What I eat
This is kinda random but I was making my lunch today thinking about my recent posts on diet and it occured to me, it’s one thing to say what you eat, it’s another to show what you eat. So I grabbed my digital camera and snapped a few pics. This is really what I am eating today. I didn’t hide the candy bars or anything:
My lunch bag:
I use pretty much the same lunch bag every day. It’s large lunch bag and I know that, it was partially purchased for that reason. I place and icepack in the bottom and salad dressing off to one side. Sometimes I’ll stick another condiment in there, depending on my entree. Today is different. I have class tonight so I’m packing lunch and dinner. That is why there are two yogurts in today’s lunch, normally it’s just one. Those are probably the sugariest thing I eat most days but I find the more healthy yogurts taste like crap and I have trouble eating them. Those are yoplait: Calories 170, Carbs 33, Fat 1.5, Protein 5.
Entree
Like I said today is different, I’m packing lunch and dinner, so there are two entrees. The first is Chicken Fajita mix, we make it at home, I cut and cook the veggies. This particular one was made by my wife and used the precooked chicken. It’s beans, veggies, chicken, spices, pretty much in that order. I shredded some colby cheese this weekend and that melts real well so that is what is on top, that’s kind of a treat to me. 🙂 The secon item is half of a sub sandwich my wife bought a couple days ago. I don’t eat something like that very often, maybe once every two weeks or once a month but they are pretty good, artisan bread, sliced meat, veggies. Wegman’s brand.
Salad
Pretty much everyday for lunch I have a baby spinach salad, it’s why I pack my salad dressing with me. The tomatoes are a little treat I picked up this weekend, also not normal but I like them so they may become normal. It was getting hard to slug down straight spinach every single days with just a dash of vinegrette.Oh yeah, my favorite dressing is Balasamic Vinigrette, that is what I have currently. You have to be careful, they slip high fructose corn syrup in a surprising number of dressings.
The total package
That’s a day’s worth of food for me, I’ll drink some coffee during the day, no sugar. When I get home I’ll have some tea. I was eating a handful of almonds each day. I’m trying and experiment though, I have been eating one serving of Caesin protein powder per day instead. I’m waiting too see if it reduces the cravings problem.
That’s really how I eat.
EDIT: The thermos is a new addition. I bought that this weekend and this is the first day I am using it. It’s filled with some home brewed coffee and a little bit of skim milk. So far, I have found that it gives me too easy of an access to my coffee. Drank it all this morning, oops.
Anvil or Hammer 
on February 20, 2007 on 6:25 pm
That doesn’t look like much. Do you eat more on the weekend or something? How often do you deviate from that during the week? Have you considered measuring the food and counting calories for a week?
Man, my planned day is:
Feed 1–6am
2 Servings Cereal plus one cup of skim milk
Feed 2–9am
8oz cottage cheese and 1.5 servings triscuits
Quart baggy of baby carrots, celery, snow peas
Feed 3–11:30am
2 servings cooked pasta, serving brocolli, 2 servings part skim mozzarella
Feed 4–2:30pm
Yogurt and Bannana
Quart baggy of romaine lettuce
Feed 5–7:00pm
Peanut Butter and Jelly with 12oz chocolate soy milk
That’s about 2500 calories and a little over 100 grams of protien. Feeds 2 and/or 4 might be dropped if I go out to lunch or plan to have a heavy dinner. That has me dropping weight at a rate of around 1lb a week. I’ve considered cutting the sweet stuff (yogurt, bannana, chocolate soy milk) but don’t want to burn myself out trying to progress too fast.
And shoot, I’d say 2-3 days a week I’m exceeding those allocations. Today I had 2 bagels with cream cheese for feed 2, and an ice cream cone for feed 4. We didn’t get groceries delivered this weekend and I’m out of food. I’ll probably be at 2800 cals for the day, but I still expect to have dropped weight at the end of the week.
Activity wise I do weights 4x a week on an upper/lower split. I’ll grip 2x a week in the evenings, but don’t really count that as exercise. I walk maybe a mile a day, with one day a week having a longer walk or some kettlebells or DDR. That seems similar to what you do, probably less after you account for how much heavier the weights are you lift.
on February 20, 2007 on 10:13 pm
Scott,
I posted my food for a while, I can’t find it at the moment though. It’s changed anyway. When I stay on diet, I can drop about 3 pounds per week. Maybe I’m cutting too much.
My lunch for today was pretty typical for me. My dinner was a little smaller than usual. It would be more typical for me to eat one quarter pound hamburger and a dozen or so tater tots or two pieces of quiche or a grilled cheese sandwich and half a can of tomatoe soup. I did forget to mention my breakfast, I do eat breakfast every morning, one cup of coffee and a bowl of one quarter cup steel cut oats and one quarter cup ground flax seeds with hot water.
I don’t think I eat more on the weekends, in fact, last weekend I was pondering that I may have eaten less. I don’t eat as often, usually just three squares a day.
When I go off diet, I eat “junk food” but I don’t typically eat a ton of it. For example, my wife and I might split a 10″ greek pizza and a dozen fried button mushrooms or we order mushu chicken and eat about half of it between us. Our favorit and worst vice is to split a bag of the really good Garden of Eaten (I think that’s how they spell it) chips and eat it with this guacamole/bean dip combo called a Mexican Layer cake that Whole Food sells. If you go there you’re probably familiar with both, lately we haven’t actually been eating the whole bag between us.
Not a whole lot else. I don’t drink alcohol all that often. I do go out for a medium Starbuck’s coffee about once a week. We don’t really eat out, the rare occasion that we do, about once a month, we go to Chik-Fil-A or a basic combo.
I’m real boring. I do try to cook stuff occasionally. I used to do almost all of our cooking. Now my wife is doing more of it, she cooks a lot like I do. Lots of veggies, I use more meat, she uses more beans. Good stuff.
on February 20, 2007 on 10:31 pm
It sounds like you eat well. Dropping 3lbs a week is a lot though, I’d have a ton of cravings and quit if I did that. At the 1lb a week range I don’t miss much. I can fit half a large pizza and a bottle of wine or six pack in once a week and still stay on track.
on February 20, 2007 on 10:33 pm
sounds about like me then, I’ve had the cravings, I’ve had the backsliding. This week has been good but it’s Tuesday. Perhaps more allowances should be made.
on February 22, 2007 on 3:09 am
Very nice. Looking at those pics, it’s clear just how ordinary my diet is at the moment (not bad by any means, just ordinary). Think you might have started something here 🙂
on February 22, 2007 on 6:44 am
I don’t do well at plain. I have to keep it flavorful, when I watch TV, it’s pretty much cooking shows I watch. I never quite work up the guts to pull off some of those amazing dishes though. Having lived in Colorado, which is considered by some to be a part of the american southwest, I eat a fair but of pseudo mexican food.
I’ve thought about trying to get some kind of conversation going in various places regarding “muscle food”. As long as I don’t eat too much of it, I can really enjoy that stuff and get some great benefits.
on February 22, 2007 on 10:32 pm
I see in the background you’ve got the ON 100% Casein whey. Do you consume it on a regular basis? I have the exact same stuff, I haven’t even touched it. I can’t seem to stomach the artificial chocolatey taste. How do you take it?
I just take my cup of cottage cheese with a side of tuna for my night time snack 🙂
on February 23, 2007 on 6:59 am
The protein powder is new. Last week I had to go to the Vitamin Shoppe to get more fish oil. I added Glucosamine Chondritin and I picked up the protein powder. I actually bought it based on Stephen’s suggestion to get some Protein Pudding. They didn’t have that but they had a whole lot of powders. I picked this one because it was the only caesin protein they had. I tend to hold Caesin in higher regard than soy. I also tend to eat it at other times than during my workout so the slow digestion is a plus.
As for choking it down, it has gone pretty well so far. I haven’t noticed the flavor vary much. Some of that could be due to having eaten protein powder and bars a few times so “good” become relative. I haven’t been mixing it as directed either. Instead I take it in a small tupperware container, one scoop and mix it with between 1 and 2 times it’s own volume in water. So not much water at all. I stir t thoroughly with a spoon until I get a pudding like paste. Then I use the spoon to wolf it down in about 5 bites. The flavor seems ok at this high concentration, but as I mentioned, “good” is relative.
I used to love cottage cheese but ever since I moved to the east coast i haven’t been able to find any that is really worth eating. No cottage cheese is as good as midwest cottage cheese. 🙂