Welcome back! Like I said in my last, thank you for your patience. It seems that right after my first fitness post, life went nuts. Harper got fairly sick, (suspected the rota virus) and there wasn't much sleep for either of us for about 9 days. This made me pretty miserable too; she was inconsolable, throwing up, needing a diaper change every hour... you are welcome for that image. Plus, when your little is sick and not old enough to be able to vocalize their problems, it's mentally draining trying to figure out what the problem is, let alone a solution. Right after she was feeling better, Marcus got extremely sick. Just a random cold that hit him pretty hard. THEN we had Easter, and alot of family in town. Moral of this story is, I was tired. Drained, exhausted, sick. I wasn't eating well, actually barely at all. I felt the difference. I was dizzy, lethargic, my skin wasn't clear.
So I bucked up and went grocery shopping when we came back from vacation. It sickens me to think that I used to live like this, everyday. Now, even a few days takes and immense toll on my body.
I decided to make a post of "What I ate today".
To summarize my eating habits. I count macros; macro-nutrients are what our body uses to create energy but are more commonly known by carbohydrates, proteins and fats. My personal macro goals are
50% Protein
30% Carbohydrates
20% Fats
Sometimes I intuitively eat (eyeball it). I don't restrict carbs, I drink lots of water, I don't drink pop.
I may start including the exact macro specifics on each meal; until then this is an example of what I eat in a day.
7-7:30
First thing I do in the morning realistically depends on if Harper woke up or not. Most of the time she will stay snoozin' while I get ready. If so, I will sit at the table for a bit and just try to wake up. If she's up I'll sit in the rocking chair and nurse her. Either way, I start the day with a glass of cold water. The whole thing, ice cold. This jump starts your metabolism, will prevent you from over eating at breakfast, and it honestly helps you feel more alert.
After that I will drink something else. I have been trying to not drink coffee first thing because when I do I have a problem not using creamer, plus I just hate how it makes my mouth taste. Blah. So I found a "clean" drink. I don't drink energy drinks, I think they're god awful for you; if you do then you do you, I just can't do it. I picked these up and I'm hooked. There's a wide variety of different flavors, it's certified Kosher, it is gluten free, non-GMO, and there are no artificial preservatives. It is vegan, soy free, and contains has the same amount of caffeine as a cup of tea. It was a diamond in the rough for me to find something so good, but not like drinking liquid sugar.
7:45
Breakfast time! I love me some omelletes. They're very mom friendly. Mix the eggs, put it in the pan, put your ingredients in; then you can walk away to brush your hair, change a diaper, slay a dragon, whatever you gotta do. Come back, flip it and you're good to go! My go to omellete recipe is
*3 eggs
*1 whole package of Wholly Guacamole
*1 tablespoon feta cheese
I put about half or 3/4 of the quac in the omellete and then spread the rest on the finished omellete. Sprinkle the feta (your choice of cheese) inside. I also use avocado oil to fry my omellettes. Takes about 7 minutes to make and is easy to eat while doing something else and I'm all about multitasking. This isn't the most wonderful picture, but to be fair it's fried eggs with creamed junk on top. What can ya do?
9:30-11
I'll try to eat within this time frame so I'm not feeling famished when I'm off work. The biggest key I have found to maintaining your goal of clean eating is to snack. How many times have you thought you ate really good all morning; but in reality you ate a small salad, an apple and some water then went home and ate 62 oreos some pizza and a newborn giraffe. Yeah, snacks are your friend. I like to take a variety so that I don't get bored. I found a stackable snack holder, it's by the blender bottle brand and it's basically my new best friend. In this picture there are only almonds in the bottom stacker, because I ate the rest. I only work from 8:30-1 so I don't need bring too much. The almonds I have are just the Blue Diamond brand and lightly salted. I will be honest I'm not a huge fan of almonds plain, so I get them salted. They're insanely good for you so I do my best to integrate them into my meal plan. The other snack I had was banana chips. Be careful of what brand you get, most generic kinds at the grocery store are loaded with sugar. I use the Bare brand from target.
The top tier I keep my pills. We both take a multivitamin and a probiotic, but I will usually wait until later in the day to take it when I have digested my food to avoid getting nauseous.
Sometimes my friend and I eat jerky that she brings in, while sometimes high in sodium, jerky is a great snack when homemade. Or she brings me salted nut rolls, I mean same thing right (thanks Haley).
1:30-3
This timeframe usually goes one of two ways. I either go home right away (1:30) or I stop by Marcus' grandma's (3). I will talk about what I did on this particular day which was go home. I was feeling particularly hungry today and I hadn't had much starchy carbs that day. Plus I knew that I wouldn't be eating many starch carbs in my dinner; with breastfeeding carbs derived from grains help immensely. I think I just made up an adjective "starchy", but it's cool. I love pizza, who doesn't love pizza? Buttt regular pizza is pretty horrible on a nutritional basis so you're better off making your own. We buy our crusts from Hennessy Market here in butte, but there are lots of options. We personally buy a no-GMO gluten free crust. I literally just put diced roma tomatoes, fresh mozzarella, pesto, and fresh basil leaves. I bought a can of fire roasted tomato paste and put a thin layer on the crust then pesto. Also dropped pesto on top. Basically I drowned it in pesto because pesto is delicious.
I planned to eat half, and save half. BUT I ate it all. It was wonderful.
4:30-5:30
I will usually try to fit another snack in. Sometimes it's because I'm still hungry, or I don't want to over induldge at dinner. One of my all time favorite snacks is granola. I have found one in particular that is just bomb. I have never been a huge sweets person, but when I was pregnant I wanted oreos daily. Unfortunately, I never really got rid of that. This snack has oreo like cookies in the mix, and is still good for you! The bags are quite small, so I bought literally about 10 bags at a time because sometimes I take them to work and snack all day on just these. There are some other flavors, but these are my all time favorite.
6:30-7
Dinner is always at different times. If it's just me, it's around this time. If Marcus is off at a decent time, it's about 8ish. Tonight we ate together at around 6:45. I was attempting a new Pinterest recipe, using zuchinni in place of noodles in enchiladas. Turns out I'm not very good at hand slicing extremely thin slices so I ended up making more of a bake. I also made a section with whole wheat tortillas for Marcus. The enchiladas themselves were pre-seasononed (taco) turkey burger, black beans, red enchilada sauce. Super simple but really good. As for my half, I made sort of a lasagna. Put sliced zuchini down, stacked the ingredients then topped it. I put a little cheese on mine, more on Marcus'. Bake at 350 for 35 minutes. I have a good recipe I can post, this is just a general overview. This doesn't look pretty, but it was actually really good. I'm going to get a slicer and try it again, but the taste was fantastic.
This is an example of a genuinely good day. I drank 4 bottles of water (2.3 gallons), 3 glasses of orange juice, and the Bai at breakfast. Not all days go as well, but for the most part staying full has immensely changed my eating habits. I plan to do more of these, with more in depth nutritional info and ingredients. It's a little weird, not weird I suppose, but different trying to track what you eat. I personally use an app and it is set to remind me ever 2 hours to eat. It helps enormously, water is also huge. Sometimes I'm just bored or thirsty, drinking a full glass of water and waiting will tell you if you're actually hungry or just bored.
I hope this was enjoyable, any suggestions or questions feel free to message me.
Happy Friday!
XOXO
Shayla