Nutrition Overhaul Week 1: Pictures of food

Week 1
Yep, 2-3 weeks later, I'm definitely writing this a little late. Did you miss the first post? I described why Ben and I jumped into this diet idea and finally found some explanation for my skewed perceptions of eating and food.

Here's what the first week was like.

Reading/Food for Thought

via

I read a great post from another blogger called "Run. Eat. Don't Repeat." about eating - and running - and eating - and running. It was really eye-opening! The blogger outlines a few simple rules, including:

• Stop using exercise as punishment. In other words, exercise for your personal enjoyment, not because you need to earn your calories.
• Eating is neither good nor bad. You're not a bad person for eating a piece of cake, but you're not a good person because you ate a salad. It's neither.

I read a quote on a nutritionist's blog recently: You're not a dog. Stop rewarding yourself with food. Find something else you enjoy to use as a reward. It relates to what I just described above, but it was an interesting - and blunt - way to explain it. Easier said than done, writer!

Ben

How did Ben eat before?

Previously, breakfast would consist of a few bowls of cereal (like Cinnamon Chex or Wheaties Fuel). Lunch would be a euro sandwich, a the hangover burger from the Bakehouse, leftover chili, or nothing at all. Dinner was usually something that I would make, like tomato spinach soup & tortellini, beef stew with brown rice, or chili and whole wheat pasta. Eating out on weekends, Ben would order two entrees to make sure he left the place feeling full, or we'd pre-game with an appetizer. Dessert might be a huge bowl of ice cream (about 1/3 to half of the half-gallon container in one sitting) or a row of oreos.

Ben's now been averaging a calorie deficit of at least 1,500 per day and eating salads. Lots of salads. The new mantra is quality over quantity, which obviously wasn't the case before. Here's the breakdown, totaling about 1,500 calories per day:

• Breakfast is usually an 2 egg-white turkey omelette and piece of toast (200 cal), with a Slim-Rite meal replacement shake mix made with milk (200 cal).
• As a snack - an apple (75 cal). For lunch, he makes a greek yogurt parfait with Bakehouse granola and some frozen berries (450 cal). 
• The second snack would be a fruit juice mix + chia seeds (100 cal). 
• Dinner is - you guessed it - a salad. Spinach, carrots, red bell pepper, cottage cheese, and some kind of protein (turkey, fish, etc.) at 350-400 calories. Hold the dressing.
• If he felt that dessert was necessary, he's make another Slim-Rite chocolate shake with milk (200 cal).

On the new diet, after every meal, he tracks every calorie in a spreadsheet to make sure he's negative on the day. He spent the earlier part of the week studying every single label (which made for a long trip to Kroger) and used measuring cups to make sure that no calorie slipped by him without his knowledge. He made conscious decisions to swap out certain types of foods for other close, healthier substitutes (egg whites instead of eggs, lean meat vs. lunchmeat) Because he was now eating better quality food, he never felt hungry. We confirmed this with Rachel Noirot, our dietician friend, who says that the high amounts of protein in Ben's new diet are probably doing the trick.

As you saw, Ben's total daily calorie intake sat around 1,500 calories. Just by the pure act of living and breathing (metabolism), he burns ~2,500 per day... the equivalent of two pounds lost in one week. Combine this with running, which burns ~100 calories/mile, 35 miles per week = 3,500 calories = one more pound lost.

Ben did get sick a little over a week into the new diet, though I'm not certain if the two were related; surely it takes your immune system some extra energy to fight off a cold!

Runs still feel great. Ben broke 5 minutes in a mile time trial, and true to the spreadsheet predictor, he gained 2 seconds per pound per mile of weight lost. Having lost 4-5 pounds, he was 10 seconds faster than he expected, so good results from this experiment.

By the end of the week, Ben lost around 4 pounds, down from 149-151 to 145-147 pounds!

The routine is still new, but week 1 brought great success!

Steph

I cut down my portion sizes and took pictures of everything I ate, like you see below. Here's a sampling of what I ate during the week. (Um, yeah, blueberries were on sale.). 

  

     

  

  

History of dieting: I was on South Beach once before as moral support for someone else who was trying it, but I lasted 3 days. Cauliflower mashed potatoes (fake mashed potatoes made with cauliflower as a substitute for potatoes) were nasty. This was during a time when I was running between 8-17 miles/day on the treadmill, and when I went on this diet, I couldn't even make it a half mile without having severe fatigue issues. How I feel on my runs are a good test of staying power and sustainability of a new diet, for sure.

This time around, I cut out all cheese except cottage cheese (still rarely), started putting Greek yogurt in almost everything, ate a ton of chicken, and attempted to replace desserts with fruit. Even though you see things like rice, cereal, and oatmeal in the photos above, I didn't actually have a ton of these types of carbs. For salads, I found this amazing lime dressing from Newman's (which I dilute with vinegar) that actually makes me want to eat more salad after I'm done! 

Many of these foods are things that are regularly on the grocery list and foods I would typically choose to eat anyway - maybe prepared differently, but they're certainly not foreign. I definitely eat similarly to this already when I'm not restricting. Just less and with more grains.

A couple changes from my normal eating routine:

- salads for dinner (previously a stir-fry, whole-wheat pasta w/ marinara, soup)

- no bread, no cheese

- much smaller portions: 1 serving according to the box/can/etc. (previously something like 2-3 servings)

- less refined sugar (previously dessert would consist of 2-3 cups of ice cream or 6 oreos + milk. Using honey  as a sweetener.)

- drank water instead of eating when I was hungry (previously ate when I was hungry)

- limited or no snacking (previously snacked multiple times daily, post-lunch and post-dinner)

Outcome?

This diet made me mad/frustrated/stressed out.

I felt noticeably worse while running. I felt tired and like I was out of energy.

I didn't lose any weight. Actually, I gained weight. When I weighed in at 113.4 on the first day of the diet (same time - every morning), that was my lowest recorded weight of the week; I fluctuated between 113.8 and 116-something pounds each day that week but never hit that first-day 113.4.

I felt like I wanted to eat most of the time. I felt like I was counting down the minutes until I could get my next food fix. Feeling hungry - yet, my calorie deficit was 1,000+ calories less than Ben was taking in. In other words, he was 1,500 calories negative and not-hungry, while I was eating more calories while being 300-500 calories negative and was hungry!!

For something that was causing so much anxiety and stress, I saw zero results in my running and on the scale, so yes (being the non-patient person that I can be) - I was frustrated! I wasn't looking to suddenly break a 4-minute mile or lose 25 pounds in a week, but any kind of positive sign (seriously - a tenth of a pound! or one strong run day!) would have helped me be more positive about continuing this change.

End of week 1: not so much success.