Before I met with Tim, the personal trainer I talked about last week, he asked me to record everything I ate for a week.
Let me tell you, this is a very tedious, challenging, interesting, and slightly addictive thing to do. I completely understand why some people get obsessed with counting calories. I stopped after one week, but it was tempting to go on.
I’m showing you a regular week here. At first I thought, “well, I’m going out this week, so it’s not going to be regular since I will be drinking, eating junk food, etc.” Then, I had to be honest with myself. These kind of ‘exceptions’ happen every week, so there you have it - a pretty common week of food in the life of Amelie.
Overall, Tim told me that my eating habits were pretty healthy and balanced (give me more wine!), but of course, he didn’t finish his sentence there.
He noticed a few things that I could slightly change. I’m sharing his advice so that if you recognize yourself in the food above, you can see where the areas of improvement are:
I usually work-out in the morning, yet I don’t eat breakfast. This is a clear no-go. Muscles need fuel to repair and I’m not giving them anything. Whether or not I’m hungry is beside the point; I should get some protein in.
Lots of carbs… well, you can take the girl out of France, but not the baguette out of the girl, right? Here, his advice was not to cut too much of it, but to check my intake.
Water – drink more water more often.
Not enough protein in general. Animal and vegetable protein, like tofu, needs to be added to my diet.
What am I going to do with all of these? How can one change her habits? For now, I’m taking it easy. Still, here are a few things I’ve implemented.
I have started boiling eggs for my whole week, so I have one egg to eat after my work-out for my body to process and refuel.
I am ‘forcing’ myself to down half a liter of water in the morning and another half in the afternoon at work.
Despite how easy it is for me to buy bread when I come back home from work (the smell of bread at a bakery is like a mermaid’s song to my ear), I’m only buying bread once a week.
It’s probably not enough, but it’s a start. As I can feel my body is changing through the different type of exercises I’m doing, I will make sure it gets what’s needed to perform at its best.
Keep on hydrating people!
