How am I doing?

Nunilwen

I've stopped eating any junk food snacks and don't drink any coke anymore (was almost a liter a day of Coke person!). Replaced normal sugar in my own cooking with Stevia and salt with Seltin which is a (swedish?) mineral salt with 50% less actual sodium than normal tablesalt.

I have a sort of set meal-plan that I follow every day for breakfast and lunch:

~9am: Each morning I wake up and cook some oatmeal on stovetop in light (.5% fat) lactose free milk (1 part oatmeal to 2 parts milk). I use 1 serving of oatmeal which is 1dl or about 1/2 cups. I add a little more milk after I finish cooking it, about 1 tbsp stevia, 1 tbsp of cinnamon and half a tbsp of flaxseed. I also have less than 1/2 cup of lactose free vanilla yogurt (2.1% fat, there is no lower fat option in the one that I like the taste of!) with less than 1/2 cup of Berries Musli mixed in.

I drink water with breakfast and between breakfast and lunch, usually I go walking about an hour after breakfast, for 20 minutes or so, 4 times a week.

~Noon: For lunch I have 45 grams of tuna (in water, it's half of a small can) mixed with a half tbsp of Hellman's Garlic Sauce, 4 cherry tomatoes, 4-6 slices of cucumber, a small sprinkling of roasted onions (just to get the nice rich flavor and crunch in there, less than a tbsp) and a little bit of alfalfa sprouts all wrapped inside 2 of the large outer pieces of Romaine lettuce. If I run out of the larger outer leaves I cut up the small inner leaves and have it salad style with the same ingredients + 1 tbsp of Hidden Valley light ranch dressing. I drink water with Fun Light mixed in (it's a zero-sugar water flavor-er, 0 fat, 0 cal, 0 sodium and like 2 calories per cup!) or just plain water.

In between lunch and dinner if I feel hungry I munch on raw cauliflower florets or baby carrots.

~3 or 4pm: At dinner I eat whatever my boyfriends mom cooks (he is a student so it is more economical to live home while studying, though we are searching our own place, not very easy to find apartments in Sweden!) which can range from chicken and potatoes to pasta and browned ground beef. We eat a wide variety of homecooked meals. We often eat varying types of pork and sometimes we have a pasta sauce made with all sorts of fatty stuff like cream and bacon! Dinner is pretty unpredictable but usually once a week we have pizza (usually Friday because nobody feels like cooking after working all week, they're ready for the weekend to start!). The pizzas in Sweden are smaller (but not tiny) and my boyfriend and I usually share one 50/50. We used to each eat a whole one!

I always have a Fun Light mixed water with dinner.

Occasionally I cook a healthy(ish) dinner on Saturday like stuffed savoy cabbage with brown rice or homemade "American-Chinese" chicken and broccoli with a homemade brown sauce and served with brown rice!

~6pm: I usually take a snack, or as I call it my "dessert" of either half a small canteloupe or half a gala apple, sliced with around 1/4 cup of vanilla yogurt to dip them in.

~8pm: I take my last snack, a medium or small banana with a thin smear of Jiffy creamy peanut butter or homemade peanut butter made from honey roasted peanuts.


Am I doing good, or should I be eating more/less of things? The first week I began eating like this my weight remained the same. Between Aug. 20 and now I've lost 4 lbs. I weigh once a week on Wednesdays right before I eat breakfast.

Eventually I will graduate to power-walking every day and I will add strength training. I just don't want to overdo it, I have an old back injury that flares up from time to time nowadays if I lift something heavy or in the wrong way. So I am slowly progressing to more exercise and eventually strength training!

z_bra

There is no way anyone could tell you how many calories that is. You need to weigh everything and calculate it. You will need to start cooking dinner yourself if you want to accurate with calories.