (LOTS OF GRILLED CHICKEN), grilled pork or roasted pork loin, mixed veggies, green beans, corn, lima beans, couscous, roasted potatoes, baked potatoes, grilled zucchini, and a variety of other veggies.  We try to eat a balanced meal with one green vegetable and one starch.

The way we manage portion size and calories is we measure the food we eat at home.  If a serving size says 2/3 cup of corn, that is all we get (and that is a lot).  When I eat chicken or pork, I weigh the amount I put on my plate and log the calories accordingly with a food scale we bought a Wal-Mart for $15.

For snacks, we keep apples, oranges, Kind protein bars, strawberries, fruit salad, etc. around.

HONESTLY, there are probably a couple of days a month when I cheat and even then, I try to control portion sizes.  And if it looks REALLY worth it I will have a little dessert.

I am sure I have left out some really important details, but this is a general idea of how we are eating.  And so far it is worth it!!  My doctor approves of this, my blood work a couple of months ago was PHENOMINAL, and it is still working so far …  One of the tricks to keeping it off will be to have a plan for maintaining, and MyFitnessPal has that mode available.  And I plan to keep using it!!

Next time, I will write about what is going on in the gym ….