Jun
18
A Day In My Life - Monday
Filed Under Eating Healthy
I was going to talk about how to make health more fun this week but then I remembered I had already promised one of my readers a different topic. So we’re going to defer the fun and health topic and talk about diet this week.
You see, after the healthy eating habits discussion, someone asked me about my own diet. So I decided to spend one week describing what I eat, when I eat and everything else related to my diet. These posts are going to be slightly different than normal in that I’m going to be updating them throughout the day. So with that, let’s begin with Monday.
Breakfast
I usually get up at around 7am. Breakfast is part of my morning routine and I prepare and eat it while getting ready for work. Today, breakfast was two hard boiled eggs and a banana. Here is the nutritional information for 1 large hardboiled egg and here is the information for the banana. Note that the site I use allows you to choose various serving sizes. So make sure you pick the right one or else the numbers you see will be off. For the egg I chose “1 Large” and for the banana I chose “1 medium” as the serving size.
As you can see, this choice is a bit high in fat and cholesterol, most of that coming from the eggs. However, it also adds protein, which I need. The banana adds a decent amount of fiber. I also have a Men’s Once A Day vitamin supplement to make sure I get all my vitamins.
Lunch
Two Quorn Garlic & Herb Cutlets. These are made from soy but taste and feel exactly like chicken. One of them is usually enough to fill me up but I was hungry so I ate both. Total from both was 400 calories, 18grams of fat, 24grams of protein, 44grams of carbs and 6 grams of fiber. I ate them with a tortilla which added 100 calories, 3 grams of fat, 20grams of carbs, 12grams of fiber and 9grams of protein plus about 10 olives. The olives added another 45 calories, and 4grams of fat.
Total for lunch was 545 calories, 25grams of fat, 33grams of protein, 64grams of carbs and 18 grams of fiber. Note that all of the carbs I’m eating are coming from sources like whole wheat tortillas. I don’t eat the junk carbs like white bread and refined sweeteners.
Snack
1 Banana. Same stats as the previous banana. Can you tell I like bananas? Oh, neat little trick I use. Put fruit on top of unhealthy snacks like chocolate. So if I’m reaching for a snack, I more inclined to eat the fruit than the unhealthy stuff at the bottom of the pile.
Snack
My one remaining bad habit is my sweet tooth. I’ll admit it, I love candy! However, I do realize it’s very bad for me. So I try to limit my intake to small amounts. Today, I helped my fiance unload some hay for her horses and just happened to find her stash of jelly beans. These are meant for the horses, but I’m sure they won’t mind me having a few. I looked at the package and I ate the equivalent of two servings. That’s 300 calories with 50grams of carbs and nothing else.
Two things to note. First of all, you can clearly see how bad this food is. 20 jelly beans are nowhere near enough to make me feel full. Yet they have three times the calories that the banana had. They have zero nutritional value and they contain nothing but junk carbs. So yes, this was a very bad snack. The other thing to note is that it’s occasionally ok to have these bad snacks as long as you are aware of how bad they are and plan for it.
I love sweets. I don’t want to give them up. So I build a bit of a buffer into my diet just so I can accommodate these snacks. You can read about that particular healthy habit here.
Dinner
I had Indian for dinner. Since it’s not from the supermarket, it’s a bit hard to estimate. However, I’ve gotten pretty good at eyeballing stuff. I stayed away from the dishes with a lot of rice since those are typically loaded with bad carbs and nothing else. Instead, I had a veggie curry with some dal. The lentils in the dal are a great source of protein. I also added another banana as dessert and some corn when I stopped at my mom’s house after dinner.
By the way, I really recommend you do this exercise for yourself when you’re first starting to focus on your health. I’ve been doing this for three years now but even I learn something new each time I look at these kinds of details. For example, I never realized quite how high in calories corn was. So if you can, follow your own eating for a week in this kind of details, you’ll learn things about yourself and what you eat that you never even dreamed of.
That said, total nutrition for dinner is about: 1200 calories, 20grams of fat, 36 grams of protein, 150grams of carbs and 30grams of fiber.
Total For the Day
Calories: 2409
Fat: 55g
Protein: 93g
Carbs: 320g
Fiber: 54g
Daily Summary
As you can see, my diet is relatively high in carbs. That’s to be expected since I’m a vegetarian. They’re mostly simple, unprocessed carbs, which is fine. At the same time, it’s good to see that I’m still getting a decent amount of protein. I’ve been thinking about supplementing my protein intake but this looks good. My fat consumption is ok and I’m only getting a small amount of my daily calories from fat, which is good. Also, I’m barely eating any saturated fats which is also good. Fiber intake is great, but that too is natural for a vegetarian diet.
Overall, this looks good. The only thing that was a little off today was the number of carbs, and that’s mostly because of the Jelly Beans and the corn. Those two were really unnecessary but they made me happy and I’m still well within my calorie goal. Of course, this is just one day. We’ll see what happens tomorrow. If you’re doing this same sort of exercise yourself, then I would recommend doing it for at least two weeks. Eating habits can easily vary from day to day and especially on the weekend.
See you tomorrow.
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[...] A Day In My Life - MondayA Day In My Life - Tuesday This entry is part 2 of 2 in the series, A Day In My Life. Monday’s post is complete now just in case you went to sleep before me. Now let’s get started on Tuesday. [...]
It’s really eye opening when you start to food journal, and then do an analysis of what you actually eat. In my journal, I added the emotion I was feeling and the date/time/place because I do know that much of my over eating is sparked my something emotional like stress, boredom, fear. The emotions can be a powerful sabateur in any weight loss journey.
Hi Stephanie, thanks for stopping by. For those who don’t know Steph, she runs a great blog called Back In Skinny Jeans. I highly recommend your give it a shot by clicking on her name.
In the mean time, I think adding emotion might be good for some people. For me, eating is less about emotion and more about boredom so perhaps I should add a note as to what I was doing before and after my snack. Either way, Stephanie has a great idea. If you add info like activity, time and mood, you can use the food journal to figure out why you’re eating, not just what you’re eating.
Gal