What I Eat In A Day
I’m fascinated with eating habits. I find food preferences, cravings, and tendencies interesting, the way some hone in on hair style or shoe preferences.
In many ways, nutrition info is like the wild west - the landscape is so large, it’s hard to know where to start. Ideally, your nutrition approach should start with your goals: do you want to lose fat, optimize performance, improve health, or add bulk? The vast majority of my clients want 2 things: 1) to improve their health and 2) lose fat and increase lean muscle mass. Please do not confuse losing weight with losing fat. It is very possible to drop weight on the scale but not look, feel, or be stronger or more fit if you are losing muscle mass. If you, like my clients, want to build lean muscle and lose fat, there are 2 key ingredients you need to reach this goal:
1) Strength Train
2) Eat between 0.8-1 gram of protein per pound of ideal body weight.
When I say those numbers, often people’s eyes glaze over or they say, “yeah, I eat protein, I eat eggs!” Eggs are are a great start, and 2 eggs will give you a whopping 12 grams of protein to kick off your morning, so where are you going to get 100+ more grams of the muscle building amino acid? I want to give you an idea of what I eat on a day when I am not training (strength training or riding). On training days I eat more carbohydrates in the form of potatoes, oats, rice, or bread. A few things I focus on daily:
I start my day with a massive class (jar) of water
I try to eat between 120-130 g of protein 5-6 days per week
I try to eat veggies at every meal
Bowls are my food vesicle of choice :)
Here is a sample day of what I eat at each meal on a sample non-training day:
Breakfast
I typically wake up at 5, drink water, make coffee, journal, then hop on the computer and start work.
5am Black Coffee and Mason jar of water.
6am Cottage Cheese (lowfat) with salad mix, blueberries, half a grapefruit, and handful of almonds, plus tajin seasoning. Yep - call me weird, but I love it:)
Protein: ~20 g
Second Breakfast
I eat eggs almost every day. I love them. If I am working out or riding I will typically have the same meal as below but with rice, potatoes, or bread.
9:30am Scramble of zucchini, broccoli, tomatoes, 2 eggs, 2 strips turkey bacon and rice. (2nd bowl, notice a pattern)
Protein: ~ 20g
1:30pm Lunch
I was pinched for time and wolfed down a “Big Ass Salad” Id make the night before with left over roasted chicken plus roasted roots (beets, sweet potato, carrot). I ate this standing up in the kitchen before driving to pick up kids. While driving I ate a pear and dribbled pear juice all over myself :) If possible, I try to eat my meals sitting down (and not while driving) but that doesn’t always happen.
Protein: Big approximation on this as I didn’t weigh or measure anything, but probably 30-40g.
Snacks and Drinks
I never get through the day without at least one snack. On this day I ate a handful of chips (Siete lime flavored!) and cashews (roasted and 1/2 salted) between first breakfast and second breakfast, along with a cup of MUDWTR. I ate half a SANS bar when I was out mountain bike coaching with the kids. A fizzy water, some left over hot chocolate from my kids program, and a glass of homemade kombucha also went down the hatch. Pre dinner snacks included homemade dilly beans and olives, plus a lot more water.
Protein: ~10 g
7:30pm Dinner
Dinner was a quick mash up of grass-fed ground beef and ground turkey, spaghetti squash, homemade pesto, broccoli, and tomatoes. I sprinkled nutritional yeast and Jacobsen fleck salt on top! Yum:)
Protein: ~ 40 g
On my rest days I try to get at least 10,000 steps in. For me, this usually happens by walking my dog and general around the house movement. I recommend everyone try to get at least 8,000 steps every day. I have spent time tracking macros (this means tediously weighing my food and figuring out the specific grams of proteins, carbs, and fat in everything I eat). Macro tracking for me was incredibly illuminating but not enjoyable. It’s hard to figure out the nutrition info for a lot of foods, especially if you’re eating whole foods that don’t have a barcode attached and there can be as much as 20% error on nutrition labels. Tracking takes a ton of time, and as someone who loves to cook, weighing every bit of squash and fish took a lot of joy out of food for me. I definitely do not recommend tracking if you have ever struggled with an eating disorder. If you are interested to make body composition changes, and want to dive into your nutrition more, I do recommend tracking at least your protein for a month. Shoot for these targets:
0.8-1 gram of protein per pound of ideal body weight
Fill your plate with veggies
Add in carbs to support your activity levels
Include healthy fats (nuts, avocado, olive oil) to keep you satiated, make sure hormones stay balanced, and keep you pooping :)
I hope you find this post helpful, please remember that just because this is what works for me, it by no means what will work for you. It’s important you spend some time dialing in the foods that make you feel great in order for you to be your best self!