What I Eat on a Typical Work Day

Many people ask me what I eat in a typical day.  Thanks to www.myfitnesspal.com I can easily show you what I eat and what I try to do with my meals during the day.  MFP is an online calorie calculator that tracks what you eat and shows you important totals like total carbohydrate grams, fat grams, protein grams, sodium, etc.  Only when I started to pay attention to my carb/fat/protein ratio last year did I start to feel in control of my diet.  Once you enter items for the first time the application remembers your history which makes daily updates quick and easy.  It includes a huge database of almost all packaged foods, generic foods, restaurant menu items and published recipes.  I’ve never had to enter any individual numbers myself, the database has always found what I was looking for.  A camera on your phone can also be used to scan barcodes on packages for database look up.

Here’s a summary from MFP of what I eat in a typical work day.  I also try to educate people that eating healthy doesn’t have to be expensive, so I have included what my food and supplements typically cost per day.

I work out first thing in the morning.  If I’m doing a strenuous workout like P90X or Insanity I typically take C4 before my workout primarily for the caffeine but also for the muscle endurance it provides.  My post workout drink is a protein shake with a little Hershey’s Chocolate Syrup added (after a strenuous workout is the only time you actually want to ingest simple sugars to start the muscle recovery process—I’ll write more about pre- and post-workout nutrition in a future post).  If my scheduled workout is not particularly strenuous like Yoga or stretching I will skip all this entirely.

We eat oatmeal with thawed blueberries six days a week (fresh blueberries in season).  CLA (Conjugated Linoleic Acid) is a healthy fat supplement that promotes fat loss and is found naturally in grain-fed beef.

Just like breakfast my morning snacks are heavy on carbs as I try to shift carbs to early in the day when possible (nutrient timing is a topic for another day).  Almonds, of course, are loaded with healthy fat.

Lunch is the first time I really re-load my protein since my post-workout drink.  This list shows a grilled chicken breast wrap that I bring to work everyday.  We buy a 5-pack of breasts on the weekend, split them in half (lay them flat and slice sideways) to yield ten 4-5 oz pieces.  My wife and I each use one a day for lunch, and sometimes add one to dinner to increase protein late in the day.  Lunch for less than $2 sure beats anything in our cafeteria or going out.

I try to balance protein and carbs with my afternoon snack.  Shakeology is a meal replacement shake I use that is much better nutritionally than the $2 protein bar I used to eat (Note:  it retails for $4 per serving but various discounts are available—ask if you would like more information).  I still have a hard time kicking my vending machine habit, but at least now I get peanuts instead of M&M’s (as frugal as I am this little bag of peanuts ends up being about 10% of my food bill for the day!).  When I get home after work I usually sneak some Wheat Thins just to try to hit the carb goal I have for the day.

I eat a variety of things for dinner, but one staple in our freezer are Kashi frozen dinners.  We usually cook enough on the weekend to eat leftovers during the week, but when we run out I will pop a Kashi meal in the microwave.  At 300 calories they are a great way to exercise portion control.  Depending on how much or little protein I’ve consumed so far in the day I may add one of our chicken breasts to this dish.  I don’t usually like eating this many carbs for dinner—I much rather prefer leftovers consisting of only meat and vegetables for dinner.

My total caloric intake on this day came to 1939 calories.  I used MFP to calculate what my base caloric need is to maintain my current weight and that value is 1920 calories.  Since I burned 411 calories during my workout my daily goal was adjusted up to 2331.  This says I ran a 392 calorie deficit today, and since it takes 3500 calories to lose a pound of body weight, I may have lost about a tenth of a pound today.  You would never see this on a scale on a daily basis, but over time knowing your daily calorie deficit is a great way to manage your weight loss expectations.

Most people do not get enough protein in their diets.  I set my carb/fat/protein ratios to 40%/30%/30% which is based on the P90X Nutrition Guide.  I really started to lose body fat last year when I reduced the amount of carbs I was eating and added protein to every meal.  A rule of thumb I use is to shoot for 1 g of protein per pound of lean body mass (lean body mass is your weight minus your body fat %).  When I’m really trying to add muscle I will try to eat 1 g protein per pound of total body weight.

I added a few lines to the summary that you don’t get with MFP to show the difference between calories and grams.  Your ratios are based on % calories, but food labels and the program show grams.  Fat has more calories per gram than carbs and protein, so a gram of fat adds more than twice the calories than either a gram of carb or protein.

Just to wrap it up, here’s what I want you to take away from all this:

• I eat 5 or 6 small meals a day, and never go more than 3 hours without re-fueling.
• My goal is to divide protein up evenly during the day, but I do lean towards shifting protein to later in the day.
• I try to shift carbohydrates to early in the day, and limit (or avoid) them at dinner.
• It cost me $13.58 to eat on this day, but $5.32 of that are supplements including my Shakeology.  So for about $8-$9 a day you can eat pretty well.