Friday, May 30, 2008

Diet days 3-4

Yesterday I screwed up- I failed to plan, which of course is a plan to fail. I have really been enjoying my banana with grape nuts breakfast which sounds spartan but it's really not- I eat an entire serving of grape nuts which is 200 calories, a banana (about 100 calories), and then my coffee (with sugar and creamer it's probably about 75 calories). Then I had such a busy day that formal meals/snacks kind of fell apart.
I grabbed a non-fat caramel macchiato from Starbucks- really this was out of habit than anything else, it wasn't until I got home with it that I remembered I was cutting back and that I should have gotten tea. Calories in a non-fat macchiato- 190 and 11 grams of protein. Not awful and plenty of milk for a midmorning snack.
A so-late-late-lunch-it-could've-been-called-Lupper was a Lean Cuisine spinach and mushroom pizza- 330 calories
On the way to the ride I had about 150 calories worth of pretzles BUT I forgot to plan for the fact that I would be out way past my usual dinner time.
So, I had a Gu before the ride and water and when I got home I had a cup of coffee, but that was pretty much it. I only got hungry after the ride after a round of tweets about some zucchini, still I didn't eat- it was late. I realize I had too few calories, and that I should have definitely bent my 7 pm rule and eaten after the ride.

Today I prepared to make amends. I had one (Omega-3 enriched) egg and one egg white rolled in a burrito with two strips of veggie bacon- total calories for breakfast- about 400 with coffee.
I snacked on a few pistachios in the morning and had a veggie burger on a light bun with strawberry applesauce for lunch, salad with about 100 calories of dressing. I eschewed the Dunkin Donuts and pizza that were offered in the teacher's lounge, yay!
As of this writing, my day is going well- I'll have probably soup with veggie crumbles for dinner and some blueberries and raspberries for dessert.

DINNER: One of my favorite dinners- Sloppy Joes!
Morning Star crumbles- the vegetarian version of ground beef. 2/3 cup is 80 calories and 10 grams of protein
I use lite hamburger buns, stir in one can of Sloppy Joe mix (which is pretty much just tomato sauce) and serve it open face.
The buns are 80 calories each and 3 grams of protein making my dinner over 26 grams of protein and under 500 calories.
Not only is this dinner just tasty and awesome, it's very filling. I actually just couldn't finish the two sandwiches I made.
I also forgot to mention I'm taking a multi-vitamin every day and a baby aspirin, just for good measure.

I know many people have a lot of knowledge about nutrition and I also know I'm not there yet on what I should be doing. It's a learning process. You're welcome to post info about how I'm screwing up, I'll read it. I might even listen once or twice. Or I'll just argue publically with you about it.

But now, it's naptime. I love naptime.

My dieting tip of the day- use sugar cubes instead of regular loose sugar- it's far easier to count one cube as 15 calories than loose sugar as you're spooning it in.

4 comments:

Unknown said...

other than the fact that you didn't fuel up before or after your ride, that doesn't really seem all that bad to me.

You want to eat carbs within 30 minutes of finishing a ride, this is a period called the glycogen window, which is when your body returns the most amount of those carbs to muscle repair. There's a long winded calculation for how many carbs you need, but a nice bowl of cereal with skim milk does it fine.

Anonymous said...

Try coffee black, no sugar. You will have to hold your nose to drink it for 2 weeks, but then will not be able to go back. Sugar and creamer are really empty calories. Try it -- it works for most people (but then you are not most people).

Jenni said...

Let's be clear about one thing: black coffee serves as merely the matrix for holding the creamer and sugar and that's the only thing it does. I'd rather give up coffee than drink it black, and since I avoid all artificial sweetners, sugar it is. But really it's like my treat so I don't mind- I can easily give up cookies and candy and all other sweets, but I'm stickin' with coffee. But to be fair, I did give it up entirely for a year and then when I returned to it I used mostly agave to sweeten it. I'd rather save the calories on say, potatoes. I have pretty good self control when it comes to those.

Anonymous said...

Like I said, you are not most people.