Day of Meals

This is how I eat. Mostly plant based/vegan meals supplemented with the very occasional bit of meat and the frequent hunk of seafood. Today I'm really enjoying my "break" day, so I'm indulging in a bit more grain-based and legume foods than I have been lately, but I'm not going crazy with portions.

Over the past several weeks, most of my calories have come from vegetables, fruit and fish. I plan on reintroducing more legumes and grain products as I wrap up the 5 pounds 5 week challenge, but as they are the most calorically dense of the vegetarian energy sources, I've cut back on them a bit during the challenge. I do also wonder if there's something to the "Paleo" thing and maybe one of the contributing factors to my feel-good-ness lately has been the relative lack of grain and legumes. I'll definitely be keeping an eye on that and how I feel as I reintroduce those foods.

I started my day as I always start my day: soy latte in bed. Thanks, Nick, for bringing me a latte in bed almost every morning for the past 5 years or more.

Then I had breakfast:


Bob's Red Mill 7 grain hot cereal with raisins, apples, cinnamon, pecans & soy milk. A tiny drizzle of maple syrup finished it off nicely for under 400 calories. Also ate a big bowl (300 gms) of pineapple and a small portion (50 gm) of sockeye salmon. Big, yummy breakfast.

A little later I snacked on some blanched green beans and split a banana with Bella.

Next was lunch:


I call this Antipasto Pasta because I take whatever jarred antipasto-type pantry staples I have on hand - sun dried tomatoes, beans, olives, artichokes, roasted peppers, etc. - and toss it all together with a bit of whole wheat pasta and a lot of vegetables for a lean and filling meal.

This version was thrown together with whole wheat spaghetti, kidney beans, marinated artichokes, pepperoncini + a splash of the pepperoncini vinegar, garlic-stuffed green olives and lots of baby spinach. I sauteed it all until the pasta was hot through and the spinach was wilted. It was seriously delicious and really filling for 330 calories. Also had an orange and another soy latte. (I really am enjoying my day off and indulging a bit!)

Dinner? No clue - still full from lunch! But it'll be easy, thrown together with whatever mise en place I have in the fridge.

Update: got hungry again after lunch and had a HUGE bowl of pineapple - killed off my prepared pineapple - probably 600 gms of pineapple.

Then, an hour or two after the pineapple binge, I put together dinner:

It was a vegetable-shrimp stir fry with asparagus, sweet potato, roasted mushrooms and a bit of brown rice. Everything got tossed together in the wok with a touch of oyster sauce and topped with Asian chili sauce.

If it seems like I eat all day long, I do! One of the "tricks" to keeping your metabolism fired up in general, and to weight loss specifically, is to eat small meals throughout the day. When I'm really on target I eat 5-6, meals daily, each around 300-500 calories. Usually 2 meals (lunch and dinner) are on the high end of this scale and the rest are towards the lower end. As my lunch meal today demonstrates, you can cram a lot of great food into 300ish calories if you try. When I'm not trying to actually cut body fat, I'll let all my meals drift up to the higher end of the range, and may even start eating more "normally" - ie, three large meals with minimal snacks. But I definitely feel best when I'm spreading smaller meals throughout the day.