I've had several people ask me what I tend to eat in a given day so I thought I'd occasionally post daily menu lists. That way you can see how I eat.

I drink water regularly. I always have a large glass of water near me. Sometimes I flavor it, sometimes not. Regular hydration is key no matter what eating style you follow.

I'm not a breakfast person - but consuming something when you wake up is critical to a healthy metabolism. So my compromise is to start every morning with an EAS protein shake. It's full of vitamins and minerals and the protein. With that I have a chewable orange multi-vitamin, two chewable orange calcium pills (Tums), and three chewable orange fiber pills. That way my body gets all of those critical items to work with during the day.

So the thing that changes each day is my lunch, my dinner, and my snacks.

Some people might read my daily notes and think "I would get hungry eating only that". I used to eat a lot more when I ate a high sugar diet, because that incoming sugar would create high-low blood sugar swings. When the swing got low it would create a craving, making me eat a lot.

Now that I eat a low sugar diet, my blood sugar doesn't have those wild swings any more. So I don't get as hungry. I'm full with far less.

Also, I eat slowly and pay attention to what I eat. This means I sense when I'm full much more easily. That lets me be full on less.

With all of that being said, I always DO eat until I'm full. I am never hungry (except I suppose right before a meal ). I am full and content during the day. So this isn't a diet of "feeling hungry". I am content and full and happy eating this way.

There was a weaning process. It was hard for me to give up some sugary foods I had grown up with. Potato pancakes, pirogies, ravioli, that sort of thing. But over time I crave them less and less. Now I tend to only crave them if I'm emotionally upset - and it's better to solve that problem by fixing the issue, not by eating sugary foods.

Let me know if you have any questions about the basic of my daily meal plan!

C'mon, admit it; you got the idea from me. :p

I should say up front that I'm a believer in eating healthy foods. I only have X room in my stomach in a given day. I want to make sure what I feed myself is building my body's strength. If 25% of what I give myself is junk, I've lost out on a key opportunity to give myself the building blocks for repairing itself.

Some people advocate a style of eating of "eat whatever you want and then exercise away the calories". I don't agree with that. To me it's not about calories - it's about caring tenderly for yourself. If I drank in a tasty poison, and then exercised away the calories, I still would have damaged myself. Even if I drank in a tasty neutral item, I would have by default made my body miss out on nutrients because that portion of my daily intake was wasted.

There are so many delicious, nutritious things out there to choose from that I don't see there ever to be a reason to have to go beyond that to something that is non-nutritious or harmful.

OK, enough preamble

Here's some previous days:

Thursday, March 22:

EAS shake for breakfast

Tomato-mozzarella-basil salad for lunch (yumm!)
homemade lemonade with splenda

chicken cheddar omelette for dinner (yumm!)

So that was 16g carbs and 545 calories for the day. Maybe a bit low on calories, but I was full all day and did a lot of dancing too. I certainly would have had a snack like almonds or something if I wanted to, but I didn't.

Edit: I forgot to list the fiber here. That is 2g fiber, so that's 14g net carbs.

Dear Jilly -

You're very sweet to share all your food items Your food log is to help keep you on track, which is great!

My actual food log is kept in software on my computer. So this thread isn't for that.

This thread here is because in the past week I've had several people ask me what my daily menus were, to get some guidance on what to eat. So rather than posting it in pieces via email or Facebook or so on, I thought I'd post it in one central location.

My food log (edit - by this I mean the actual software version that I keep for myself) adds up all the nutrition and calories and carbs for me automatically, which makes it easy to see how I'm doing. I highly recommend everyone use software like that to know they're getting enough vitamins and protein and such each day.

Here's my daily food log for March 23rd.

Because the log runs midnight to midnight, sometimes I have foods that "cross over" (I.e. I eat them after midnight, but before I go to sleep). I always accurately record them in the proper calendar day since that's how my workout calories record.

So on this day for breakfast in addition to my EAS shake I had a miso soup. That was actually a post-midnight snack.

For lunch I had a great salad with lettuce, tomatoes, and chicken along with olives, cheese etc. and ranch dressing.

For dinner I had a can of tuna with mayo and olives.

So this day was a 34 total carb day, 872 calories, 52g protein and 10g of fiber. So 24g net carbs.

My food for March 24th. This ended up being a splurge day for me - both for lunch and dinner.

breakfast was the typical EAS shake.

Lunch was Triscuits with cheese and salsa, and sour cream. That right there - just 14 crackers, with a freshly squeezed lemonade to wash it down - was 57g total carbs and 530 calories.

For dinner, Ruby Tuesday. I had ribs with grilled zucchini, and a salad. Plus a glass of wine. So dinner was 50g total carbs and 771 calories.

Total day - 1411 calories, 110 total carbs - 13g fiber = 97g net carbs. 64g protein. So clearly not a "low carb" day. Those ribs are coated with sugar sauce I think And those Triscuits really aren't great for me.

Food for March 25th was a good example of not-super-low-carb - it was healthy, but not stringent.

Breakfast - EAS shake

Lunch - roast beef sandwich. Nitrite-free roast beef, high-fiber bread, mustard.

Snacks - miso soup, peanuts

dinner - homemade low carb garlic pizza on Italian herb flatbread, so yummy. I have them with sour cream, I'm odd Plus homemade lemonade.

838 calories, 69 total carbs - 20g fiber = 49g carbs. 60g protein.

March 26th is an example of eating out in a healthy way.

Breakfast - EAS shake

Lunch - salad with ranch dressing. I hand entered every single item in the salad too

Dinner - I searched the menu carefully and finally went with swordfish, as it was the only fish that wasn't breaded. Normally I avoid swordfish, and go with tuna or salmon instead, but here it ended up being the healthiest compromise. I had a tomato-basil-mozzarella salad with that. Water to drink, and I really never have dessert. I eat until I'm full, then stop.

So total, 1048 calories (the pine nuts and ranch dressing on the salad were prime 'could be better' items here). 33g carbs - 6g fiber = 27g total carbs. 73g protein.

March 27th demonstrates that, as much as I think Subway is one of the better options for fast food, it's still not great.

This was the day of our pedometer testing at the mall. So while there I got a Subway tuna-on-wheat.

Breakfast - EAS shake

Lunch - 6" of the Subway sub

Dinner - the other 6" of the Subway sub

Each of those 6" subs was 43g total carbs and 500 calories. Yikes .

So the total day ended up:

1110 calories
90g carbs - 11g fiber = 79g net carbs
61g protein

So while I'll go with the tuna sub as my fast food choice, I think there are definitely healthier choices that can be made at home, and of course for less money.

OK those were the days that I was being very precise about recording every item on every meal - and even weighing items - to make sure I did my testing of the SlimCoach system properly. After that, I wasn't being as careful with my recording.

So for example I hadn't entered today's information, but I just did now to update this thread.

Breakfast - EAS shake

lunch - large salad with tomatoes and olives, and ranch dressing

Late afternoon - hamburger, no bun. Normally I don't eat twice like this but we were on an odd schedule with James and when he ate, I ended up eating again. Which was bad of me because I wasn't hungry.

dinner - grilled cheese sandwich on high fiber bread

As a treat, for getting past the 130 mark, I had a glass of Champagne and 2 nut flour cookies (homemade). I did actually attempt to enter all the ingredients into the system to figure out the counts for the 2 cookies, but then the system didn't know what pecan meal's values were and when I went to enter that it lost the rest of my recipe. So I gave up on that process. So my daily totals *without* those two cookies are

1077 calories
48g carbs - 7g fiber = 41g net carbs
72g protein

So an odd day, but a reasonable result.

Definitely both Bob and I have found that tracking your food in a food journal of whatever sort - either in a forum, in software, in your smartphone, etc. - keeps you more aware of what you're ingesting and how it's helping or hindering your health. I highly recommend it!

(edit note - usually I don't eat desserts. The only reason we had nut cookies in the house is that yesterday I was feeling quite stressed, and I made nut cookies as a way to relieve the stress. Clearly not the best idea But I do still do that sometimes. So these 2 cookies were left over from that decision yesterday. I wouldn't have eaten them if they weren't there. Since they were there, I hated to waste them. Again a fairly silly reason to eat something that I didn't need to. So this whole cookie thing is a recurring learning lesson for me).