Are You Eating Enough?

We're going to start today off by talking about food. I know, you're super excited. Calm yourself.

No matter what stage you are at in your journey to eat healthier or lose weight, I want you to contemplate this question: are you eating enough? It's a strange question for me too because I'm more than capable of eating everyone's share of the chips and salsa at the table, but I've really been trying to focus on getting enough food in with all of the fitness that I've been doing. Getting enough food is super important to your body's functions but sometimes when you're eating so many low calorie, “whole” foods, it's seriously difficult.

I've lost approximately 5 pounds over the course of the last three months, three months full of Jillian Michaels and running, and I've noticed that since I starting doing this one, seemingly obsessive thing, I've been able to lose the bulk of that weight. I think about this thing I do and I almost feel like I'm going overboard... but it's not that I'm doing it to make sure I'm not eating too much, I'm doing it to give myself all the food that I should be eating. I weigh fruit.

I'll give the example in “My Fitness Pal” language, which if you aren't already using something to track your food and exercise, I would highly recommend MFP to you. I've lost 38 pounds using it. Anyway, when you track eating let's say, an orange, you have several choices. You can track “1 cup” of orange sections, a small orange, a medium orange, a large orange, a 2-3/8 inch diameter orange... you get the idea. You hold the orange in your hand. Is this a small orange? Is it a medium orange? And you think, Katie, why do we care? It's an orange. It's good for you. It's low in calories.

But it matters.

It's the difference between 100 calories for a “large” navel orange or 69 calories for a “medium” orange and if you weigh your peeled orange sections, you might find that the “large” orange you're holding is really only 125 grams and that's actually 50 calories. So you're shorting yourself 50 calories by tracking 100 calories for that item. And I hear you thinking, but isn't that a good thing? We're trying to burn more than we eat, so shorting ourselves 50 calories can help us do that without even trying, right? But if you're doing it on that orange, imagine what else you might be shorting yourself. And you could be doing it and not giving yourself enough to eat. Then you won't lose weight. You won't lose weight and you're missing out on a bunch of food... that's a depressing combination.

Here's how I've started tracking fruit: I find an entry that actually gives a weight in grams for a serving. So in the serving section, it either describes the weight of the large orange (280 g) or it gives you the stats for 100 g of orange. Then you have to do a little math, but seriously, if I can do this math, so can you. You weigh your orange sections. It comes out to 128 g. Either divide 128/280 and enter the decimal amount into MFP or you enter 1.28 servings for the 100 g of orange.

And you would want to do this for your recipes too. The zucchini you used two weeks ago to make the recipe may have been larger or smaller than the zucchini you're using right now.

The philosophy of eating enough is why I eat 5 small meals a day. I try to keep each of the 5 meals under 300 calories and this keeps me constantly fueled and never overfull. Being overfull is always my downfall. It makes me want to eat more. Knowing at 1:30 that I'm going to get another meal at 3:00 helps me to keep away the bored-eating cravings.

I didn't do very much cooking this week, but I did finally try a food that I've been wanting to try for a while. Quinoa!! I know, I'm late in doing this, but living in the world of Pinterest and seeing so many quinoa recipes around, I had to try it.

If you're like me and you've never eaten it before, I'd describe the texture as if barley and rice had a baby. The nice thing about quinoa is it has protein in it as well as carbs, so you get a little more bang for your buck. Always remember, the more nutrition you're getting from a given food, the less of the next food you have to eat. And that's how we take in less calories than we exert in order to lose weight.

I call this my Veggie Quinoa Skillet and I legitimately just whipped this up in my kitchen with no direction other than how long to cook the quinoa from the side of the box. Of course, if you have different veggies in the house, feel free to use whatever you have on hand or whatever you like.  Here's what I used and I split this recipe into 3 servings:

2 servings of quinoa, cooked per package directions (you'll need to half the direction requirements)

1 portabello cap, chopped into bite-sized pieces

½ serving of baby spinach

1 medium green bell pepper, chopped into bite-sized pieces

1 tsp olive oil

Start your quinoa cooking. It will only take about 10-15 minutes and it's super easy to cook. While that cooks, heat up your oil slightly and throw in your pepper and mushroom. Cook the vegetables to your liking and then spread out the veggies on the bottom of your skillet. Add the spinach on top. This will allow the spinach to wilt without sticking right away.

When your quinoa is finished, stir the spinach in with the other vegetables, then pour the veggie contents into the pot with your quinoa. Stir well, incorporating everything together.

1/3 of this recipe is 160 calories, 4 grams of fat, 6 grams of protein and it is delicious. The first night I made it I had an avocado that I needed to eat, which was the rationale behind splitting the recipe three ways, so I could add avocado to the mix and not be over on calories.

I had my second serving with some salmon and then I had the last serving with some boiled eggs and a cheese stick. It all went together very well.

I've been getting a little burnt out on salad recently, mainly the cutting up of the lettuce, since buying heads of romaine over the bagged stuff helps it last longer. But I had a delicious salad made with baby spinach, romaine, salmon and orange sections.

In the world of fitness I've been sort of taking it easy this week. Monday and Tuesday I came home from work and did Level 1 of Jillian's Yoga Meltdown. I hadn't done that video since before doing Ripped in 30 back in January/February and my flexibility has vastly improved! I've never been able to get back into Camel Pose. I think it's because I'm fairly short waisted, so there's not too much space to bend between my shoulders and my waist. But I can do it now! Maybe my recent abilities in Wheel Pose have helped that out.

I'm also pushing along well in my Push-up Challenge. I'm really enjoying starting the day off with some activity and push-ups are quick and fun to do before I jump in the shower. This morning I was able to do 21 push-ups before failure. I was at 20 earlier in the week. I did a total of 35 push-ups today. By the 31^st, I'll be doing 50 and I'm hoping that I'll be able to do half of those before failure.

I'm heading to Kentucky for a quick trip next weekend, so my blog post may be a little late next week. April 1^st my graduate school classes begin online and I'm going to start on ChaLEAN Extreme. Pretty pumped to start a new routine and since this one is 90 days, I'll have a lot to keep me occupied.

Lastly, not sure if you know this, but you can now follow Autonomous Eats on Facebook. I'll share random stuff that I eat and notice during the week that might not make it into the blog posts. Just search for Autonomous Eats and “Like” the page!!