How I Eat. What I eat.

I have no idea if anyone is even interested in what I'm eating...but I'll tell you anyway just in case someone out there is...

My weekdays are busy. My weekends usually are too!

Because my commute is an hour each way, I drink my breakfast on the way to work (smoothie) and don't have a lot of time in the evenings to cook anything that takes longer than about 30 minutes. I do my best to meal plan and have a few recipes to do each week, and we always eat leftovers for lunch. For weekdays, I have a general formula that I follow.

Berry banana smoothie.

Breakfast: Smoothie with a small snack once I am at my desk at work (usually dry cereal with a few nuts, 1/2 cup total)
Mid-morning snack: greek yogurt
Morning: Drink tea (decaf)
Lunch: Vegetable and meat
Afternoon at work: sparkling water
At home: Snack, usually a small bowl of cereal
Dinner: Vegetable and meat
Dessert: Something small, sometimes not-so-small involving chocolate
All day, especially in the morning: Tons of water (usually 2.5-3 quarts between waking up and the time I leave work in the afternoon, not counting tea and sparkling water)

See this post for my smoothie formula.

For my morning yogurt, I usually eat ~1 cup with 1/2 cup of fresh fruit or applesauce (plain/unsweetened) or 1-2 tbsp of homemade jam.

I make all of the jam we eat using local fruits and low sugar recipes.

Lunch is usually a big salad with a little dressing and meat leftover from dinner the previous night. Sometimes I eat frozen (heated) vegetables (I prefer the chopped broccoli but will also eat mixed veggies or green beans). I usually eat 5-6 oz meat.

Snack: I love cereal. Especially with chocolate chips and nuts on it...

Dinner is usually very similar to lunch and I usually make lunches while I make dinner.

Food prep:
I shop on Mondays and that evening I usually make 2 dinner salads (for 2 nights) and salads for both of us for lunch. I try to do as much food prep early in the week as I can.

My downfalls:
-Morning smoothie--could probably have fewer calories. I really love peanut butter and a super creamy smoothie.
-I love cereal. And I always feel snacky in the evenings. I also always want dessert. I know that if I wanted to cut calories I could just stop eating as much in the evenings...but it's so GOOD.
-The occasional drink...I do like gin.
-Starbucks. Never thought I'd say that! I'm not a coffee drinker. But since I have been doing this long commute 5 days a week, I've been allowing myself to stop there once a week (last week I went twice.....). I always get a Frappuccino, usually a tall Mocha Light Frap. Sometimes I get whipped cream because that's the best part. For a while I was getting the Mocha Cookie Crumble one with fat free milk and chocolate whipped cream...but I think that was a really bad idea.
-Condiments: I could probably cut back here too to cut calories. I don't like a lot of salad dressing, but I do need at least some, and I also like BBQ sauce with grilled chicken.

Homemade yogurt ranch dressing. 

My good parts:
-Work--there is generally zero temptation there. There are no restaurants, no other sources of food (unless it's someone's birthday but that only happens 5 times a year). So what I bring is what I get!
-I drink a ton of water and rarely have caffeine.
-Since making some changes earlier this year, I eat a lot more protein and fewer carbs, and I notice that my GI tract prefers this.
-I eat a lot of veggies and lean meat and just a little processed foods (processed foods are usually cereal..which is frequently Cherrios).

So there you have it! Some info on how and what I eat.