What I eat in a day + let’s talk about weight loss

Weight loss is something I’ve never spoken about on here but something I’m sure that, at one point, has been a big part of a lot of our lives. These days I’m a lot more into healthy eating and fitness for aspects other than just losing weight; but more generally, weight loss has been something that has received either a lot or no attention at several points in my life…

The first time I ever even thought about exercising was when I was 18 – I had my first girls’ holiday on the horizon, and I knew that I would not feel comfortable in a bikini around my friends. I discovered Denise Austin via the BeFIT YouTube channel and every single day for two months, I did one of her workouts. I’d alternate between a day of cardio and a day of abs, do only 15-20 minutes a day, and before you know it, my stomach started to shrink. I also started to regulate my portion sizes a bit – I didn’t starve myself, but as I love food so much it was not hard for me to just eat wayyy too much.

But the problem with this is that I was only working out to look skinny on holiday, I wasn’t trying to get fit, I wasn’t trying to feel more energized, I wasn’t trying to regulate what I put in my body to make me healthier – I just wanted to look good in a bikini. So naturally, after my holiday ended, as did my workouts. Freshers week quickly started, and instead of working out, I was clubbing all the time (drinking more), and I was eating Burger King several times a week. By the time I got home that summer, even my mum was raising an eye at how much weight I was piling on. Second year was a similar situation, a few failed attempts to get motivated in the gym, and still eating pizzas several times a week, I’d sometimes skip breakfast to make myself feel better about my poor eating (not a good idea), and when my internship rolled around, I was eating a Chinese takeaway almost everyday. Yep, a good 3-4 times a week I was eating a tub of fried rice… damn. That year on my girl’s holiday to Cyprus, I definitely looking… not so great.

This year, my boyfriend and I decided we’d support each other in a journey to get fit and look how we wanted; he pushed me a lot harder in the gym, not before long, I started to see my body improve. It still took a few months for me to change my diet a long with that, but now that I’ve started eating healthier the changes in my body are actually better and faster than when I’d just rely on the gym. Not only that – but I feel better. Now I’m not drowning in grease and oil, I feel a lot less sluggish, and a lot more energized. Now I’m working on my health and fitness not just to look good in a bikini, but because I’ve realised the long term benefits it has also how much better it makes me feel. It really takes a while for something to become habit, and it’s easy to slip back into old habits, but once you keep something up for a while – such as eating healthily or going to the gym – it does become a lot more easier and more specifically less of a chore to just continue with it.

What I eat in a day

Breakfast

For 21 years now, I’ve been eating cereal for breakfast. Most people I know don’t like eating cereal for breakfast but I absolutely love it. Growing up I was in love with Cocopops (which is way too sugary), but these days I’m typically piling my plate up with some Cornflakes. If I don’t eat cereal, I’ll sometimes grab a roll from Pret. They sell egg and sausage rolls that are pretty cheap, but I’ll usually take the sausage out of just leave half of one in as they are very fatty. Eggs are some of the best things you can put in your body and I absolutely love them. I always, always have orange or apple juice for breakfast, I know they can be quite sugary and often not very good for you given how they are packaged up, but I need some sort of juice in my life to be happy. I limit this to breakfast and stick with water for the rest of the day.

Lunch

For lunch, I typically eat a salad. Birleys is the best place I’ve ever gone for a salad, it’s a bit expensive, but they really can’t be beaten. If Birleys is too far away from wherever I’m based at that moment, I’ll just try and recreate the salads they make at home. In my salads I love to have chicken, a bit of bacon, croutons, lettuce and dressings – a lot of supermarkets sell low fat caesar dressing. When I’m in my family home, I’ll usually make myself an egg toasty for lunch with some smoked turkey on the side.

Dinner

Dinner is where I typically load up on carbs a bit more. As my breakfast and lunch as usually quite low in carbs, or have no carbs at all, I feel less guilty about having more carbs a dinner. Personally, for me, giving up carbs all together or having an extremely low carb diet as is recommended by many diets such as Atkins, is almost impossible. So dinner for me is usually pasta or rice with some type of meat, with some vegetables too depending on what we have in the house (I like to include vegetables are much as possible). Otherwise I’ll definitely be eating Nigerian dish if I’m at my family home (such as pounded yam – if you know…). Sometimes after dinner if I’m really craving some more juice I’ll grab an apple as well. Fruits are also really great if you need to snack.

I’ll have one (occasionally two if I’m really tempted, but I try not to) *cheat* meals a week… this usually comes in the form of fried Chinese rice or a gourmet burger from GBK or Byron.