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!

Hi, friends! Top of the morning to ya! It’s Wednesday morning, which you may have figured out now means a What I Ate Wednesday post a la Jenn!

Let’s hop right in with the good stuff!

Yesterday morning, I grabbed my standard piece of fruit for a pre-workout snack as I run around feeding little children’s mouths and getting ready for the gym. I don’t like working out with a heavy stomach because then great workouts will make me want to vomit. And vomiting is no fun, agreed? 😉

I completed a full body weights workout followed up with 30 minutes of light elliptical action. No intervals. Just slow and steady. It felt calming, which is just what I needed after the hectic mindset I had earlier. And cereal was just what I needed after a great workout.

Have you heard that cereal is actually fantastic for a post-workout meal because it has plenty of carbohydrates to refill energy stores and some protein as well from the milk? I believe it because cereal sounded good for post-workout today. Have you also heard of Fiber One’s new Honey Squares 80 calorie cereal?

I got a box of this cereal to sample free of charge and have fallen fully in love. I assure you the company did not buy my love. In fact, I promptly went out and bought myself two more boxes while on sale – using two coupons of course. Pick up $1.00 off and $0.75 off printable coupons to use for yourself after hearing how good this stuff is.

It has the perfect crunch, just enough sweetness, ingredients that don’t make me feel like I’m a rat in a science lab, and a healthy dose of fiber (40% daily value!). And I will admit – I like that it has a lower calorie count than most cereals because I can fill up on even more. I love cereal, but I can easily go heavy on the pouring and end up with three servings. Three 80 calorie servings = way more reasonable than three 180 calorie servings. Not that I would know or anything. Ahem.

I devoured a large bowl topped with my diced strawberries and raisins combo. You didn’t think my favorite oatmeal topping would disappear now did you?

None of my meals really got any more difficult than a bowl of cereal the rest of the day either. In fact, I almost feel a little embarrassed by the sheer ease, laziness, and packaged-ness of most of the day’s eats.

Lunch:

A grilled ham and swiss sandwich. Carrot sticks, cucumbers, and hummus. Watermelon.

Snack:

A S’mores Lunabar and a container of Chobani greek yogurt.

Dinner:

I actually pulled out more produce for dinner. I chopped up a zucchini, two small summer squash, a small head of bok choy, some onion, and some mushrooms to stir-fry all together. Since I didn’t feel like cooking a full meal, I turned to the freezer for some packaged chicken egg rolls we had to use. And while the nutritional stats aren’t terrible in those little eggrolls, I can’t deny their super processed state.

I almost felt embarrassed for showcasing meals like cereal, packaged bars, and frozen eggrolls in a What I Ate Wednesday post. No cooking. No creativity. Nothing fancy. Nothing perfectly unprocessed with zero added sugars and zero disodium guanylate.

Then I remind myself I still strive overall to eat as high quality as possible but also without stressing myself over every meal choice. I can’t feel embarrassed for eating what suited me yesterday despite it not living up to some of the standards that occasionally seem prevalent in the blogging world. I always appreciate blogging for opening my eyes to new, fun ways to eat mindfully and beneficially to my body. At the same time, I also have to remain aware to not allow the “blog food standard” I create in my head to overwhelm my decisions. So, I had my egg roll lazy meal day. Chomp.

• Are you a cereal addict?
• Do you ever feel a certain unspoken standard for food on blogs? What do you think are the pros/cons?