"So What Do You Eat?"

I sure hear that question a lot lately! The obvious question whenever someone loses weight is, "How did you do it?  What diet are you on?"  The short answer is that I'm not on a particular "diet" program.  I have, however, completely changed the way I eat.

Here is a one sentence summary of my "diet plan":  I am on a calorie controlled, non dairy, moderate complex carb eating plan.  Probably the biggest help in staying on this program (well, in addition to Rachel) has been MyFitnessPal (www.myfitnesspal.com).   MyFitnessPal is a free online calorie tracker.  It contains thousands of foods, including a lot from many popular restaurants.  In addition to tracking calories, it also calculates and keeps track of your protein, carbs, and fats.  This is another important aspect of my eating plan.  Rachel has preset my allotted calories at 45% carbs, 30% fats, 25% protein.  Those percentages will change periodically, but I am a die-hard carb lover and needed those percentages to get going.  Once I hit a plateau, we'll adjust them.

Once you enter all your stats on Myfitnesspal, you are given your daily calorie allotment.  For me, that's about 1400 calories a day.  It changes as the weight comes off.  I started higher than that.  For now though, that's what I have to work with.  I eat something roughly every three hours.  I have breakfast, a mid-morning snack, lunch, an afternoon snack, and then dinner.  Breakfast, lunch and dinner are somewhere between 350-400 calories and no snack exceeds 200 calories.  I have been entering my entire food plan a few days in advance, as it takes a bit to plan it out and make sure I am not going over both my calories and my percentages on any particular day.  This is a bit time consuming at first, until you get the hang of it.  Now I can bang out several days at a time in minutes.  I have made my food diaries public to those I am "friends" with on Myfitnesspal.  If you want to see exactly what I eat, join the site and look me up.  My username is vicki81868.  Once we are "friends", you will have access to what I eat on any particular day.

There are other little "rules" involved in the "diet".  These include:
1.  No carbs after 4:00.
2.  Eight glasses of water
3.  No food that contains any ingredients I can't pronounce.
4.  No refined sugars or white flour.
5.  Oh!  And one "cheat day" each week (I kinda like that one).  The "cheat" though still has to work with your calories, but may put you over on your percentages.

Of course there is an exercise portion to all this, though I didn't start an exercise program for the first 6 weeks I was on the program.  I'll save that for another blog post though.

It's snack time and a Peanut Butter Quest Bar is calling my name!