After giving birth to Makenzie, I discovered one of the best things ever. Food is not the enemy! In fact, my body told me EAT if you want to get in the shape you hope to achieve. And as I grew deeper in my faith and recognized my body as something of value, I began to see the importance of respecting it and fueling it adequately. I finally chose to listen to my body after years of following crazy food rules and ended up in the best shape of my life. I took that same approach post-Braedon and, wouldn’t you know, I made the same sort of progress and feel pretty dang good if I do say so myself. Eat well. Have energy. Live well. Get a healthy, strong, FIT body. Don’t mind if I do!

It always saddens me when I hear about diet plans with recommended calorie intakes of 1200 calories. I truly believe its possible for a healthy individual with no metabolic issues to lose weight eating more than that. I hope to display that you can certainly eat enough food to fuel your body well, feel satiated, and still make progress.

I certainly don’t post all of my eats on a daily basis, so for today’s What I Ate Wednesday post I wanted to give a rundown of ALL my typical daily meals and how they add up. I even broke out the Eat Smart Precision food scale I received at the Fitbloggin conference to get accurate counts for you all. I ate as I normally do, but simply measured the portions I typically use. The scale made measuring for the day easy and accurate since I could choose to measure in grams. Note: If you measure things, always use grams. You get more food. Reason enough for me!

Oh, flashbacks to competition prep days! It’s been a long time since I’ve measured things besides the occasional check on portion sizes or for recipe purposes. And it’s certainly been forever since I have measured things like raisins! Nevertheless, I wanted to get an accurate depiction, so here we are. Besides - calories beware. You don’t scare me!

Pre-Workout:

Banana = ~ 110 calories

Breakfast:

• 1/2 cup rolled oats cooked in water
• 4 large strawberries diced
• handful of raisins (ended up at 26 grams)
• big blob of peanut butter (ended up at 29 grams)
• splash of unsweetened vanilla almond breeze to reach the right consistency + almond milk in my iced coffee (~ 1/2 cup)
• sprinkle of brown sugar for sweetener (~ 1 tsp?)

Grand Total = 467 calories

Lunch:

• flat out wrap
• sliced deli ham – 4 oz
• 1 garlic herb laughing cow wedge
• mustard
• handful of spinach
• thick slice of tomato
• 2/3 of a mango
• 2 large carrots chopped into sticks
• 2 tablespoons Sabra Roasted Pine Nut hummus

Grand Total = 432 calories

Afternoon Snack:

• whole wheat English muffin
• spread of peanut butter on each slice (equaled 14 grams)
• spread of “just fruit” strawberry jam on each slice (equaled 12 grams)
• 6 oz container vanilla Chobani yogurt
• handful Kashi Honey Sunshine cereal (equaled 22 grams)

Grand Total = 448 calories

Dinner:

• 3/4 cup cooked whole wheat penne pasta
• chopped cherry tomatoes
• diced zucchini
• diced mushrooms
• chopped artichoke hearts
• chopped black olives
• 1 oz feta cheese
• 1.5 tbsp Ken’s Northern Italian dressing

Grand Total (estimate on this one because I got so sick of measuring): 450 calories

Dessert:

• Private Collection cookie ice-cream sandwich while finishing up The Bachelorette

Total = 240 calories

In total, I ate 2147 calories on a typical day of meals. I haven’t changed my eating habits from when I made progress on my Body After Baby journey. I usually eat a good deal more than this on weekends as I consumer more “treats” and have a hunger monster at work every Saturday after my long runs. Sure, every body is different. However, I know in light of certain diets, it can appear that we need to eat less less less. From my personal experience, I find the opposite. My body will only reach the places it has when I give it what it needs. And I want to show the value in eating enough. Enough is different for each body…but why not push the limits to get the most quality fuel you can to it? Eating is fun. Enough with the starvation!

• Do you ever track your food at all?
• Because I’m curious – your thoughts on The Bachelorette if you watched!

Catching up from the weekend? Check out a few things you may have missed:

• I Got Sponsored for the Healthy Living Summit! But with WHO?
• What’s My Name Again? and FFF Features
• Call for Guest Posters and Self-Love Reflection on Passion

Every Saturday night, Peter and I have a “date night” where we try to decompress from life’s daily pressures and spend more time together than the standard night. Most of these “date nights” consist of dinner and a movie at home to keep our budget in check…and not to abuse our free babysitting benefits from the grandparents. Besides, it feels more special having one night a month to head out together for a special night just the two of us. We had our night out for July this Saturday and what a good one it was.

We actually started our date on the earlier side. Why? Well, to fit in enough time for this special occasion…

Yes, we were die-hard enough to go opening weekend. And to see it in 3D!

Attractive (and blurry), no? I doubted that the 3D would make a better viewing experience, but Peter insisted after seeing Transformers in 3D with some friends from work a couple weeks ago. And it really was neat! I definitely think it added to the already super-amazing-so-sad-it’s-over-want-to-watch-again movie. They really worked to end the series on a high note and the movie could not have been better. And…now I can’t wait for part one of Breaking Dawn. I’m secretly fifteen.

Once we finished our afternoon at the movies, we headed to dinner.

 

My beautiful Cheeky, we meet again! I couldn’t remember the last time we dined here - only one of my favorite restaurants - and knew we needed to pay it a visit.

We started with the required chips and salsa…

…which still lived up to my expectations. I love their salsa because it has a decent kick and is the perfect consistency – not chunky salsa but not watery either. I could have dunked the whole basket of chips in that delicious tomato flavah!

But I had to save room for my adored tacos – two fish tacos with poblano slaw and chipotle cream and one crab cake taco with poblano slaw and pineapple salsa.

Despite my happy looking face the meal ended up an Utter. Disappointment. 🙁

I don’t know what happened, but the tacos did not taste near as good as usual. They didn’t necessarily taste bad, but just not like they were freshly made and with as much quality. Part of why I always loved Cheeky was for their reasonable portions, fresh tasting food, and flavorful combinations. I didn’t get that vibe last night. I hope they had an off night and aren’t going downhill. I may just have to try that new taco place my friends love.

Even after a decent amount of food at dinner, I still felt really really hungry. If I don’t get the satisfaction I seek in taste, it’s almost like I never ate. I need food that satisfies my taste buds in order to feel satiated physically. So what does a girl do to satisfy those taste buds fully? 

I think you know what that is! Self-serve fro-yo!!! We found a coupon for a new frozen yogurt stop, so of course we had to include it in our date night. I quickly fell in love with this location. Because a) they have birthday cake flavor and b) they have cookie dough topping. A match  made in heaven…

You know…along with espresso flavor frozen yogurt and brownie bits, toffee, and butterscotch chips for additional toppings. You think I went a little topping crazy?

 

And do you think I care??? Thanks, Peter for the action shot. Imagine it in 3D. You would think I’m about to eat your face off. Obviously, the night ended on a high note. Do I look happy or do I look happy? ;) 

• Ever seen a full-length movie in 3D? Did you like it?
• Can you relate to my need for food to taste good in order to feel satiated?