Oct 113 min read

What I Eat in a Day

Updated: Oct 13

When we think about a limited amount of calories, we automatically think we won't get enough to eat. That largely depends on what we want to eat. If we eat fast food or ultra processed food, our calorie allotment will run out before our day runs out!

However, if we eat whole foods - veggies, fruits, grains, legumes, nuts, and seeds - you'll be surprised how far 1300 calories a day can go. That is the purpose of this blog - to show how much food I ate in a day to lose weight and how much I eat now to maintain my weight loss.

If you’d like to read my journey to this present weight, you can read that here. You can also read about how the LoseIt app helped me along the way here.

My calorie allotment when I was losing weight was 1200 calories per day. Since I’m now in maintenance mode, my weekday amount is 1300 and weekends are 1400.

The biggest lesson I've learned in this journey is that I can never go back to mindless eating. That is why I continue to log my food.

Is it worth it? Yes, Yes, and a thousand times YES!

So, let's get started with breakfast! I try to stay between 250-300 calories for breakfast. That satisfies me and gives me plenty of room for the rest of the meals for the day.

***I have attached links to most of the pictures in this blog. You can click on the picture, and it will take you to the recipe for the primary food in the picture.

Breakfast

Nutrition Note: When eating a heavy carb meal, eating fibrous veggies and/or fruits first helps to lessen the glucose spike. They create a fibrous mesh in your stomach that the rest of your meal has to work through to digest. This is what lessens the rapid glucose release into your system!

Lunch

I prep meals on the weekend that we eat for lunch during the week. This makes the week go much more smoothly for me. We eat an array of lunch foods. They range in caloric value from 350 - 450. This is a sampling of some of our lunch choices!

*** I usually eat a serving of fruit with my lunches. That can range from 30 calories (red plum) up to 100 calories (medium pear). It all just depends on the amount of calories in the main portion of my lunch.

Supper

Monday through Thursday we eat a huge salad for supper. I saved it as a meal in my LoseIt app to keep from adding all those ingredients every time. The salad consists of greens, kale, red cabbage, brussels sprouts, carrot, tomato, red onion, cauliflower, broccoli, chickpeas, beets, sauerkraut, pumpkin seeds, nutritional yeast,

and a vinaigrette dressing.

Yes, it is the rainbow!

On Friday nights, we typically get supper from Subway or Chipotle.

Snacks

Snacks vary but tend to stay in the 100 calorie range.

These are currently my go-to's.

My Favorite Snack

This cozy drink is 2 tsp. Dandy Blend (can use coffee.), 1T of cocoa powder, sweetener of choice (I use Stevia), 2T plant milk, and boiling water. It is rich and satisfying and easily gets me from the time I walk in the door from work until supper for 32 calories!

A Weekend Day

Since I have more wiggle room on the weekends, I make good use of it! I thought you might like to see what those meals look like.

Do I ever just eat what I want without thinking about the calories? I do. In fact, I did that today! We ate at The Sunflower Cafe in Nashville. It's our favorite place to eat because everything on their menu is plant based.