Calorie Tracking is a Bitch

So today I decided to track my calories. I had the most success with weight loss when I did that before, so I'm not going to reinvent the wheel. As I stated earlier, I'm not planning on cutting out any food groups in particular; I'm just going to try to eat smarter. I'm also working on moving a bit more. This is harder to do with a kiddo around, but I'm going to work on that too. 

This morning, my husband went to Colorado State University to figure out how to enroll in school now that we're here so I was left with the nugget. She has recently decided that 7:00 a.m. is a great time to wake up. Not a fan. She had some boob milk and we made our way downstairs at 8:00. She played while I got myself some breakfast going. 

Avocado English muffin + scrambled eggs (1 egg + 2 egg whites)

Probiotic juice to keep me regular ;-)

Trader Joe's pizza and a serving size of Caesar salad

Nuts

Cantaloupe

Chicken salad + crackers

HelloFresh baja barramundi + leftover Caesar salad

Then the nugget had some puréed peaches and we got her all dressed. She crashed for nap #1 around 10:15 and I showered and did some stuff I wanted to do (steam some green beans for her, buy a new nursing bra since I only have two and one's underwire made a break for freedom, etc). 

Reyah got up at 11:30ish, had lunch with Nasur - she's a fan of green beans like her mama! I had a bit unhealthier lunch than her, but it was noms. I also had to snack between breakfast and lunch because, duh. I'm always hungry.

After lunch, Nasur had to do some car stuff so the nugget and I hung out. She went down for another nap around 3:45 and so I got to make some lemon bars I've been wanting to make for some time now. I also fiddled around with my FitBit to finally get it to work. Nasur gave it to me for my birthday and it has been really finicky but now it's finally working!

Nasur made dinner while I kept the nugget entertained, but I snacked again between meals because I'm always hungry. I'm not sure if breastfeeding makes it worse, but I need food like every 1-3 hours.


Then we got to eat dinner. I'm pretty luck that the husband cooks because it's not for me. Baking requires less patience [if you use a box mix].

Then we opted to take the nugget out on her first bike trailer ride. Our timing probably wasn't excellent as she gets pretty fussy after dinner, but she tolerated it as best she could.

Before going out

During her ride

After, lol

We got home and she was a major fusspants so she had some boob milk and I put her down. She was mad about having to go to sleep, but settled in eventually. Then Nasur and I enjoyed our lemon bars.

It was a box mix - I'm only good at following directions

Only 100 calories!

So, now that the day is done, I can say that I did track every single thing that I ate and wow, I ate a lot.

My calorie range is 1700-2050 per day to allow for a 1.5 pound loss per week. This calculator doesn't include an option to indicate that you're breastfeeding. From what I have read, breastfeeding allows an extra 500 calories a day. So that's more of what I'm shooting for. We'll see how things go. 

Logging calories is a bitch, by the way. It'll get easier once I'm into it more, especially once I'm back to work and have a bit more structure to my day. Also, I did a weigh-in today. I'm thinking I'll try to do this once a week. We'll see.

Thanks for reading!

Study day and multi-tasking

So today is the first day in a looooong time where I've had a day off and haven't had to do something on that day off. Like technically last week I had Thursday-Sunday off, but I had a wedding of a close friend, so that doesn't count. But today, I got to have a whole day to study, go to the gym, do laundry, eat when I wanted, and so on. It was luxurious. I can't even tell you how much I needed a day like today.

Anywho, one of the things I've noticed today is my compulsion to do more than one thing at a time. For example, when I'm eating, I'm always watching something or reading something. Or when I'm at the gym and I'm on the elliptical, I'm always reading a book for fun (that's mostly to help pass the time). Or when I'm on the toilet, I've always got my phone with me. 

Source

Anywho, I think my absence of really paying attention to eating makes me eat faster and eat more without really noticing it. I'm sure I also don't get to enjoy eating as much - like observing the taste, texture, and smells of my food. I'm not sure yet what I'm going to do to be more thoughtful about this. I thought about nixing eating while doing other things, but it saves me so much time in the morning if I'm looking over my patients' charts while I'm eating breakfast. So, I'll have to think about it.

In other news, I got to have a whole day of eats at home today and that almost never happens!

Lunch

Afternoon snack

Indian food dinner, thanks to Trader Joe's

TJ's naan

TJ's butter chicken

Evening snack, courtesy of Lisa's kindness last weekend

Not pictured is the apple I had for breakfast and the Luna bar I had mid-afternoon as a pre-gym snack. I also tracked my calories all day, which I never get to do and that was good too.

In other news, I hit up the gym for an hour's worth of elliptical today because my hips and low back were being assholes. I thought really getting them going in a low-impact way would be helpful, but I'm still sore. I took some ibuprofen twice today. I might really switch things up tomorrow and swim at the gym to be a little more low-impact. We'll see. I shaved during my post-gym shower just in case ;-)

Cheers!