Yesterday was a super busyday and I just completely forgot about Eat Like Me. So let’s go back to Tuesday.

Breakfast – 2 Boiled Eggs and coffee

Snack – Carb Master Cherry Yogurt

Lunch/Dinner – Broiled Tilapia with green beans and one hushpuppy at the yummy Sea Breeze restaurant

Snack – Two cake pops and one chocolate dipped marshmallow (see next post)

I knew we were going to make Cake Pops that night so I went light on the meal at Sea Breeze. It’s what Bethenny Frankel calls your ‘diet bank account’. The whole idea is to make your day or several days in a row balance out.

Big heavy meal for lunch? Don’t stress about and ruin the rest of your day…just eat a light dinner and breakfast the next morning. Or like me if you know you are going to have a something calorie laden at some point that day, eat light the rest of day. But eat. Don’t skip meals. That never really works for me anyway.

Breakfast – Coffee, 3 links turkey sausage and Carb Master yogurt (220 calories)

Snack – Kashi Go Lean Bar (180 calories)

Lunch –  Carb Master Yogurt and granola ***note…I tried to eat a plain grilled chicken sandwhich from McDonalds while running errands with the kids and my nephews today…but I just couldn’t stomach it. So I just chunked it and ate some yogurt when I got home. (280 calories)

Snack – Turkey Pepperoni and Figo String Cheese (140 calories)

Unplanned Second Snack – Graham Cracker Sticks (160 calories) *** really these were baby grahams that the girl was snacking on and I just mindlessly ate with her. Mindless snacking is one of my nutritional downfalls that I am working on.

Dinner – Cheese and Pepperoni Omelette with an apple (330 calories)

Exercise – None today other than running my booty off taking care of a crazy teething baby and her high-strung big brother.

I told you my days weren’t always balanced. Especially a day like today that had me up early at the pediatrician and then running about 11 errands before I finally got back to my home base this week. My menu over the past few days and until later in the week will be repetitive and a bit carb heavy until I get back to my familiar kitchen stock full of the good stuff.

I am totally ADDICTED to Kashi Go Lean Rolls. I usually try to save them for when I have a bad sweet craving and not eat them everyday. They are made by Kashi and the ingredients are a bit healthier than say your average granola bar. But they are still processed and not really a whole food. But, they do in a pinch and they fill me up AND calm my sweet tooth. There are not too many things that do that. But when I’m traveling or just having a super busy SUPER MOM day I stuff one or two in my bag just in case.

What I Ate On This Day…Sunday June 5, 2011

Breakfast – Coffee, banana and 1/2 of McDonald’s Yogurt Parfait (stopped in the way to church) *300 calories

Snack – Kashi Go Lean Bar *180 calories

Lunch – Grilled Chicken Ceasar Salad from Frontera  minus croutons(I ate salad topped with salsa while the rest of my family had a heavy, fat laden GIANT Mexican meal) *approx 400 calories

Snack – Kashi Go Lean Bar * 180

Dinner – 1/2 PB&J Sandwich and 1/2 Turkey and cheese sandwich (Dinner time playdate at a friends house and the boy wanted to switch sandwiches in the middle of our make-shift quick dinner) *400 calories

About 1450 calories

Exercise – 30 minutes of compound free weight exercises

I read alot of diet books. I rarely follow them, its more like research to me. A few of the more recent books I’ve read and enjoyed this year are Bethenny Frankels Naturally Thin: Unleash Your Skinny Girl …The Dukan Diet and there was even a little dieting advice  in The Every Girls Guide To Life by Maria Menounos.

Losing weight should always be about the math. Your calories in should be less than your calories in and then you lose weight. But it doesn’t always happen that way. Especially after two kids.

I used to be able to lose weight by working out 5 -6 days a week and eating 1400-1600 calories a day. That doesn’t work so well now that I’m 40 with two kids and little time to workout. So to get the baby weight off this time I had to cut out the processed foods and and eat very South Beach Diet like; fibrous vegetables and low-fat proteins. And that worked great until I got to Phase Two and added in grains and fruit. Weight loss completely stopped.

So right now I’m doing a sort of modified Dukan Diet. I say modified because you have to be committed to follow this diet to the T. It’s hard and it makes you want to rip into your kids school lunch cookies the first few days, but after that passes in a few days you hop on the scale and you are 3-5 pounds lighter.

I won’t go too much in the principles of the Dukan Diet..you can google it and find out almost everything you need to know about it. All I know is that it helped me get back to my pre-pregnancy weight on the scale and that’s ok by me. Now I just have to tell my hips and lower belly that they are supposed to look like they did pre-pregnancy and we are all good.

So here is what works for me now. When I am sticking to it.

Low carb – low fat – high protein with a few healthy cheats to keep me from losing my mind and eating the boys cookies after he goes to bed.  Or the hubs mini-powdered donuts…but that’s another story and still a sore spot at my house so let’s move on. I eat small meals every few hours. Some people don’t like this, but I prefer to feel light and energized all day to that awful full-heavy-lethargic feeling you get after say a huge Mexican lunch. Yuk.