Garbage That GOO!

Habit #1

I promised to write more on the eating habits I follow, so here we go!

Eat every 2-3 hours. (That's waking hours!)

It sounds like I'm eating really often, right? It's similar to the 3 meals and 2 snacks per day idea. Except the snacks should ideally be well balanced!

Does it mean I absolutely have to eat like clockwork at, say, 8AM, 11AM, 2PM, 5PM, 8PM etc...? Well, I do try for every three hours, but life happens, if it swings a half hour later or earlier for some meals or even as much as four hours, it's not critical mass. I just want to establish regular meals. Eating when I get up, or within the first hour I am awake and then regularly throughout the day afterwards.

I did feel like I was eating a LOT at first! But, digestion burns calories and keeps my metabolism running. It also keeps my blood sugar levels on an even keel and that keeps cravings to a minimum. After all, if you feel a little hungry, you know you can eat again in a couple hours!

Sometimes these days, I actually AM hungry for my next meal! That has been a new experience! In the past, I've skipped meals often, but then hours later, I am REALLY HUNGRY and eat far too much! So I'm regaining a feel for what hunger is and a more normal style of eating.

Eating this way helps fight my body's natural reaction to a calorie deficit. The body is programmed to define a calorie deficit as "starvation". Back in the caveman days, if you weren't getting enough calories, starvation would be the end result. So our clever bodies can slow metabolism to stall off what they think of as "starvation". Unfortunately, this can also stall fat loss. With a steady stream of nutrients the body is happier and less likely to perceive a calorie deficit as starvation.

Eating frequently takes some planning... these are balanced meals. It's important to have plenty of lean protein, veggies, fruit, nuts, etc... in the pantry and fridge. For some meals I do cottage cheese or yogurt based protein smoothies/shakes. Breakfast is usually an egg white omelet with veggies. Other meals might be simple pan fried or grilled fish/lean ground beef/chicken and veggies and maybe a small serving of nuts or drizzle of olive oil on the veggies. And some meals are recipes I fix ahead.

Having healthy food in the house makes it easy to eat healthy often!

My scale told a lie!

Well, I ate plenty yesterday, I actually ate at maintenance level of around 2600 calories. I'd planned to stay a couple hundred calories below that. But I was hungry, and also up later than was wise. You know, one of those days you are so tired that you just can't get yourself to bed and sleep! So I ate the sixth meal I was due for. At that, I still had close to my 500 calorie deficit for the day, thanks to the long workout.

Then I slept LATE. I think my body needed it after that pool workout.

But when I weighed, I had a huge scale drop! Below 225!

I think this one's a big fat fib. One, while sleeping, you are still burning calories, so extra sleep means extra burned without normal food intake. Two, you breathe out a lot of water while sleeping, it's not unusual for me to lose 3-4 pounds of water a night. So if I really sleep late, like I did today, that by itself could account for a pound or two extra in water loss. (My hydration level on the scale was at a low mark of 34.7% to confirm this.)

So we'll see how it goes tomorrow. But hey, it makes the graph on my weigh-in page look great for today!

Meanwhile, here's a great article on Why The Scale Lies!