I took a hard look at my food journal today. I'm eating too much.
My goal is 1,000-1,200 calories/day but I seem to be hitting the top end of that range more consistantly than the bottom end. And too often going over that 1,200 mark by a little bit, especially on the weekends.
So I'm going to be more strict with myself and cut out any unnecessary snacks - of which there are some. I've also gotten a bit slack on the protein-carb balance with everything I eat. So I'm going to be very careful to ensure that anytime I eat a carb, it's balance by a protein. My goal is 40% protein and 40% carbs... so they should be equal at each meal, right?
Upon closer inspection it seems I do fine with food up until I leave work at 5:00 p.m. I always try to get home and cook dinner (since it's my only meal at home), but too often I don't even get home until 8pm or 9pm after doing my workout or errands or meetings or whatever. So I walk in the house starving and I seem to grab a snack while I'm preparing dinner. Or I eat dinner out right after work knowing I won't get home until late, and by the time I get home I need to grab another snack because dinner was so long ago. So from 5:00 p.m. until 11:00 p.m is my problem time. I need to figure out a solution for those 6 hours so I'm not sabatoging my entire day just before bedtime.
Another thing I discovered while looking back several weeks in my food journal is that I am not being as faithful with logging my food as I should. There was an entire week with nothing recorded. There were several days with just breakfast logged. I need to be more consistent with adding everything to that log. Even if I'm not counting my calories... my body still is.
So as I'm examining every area of my routine to figure out how to break this plateau... this is the first area I looked at. I still have a long list of things to think about, but wanted to report in on this first discovery.
More self discovery to come soon...
~Pam
I took a hard look at my food journal today. I'm eating too much.
My goal is 1,000-1,200 calories/day but I seem to be hitting the top end of that range more consistantly than the bottom end. And too often going over that 1,200 mark by a little bit, especially on the weekends.
So I'm going to be more strict with myself and cut out any unnecessary snacks - of which there are some. I've also gotten a bit slack on the protein-carb balance with everything I eat. So I'm going to be very careful to ensure that anytime I eat a carb, it's balance by a protein. My goal is 40% protein and 40% carbs... so they should be equal at each meal, right?
Upon closer inspection it seems I do fine with food up until I leave work at 5:00 p.m. I always try to get home and cook dinner (since it's my only meal at home), but too often I don't even get home until 8pm or 9pm after doing my workout or errands or meetings or whatever. So I walk in the house starving and I seem to grab a snack while I'm preparing dinner. Or I eat dinner out right after work knowing I won't get home until late, and by the time I get home I need to grab another snack because dinner was so long ago. So from 5:00 p.m. until 11:00 p.m is my problem time. I need to figure out a solution for those 6 hours so I'm not sabatoging my entire day just before bedtime.
Another thing I discovered while looking back several weeks in my food journal is that I am not being as faithful with logging my food as I should. There was an entire week with nothing recorded. There were several days with just breakfast logged. I need to be more consistent with adding everything to that log. Even if I'm not counting my calories... my body still is.
So as I'm examining every area of my routine to figure out how to break this plateau... this is the first area I looked at. I still have a long list of things to think about, but wanted to report in on this first discovery.
More self discovery to come soon...
~Pam