A Day In The Life of My Diet! And July goals, and such :)

Greetings, earthlings!

Wow, today was a 2fer blogging day.  And this one is actually diet/exercise-related, woo-hoo!

I'd love to spend more time gabbing about all these little things, but alas, my time is limited.  So, in the best interest of logging updates to my diet and fitness journey, I leave you with the famous words of Mario from Super Mario Brothers:  "Heeeere we GO!" :D

I was previously eating 7 small meals a day and not being able to figure out why I always felt like I was going to pass out.  Once I was done beating myself with the Stupid Stick, I realized that each of my meals was just too small; it didn't matter that I was eating every 1.5-2 hours if each meal was just not enough to get me out of a blood sugar dip.  D'oh!  So now, I've truncated everything into 6 meals.  Same foods, just more condensed.  

These photos are vaguely pointless, however, because my July goals are to essentially cut 3/4ths of the sugar out of my diet, which means big changes.  Sh*t's gonna get real.  But anyway, this is what I've been eating basically since the last time I posted food pics:

Meal 1

1 cup decaf with 1/2 cup unsweetened organic soymilk, 1 large steamed zucchini, 1/4 avocado and a builder's bar.  Oh and 24 fl. oz. water

Meal 2:

2 peaches, 1 cup berries (blueberry and raspberry, here) and a banana.  I no longer eat oatmeal after I discovered the joys of eating protein in my first meal, so these are some of the only carbs I get in the day.

Meal 3:

I forgot to take a pic before I ate my Meal 3, so I went home and pulled one out of the freezer, lol.  It's 6 oz. boneless skinless chicken breast, 2/3 cup green peas and 2/3 cup brown rice medley

Meal 4:

2 cups red leaf lettuce, a cut up apple, 1 serving raw almonds, and a Trader Joe's Blueberry Fiber Cake Muffin with a cup of green tea and a little soymilk.

My meal 5 is a chocolate Shakeology shake mixed with 1.5 cups unsweetened organic almond milk, and meal 6 is just an egg white, black bean and spinach scramble with garlic and cayenne pepper :) You can see a preview of the "Egg White Burrito" I'll be making for my July breakfasts and dinners in my Mad Science cooking album on my Facebook page, HERE.

All of these meals equate to the following macro-nutrient breakdown (This, being based off of an 1,800 calorie diet composed of 25% fat, 30% protein, and 45% carb.  And 100g sugars):


JULY
July is a big month for me.  When I started my journey, I hoped to have lost all the weight I wanted off, after 6 months of clean eating and exercise.  The end of July will mark my 6th month completed.  I was looking at my stats and realized the weight wasn't coming off fast enough, and though I was seeing results, I still have a substantial amount of fat in my core.  After some honest diet journalling, I discovered the culprit:

SUGAR.

Look at all that fruit - Banana, apple, 2 peaches, berries... peas.... the protein bar.... something's gonna have to change.

My June goal was to ride my bike to work 4 days a week, and that's a trend that will be staying through the end of Daylight Savings (upon which it becomes way too dangerous for me to ride home in the dark.  I got hit by a car last year!).

This month, it's all about diet.  I want to limit myself to 50-75g of sugar a day.  It will be traumatic, but it's my final push.  At the end of next month, I want to be ready to change things up and start putting on muscle mass and "cutting", if you will.  I'm even entertaining the thought of some light natural body building during the volleyball off-season, just to keep me motivated!

Here's a sample of what I think my diet will be looking like:
So this current diet has 81.4g of sugar, which I think is something I can live with.  There are things I can adjust to this, though.  I will very likely substitute in green beans for peas with my lunch, and sweet potatoes for the brown rice.  I am also going to attempt to make my own protein bars following this recipe here, because it is HIGH time I ditch the processed bars.  Not to mentioned it contributes 20% of my daily sugar intake! Umm, hello!

I'm also excited to announce that I found a digestive enzyme complex at Whole Foods that appears to be solving almost all of my digestive issues.  I've been slowly adding in previously troublesome foods with great success! It will cost me an arm and a leg, but you can't put a price tag on good health :) I'll blog about it soon!