New SparkPeople Nutritional Plan
At first I thought it was going to be daunting to use the nutritional guidance of SparkPeople’s site, but I found it was easier to manage and modify that I originally thought. Even though they give you a menu for the day – if you ask them to – you can add foods not in your meal plan as a substitute or addition to what they suggest. For instance this morning their suggestion for breakfast was peaches, 1c. nonfat milk, shredded wheat, 1/2 a bagel and a tbsp. of jam. I do not have any of those things in my house, well, except for the jam, soooo, I had to find something that I did have that would keep me within the calorie/carb/fat/protein range. I ended up substituting 1 cup fresh strawberries, 1 cup 2% milk, 1 cup Blueberry Yogurt Burst Cheerios and a piece of Whole Wheat Toast. I omitted the jam since the milk put me 60 calories over and I wanted to same them for another meal.
At lunch their suggestion was to use Carl Buddig Smoked Turkey on a salad. The turkey I have is a Wilson Premium Sliced Smoked Honey Ham. It ended up having less calories, more protein and less fat than the suggestion. That made me happy. I substituted the pretzels for the Honey Wheat Braided Twists which are practically one for one. Instead of croutons I substituted the Sunkist Almond Accents Original Roast since I had them readily available. Again, the fat is a little higher, but it’s the type of fat I’m worried about. Now, if I don’t see significant changes in my weight because I’ve been eating these MUFA foods, maybe I’ll have to reconsider my position of “it’s the type of fat that’s important”.
The Day Draws to a Close and Exhaustion Sets In
I discovered a problem with my timeline and goal weight. How is this you ask? I ran out of energy and was left hungry. Mentally and physically exhausted I was ready for bed at 7PM. I took a restless nap (when I’m hungry I can’t sleep) and woke up with a voracious appetite. So, I made my snack for the day – a 100 calorie snack bag of Pop-Secret – and hoped the churning in my tummy would stop. No luck. Out of desperation I ate an ounce of the Cocoa Roast Almonds which still left me under my maximum daily goal of 1550 calories. Water won’t make it stop and my brain is begging for food. I know when the hunger goes beyond just a belly craving when my frontal lobes start to ache. It’s different from a normal headache and Tylenol never takes it away – only protein will.
So, I went back to SparkPeople and set my 6 month weight loss goal to 30 pounds instead of 60. This bumped my recommended daily intake to 1720. This seems better, but I’m worried if I might be setting myself up for a crash later and impeding my long term goals. I’ll try this tomorrow and see what happens. If I still feel awful I might have to change something else.
Did I meet my exercise goals?
Yes, I did. I did the Slim-In-Six Start-It-Up workout again today though I felt very tired today. Tomorrow I think I’ll change the time for my workout for the morning. Today I went outside and gardened and played with Yeyda for a couple hours then came in to workout. I think it may have been too much on too little fuel.
On the minimal amount of exercise I did last week I still lost 1.6 lbs even without changing my diet. Maybe I need to find a better way to modify my eating than just counting calories.
Firstly, I’m a mom and wife. Professionally, IT consulting is my job and blogging is the outlet for my passions. I write about things that affect the everyday life of a stay-at-home parent or any parent for that matter such as parenting, relationships, discipline, the media, product reviews, giveaways, social media, food, cooking, gardening and anything else that might come my way.
