My nutritionist gave me the adult version of this plate. Half of our plates are supposed to be vegetables. I kept a three week long food diary. My calories per day ranged from 1560-2300. The average was 1800-2000.
In a three week period, the "bad foods" I ate was 10 small onion rings--on July 4th with a grilled chicken sandwich from a restaurant, a piece of blueberry pie at a church potluck and 1 chocolate chip cookie from a box of them my husband bought.
Good meals included quinoa patties, veggie patties, almond milk, peaches, tomatoes, green beans, a bucket of frozen broccoli and oriental vegetables cooked, one seaweed package, multiple salads, grilled chicken and a few bananas.
I learned to avoid a certain mainstream corporate restaurant like the plague. MSG? Even in grilled chicken, rice and broccoli? I still have some bad habits to tighten down. I shouldn't have eaten the sweets. I like to eat half turkey sandwiches.
A lot of my food is lighter "lunch" fare. Many things have too many calories in them like 1 packet of fancy ramen noodles from an Asian grocery store having 500 calories. Watermelon seems to ease my digestive system and has only 50 calories a cup.
However I am too damn hungry all the time. It worries me. It's 11:20 and I ate two piece of toast with vegan butter and a cup of scrambled tofu with some green onions and green peppers at 8:00 am and I already have hunger pain going like gangbusters. Why does the body want food constantly? Why can't it leave me alone?
I learned to delay lunch to stretch things out. The nutritionist wants me to eat every 4 hours. The food insecurity stuff makes eating healthy hard. I'm out of lettuce today which is irritating me because I need to fill up half my plate with veggies. I need more low calorie vegetable dish ideas.
One doctor wants me to eat 1200 a day. I don't see it happening but I have to get things lower then what they are. I may tell the nutritionist I am going to attempt 1800 a day as a baselevel to stick to.
I took a walk almost everyday, not sure what to do know since heat is back but did stretchy bands last night. Well food is complicated. Hopefully the increase in vegetables will help me. Even with the lipedema diagnosis, I still have to make sure I do not gain weight and get off what I can. Hopefully with a Flexitouch machine coming soon, I will lose more water weight.
I have slept less on the increase in thyroid, no more 12-13 hour sleep marathons. I can feel a change already.
I've used LoseIt.com on and off as a calorie diary; it's not perfect but it works for me. I've also heard highly of NutritionData.com. On LoseIt, I can enter whatever I'm making as a custom recipe and then add whatever my share of the food was to my log.
ReplyDeleteVeggies are honestly my main food group. I tend to eat extra veggies rather than the traditional 'starches'; gluten makes me drowsy, I don't like potatoes enough for it to be worth the effort, and I just prefer veggies to grains like rice or quinoa. I love most vegetables, especially stir-fried; when I first tried counting calories I started measuring my oil and found I could get by with much less than I used to use. Half a tablespoon is enough, or one slice of center-cut bacon if the flavour is right for the meal. I also find I'm less hungry if I eat lots of green and/or fibrous vegetables, like celery and broccoli. (Celery has the benefit of being really cheap.) One vegetable I love that a lot of people don't seem to eat is bok choy. It's easiest to find at Asian stores and it's usually under a dollar per pound, and it's very low-calorie and has this lovely clean taste that I can throw into almost anything. Plus the dark green parts are extremely good for you.
Another thing I try to do is find really flavourful, inexpensive ingredients that don't add a lot of calories; tomatoes, garlic, ginger, chillies, soy sauce, and grated parmesan cheese are all cheap options that work well if you're calorie counting. I like throwing a bit of frozen fruit in a stir fry, but that tends to cost more and I know a lot of people don't like mixing fruit with their savory food.
Something I made at the weekend: I heated a chopped slice of bacon to melt the fat then fried some zucchinis, mushrooms and tomatoes in it, then added some arugula when it was almost ready and gently stirred in an ounce of soft cheese. This was a REALLY satisfying snack for me, and very low-calorie.