Meal Roundup

Yesterday's meals in a nutshell.

Breakfast- Bulletproof coffee. If you google, there are a ton of ways to make this and everyone swears their way is the best. People spend a lot of money on special oil and organic special coffee. I spend a lot of money on wine and vacations, so my coffee is Folgers. My oil is Trader Joes unrefined coconut oil and Kerrygold grassfed unsalted butter. Many recipes call for 2 tablespoons of each- through trial and error I discovered this was too much for me. I need to actually leave the house during the day and not be anchored to a bathroom, so I use 1 tablespoon of each, a splash of heavy cream, a dash of cinnamon, and a half packet of truvia.  I whip it all in the bullet blender for 20 seconds and that's it. It's filling, it helps me meet my fat macros for the day (which is harder than you would think!)  Keto doesn't mean you can't eat a solid breakfast, lot's of people do- but I have never been big on breakfast (except at 2 am after screaming karaoke into a beer scented microphone, but that's a whole other blog). The idea of a plate full of greasy eggs and bacon and sausage at 7 am makes me feel queasy. Bulletproof coffee makes it a non issue. The fats fill me up, it amps my energy level and increases clarity of thought.

Click for link to purchase @ Amazon

Lunch- This is where I shined yesterday. It was a beautiful tasty thing. A deviled egg. The filling was an egg yolk mashed with 1 oz cream cheese and a healthy splash of olive oil, some salt and pepper. And a spinach salad that was so simple but just so ON POINT delicious. 3/4 C spinach, 1/3 avocado, 1 oz cubed swiss cheese, 1 tblspoon sunflower seeds,olive oil and lemon juice with more salt and pepper. You note how exact measurements are. This is important. To accurately track macros you need to be able to scan bar codes, have a food scale on hand, and measuring cups/spoons. This sounds like a pain but eventually you (and I) will be able to eyeball measurements accurately. It's about retraining oneself to better understand portions. This lunch was filling, without giving that "yuck too full" feeling- and it was very very tasty.

Dinner- Here is where I failed to impress myself. This happens a lot when I wait until the last minute and don't plan a meal. My husband and kid had grilled turkey and cheese sandwiches with tomato soup. I threw together this ugly concoction- 4oz grilled turkey (thick slicked deli turkey), I stuffed slices of turkey with provolone (2 slices) cheese, a little spinach, and roasted red and yellow peppers. It wasn't bad tasting, but it wasn't good enough to make again and it sure photographed ugly.

Snack- I had 3 really, a Powerade 0 calorie sugarfree energy drink in the am because I believe it thwarts any electrolyte issues with this diet, an after dinner coffee with coconut oil because I was still low on my daily fats and then later 3 shots of Jack Daniels, which was actually medicinal. Not like, wink-wink because I had a bad day medicinal, but seasonal allergies brought on by the wrath of yellow hell pollen everywhere medicinal. My throat has been on fire for days and since allergy pills, theraflu sore throat, and motrin all failed I'd hoped whiskey might be a cure. It wasn't. It did have pleasant side effects though. ;-)

My macros for the day were

• 8 net carbs (Total carbs 14, from this you subtract the fiber, and yes there's an app for that. I can't handle this much thinking.)
• 70g Protein- this was about 5 G higher than I would have liked, but not excessively so.
• 100g Fat- this was decent, I still had about 30G leeway, I could have eaten more but I was full and fine at 100.
• 1539 Calories- I don't necessarily track these, my app does it as a "by the way" function. I do like to see it stay under 1600 and above 1000 so this was in the good range.

So what about exercise? Lots of keto people are big into their work outs. I'm not there, yet? Ever? My cardio of choice is a nice brisk walk (which probably contributes to this allergy hell to be honest, but I won't give it up) Yesterdays walk was 2 miles.

Net results, here is where I confess something that makes many in the diet industry cringe. I weigh in EVERY day. I religiously track. I have found I need to do it- and after a few weeks of seeing those little spikes up and down on my tracker it has given me a realistic view of how weight loss happens. It's not linear, it goes down, down, up, rests, down, rests, rests, up, down, down.... and that's okay! As long as the long term overall trend is downward. This morning's scale is .9 lb down putting me EXACTLY where I was before I went on a cruise last week. This feels great, even if my throat doesn't! 

Want to figure out your own keto macros beyond the simplified formula I gave in post #1? Check out this tracker, it's pretty detailed! https://keto-calculator.ankerl.com/index.html?launcher=true

Keto on y'all!