My Eating Habits

First of all, the word diet is used in an “everyday diet” sense – I loathe diets with a passion as I don’t believe they work in the long term.  Just the name of it suggests something that is started and consequently stopped.  For this reason, I chose not to call my weight loss journey a diet but rather a new, healthier way of eating for life.

This meant completely changing the way I ate, adapting new habits and banishing a few of the old ones.

It worked for me – 9 months later, I am still at goal and am still loving my new found way of eating.  So, what are my eating habits?

Well, first and most importantly, I try to limit my intake of foods that have been excessively processed or have a long list of added ingredients.  You can read more about this in my post You Are What You Eat?

I eat natural, wholesome foods and avoid refined carbohydrates and sugars, foods that have sugar added to them, low fat or “diet” foods and alcohol.  This doesn’t mean I don’t EVER consume these kinds of foods but they are only very occasionally and not a daily, weekly or even monthly habit.

I eat around 1800 calories per day though this isn’t stuck to rigorously.  Some days I eat more, some days I eat less.  Learning to listen to my body was a valuable lesson to learn and I believe it serves me well now.  I split my calorie intake so that 30-40% of total calories come from protein, 30% come from fats and the rest come from carbs, which varies depending on whether I am training that day or not.

I eat every few hours which was a habit I got into at the beginning of last year when I read that eating every 2-3 hours keeps the metabolism firing efficiently.  I have since learned that meal frequency actually has little to no effect on the metabolism but I still consume snacks between meals to stave off hunger.  I have a history of binge eating and hunger, along with tiredness, is one of my triggers.  I find not allowing myself to get too hungry is a good way to stay on track.

The only drinks I consume are plain water, green tea and a daily cup of coffee.  I don’t have any soft drinks such as fizzy pop, squash or juice as I prefer to eat my calories rather than drink them.  The only exception to this are my mid morning skimmed latte that I make at work and the occasional smoothie/green monster.  If it is a special occasion I might indulge in a glass of red wine or a beer but alcohol is not something I indulge in very often.

The main reason for that is because it lowers my inhibitions where food and drink are concerned so one glass can very easily lead to 2 then 3 and then all of a sudden it seems like a good idea to eat chips and mayonaise.

I have a list of foods that I stick to pretty much 95% of the time, which you can find here - My Essential Food List.

I also snapped some pictures of the insides of my cupboards, fridge and freezer so you can get an idea of what I buy when doing my grocery shopping.  You can find that information here:

Inside My Fridge

Inside My Cupboards

A lot of people find the way I eat too restrictive but it’s really not that difficult.  I found educating myself about food and nutrition really helped me to understand about how what we put into our body affects not only our physical health but also our mental health.  Reading In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan really changed how I eat and you can read my review of it here - In Defense of Food.

Once you get into the habit of making all your own meals from scratch, you won’t be able go back to eating pre-made foods.