BREAKFAST: First meal of the day even though eaten at 12:52pm
Start time: 12:52pm
End time: 1:04pm
Duration of meal: 12 minutes
The pasta has pesto on it, and some chicken bits
The 2 scrambled eggs have carrots in it
1 whole orange and a branch of 11 grapes
Intuitively this looks good. Based on www.verywellfit.com , about 500 calories.
Not bad. Let's see how it balances the test of the day.
I realize today that my portions are massive.
Comparing my lunch container to co-workers, I'm stunned at the difference in size. I'm eating twice as much! Especially on the carbs portions, I love carbs but clearly I'm over packing on the carbs. They make the majority of my meal more than the veg and protein.
Not only are my portions bigger and heavy on the carbs, I snack in between.
No wonder I'm huge. I eat too much.
My diet isn't bad. I don't eat poorly, I've always known that. I just over eat and eat all the time.
If nothing else, intermittent fasting and meal prep is giving me the opportunity to LOOK at my food before scarfing it down. The more I look, the more I see. I'm seeing a whole lot (pun intended), of nonsensical.
So now I've discovered my second key to weight loss-- portion control (the first being that engaging in moderate activities like walking is sufficient exercise for my body type if done daily).
I'm day three into my IF. 11am-7pm eating window, the remaining 16 hours fasting. It's hard because I'm a night owl so I like eating at night but it's thrilling to know I've practised self control for 3 days! It's like willpower training. That enough keeps me going. Also the fact that I tell myself that fat is burning so keep on pushing! Hahah.
Anyway, this is what I ate yesterday. I also had panda express which isn't ideal because I am broke and don't want to buy food out but I was slightly peckish at 6:09pm and worried that if I didn't eat now, the rest of the evening would be terrible. Usually it wouldn't be that bad I guess because I'd sleep in hunger and forget about it, but I basically pulled an all nighter and didn't got to bed until 5am the next morning. Wow. Thinking about that now I was awake for 10 hours of no eating. Another encouragement that I really can control my relationship with food!
But looking at all this food, I know I consumed under 2000kcal which is good. It's good seeing it all at once. Without the panda express it would have been maybe 1500kcal. That was the intention for the day's meal. My goal is to be more consistent with the minimal calories (trying to make a deficit) and just get to bed on time. Again, I don't mind sleeping "hungry"... I say hungry quoted because I am probably not really hungry but rather my mind is just used to always eating food. This too shall pass.
