Ambassador's Food Log
In my last ambassador blog I wrote about the benefits of keeping a health log. Because some people wanted to more about it, I’m sharing my health log with you! I will show you what I ate last week and after that I will tell you how I evaluate my progress. So here it is, my health log.
First of all, unfortunately I’m having an injury at the moment. Normally I workout about 5 – 6 times a week, but last week I didn’t do any workouts (except from some easy core exercises). That’s why I didn’t log my exercise routine, because at this moment it’s not interesting at all…
Normally I eat more snacks, but because I wasn’t really active last week, I also wasn’t feeling so hungry in between my meals. In my opinion it’s more important what you eat than when you eat, so I have no problems with not eating every 2 hours. For me it works perfectly fine this way.
I was so curious about how many calories and macronutrients I actually eat, so I also tracked my calorie & macronutrient intake. Because I’m eating plant-based, I ‘ve always wondered how many proteins I actually eat and if it’s certainly enough. According the guidelines, for my body type (60 kgs/ 1.74 m) I should eat about 48 – 52 grams of protein a day. So it turns out that I certainly eat enough proteins with my plant-based diet!
Ambassador's Food Log
When I take a look at the schedule, I think I’m doing quite well, except on wednesday. As you can see, I didn’t have a proper lunch. My work is very flexible. Sometimes I’m working on location all week, but this week I was working at home almost every day. On wednesday morning I had to go to a few meetings. After that I wanted to finish some work before I went home again. Because I didn’t expect to arrive home so late (it was about 15:00 when I finally arrived at home), I didn’t prepare any lunch. And my biggest mistake while I’m at work is thinking “ok, I finish this task, after that I go home (or eat something)”, but it always turns out it takes more time to finish or that I find myself doing another task and skipping my lunch.
However, it turned out I arrived at home so hungry and I started to eat wayyy too much soy yoghurt & granola (my homemade granola is so damn delicious!) because I waited too long with eating a proper meal. By the time it was dinner, I didn’t feel hungry anymore. When I arrived at home again, around 22:30, I just went to sleep. Anyway, I didn’t feel hungry all evening so I guess my yogurt was my kind of dinner ;-) But skipping a meal/not being prepared is the way to get cravings & give in to your cravings if you have them. What I learned from this? I should take more attention to planning my meals & when it turns out my work takes more time than I thought, I definitely should take a lunch break!
I think the rest of the week is representing quite well how I eat normally. I really love fresh vegetables and I’m eating lots of it. I guess my lowest veggie intake is about 500 grams a day. As you could see on some of the food photos in this blogpost, it looks like my portion sizes are huge. But the good thing about it, is that vegetables are low in calories and full of healthy micronutrients (vitamins, minerals etc.). By eating lots of vegetables I really feel full & satisfied after a meal, but I didn’t take too much calories. When there are no vegetables in my meals, I really miss the freshness it brings on my plate!
If you also want to track your body weight / fat% / muscle%, I recommend to check it maximum 1 time a week. Especially your body weight is always fluctuating, so it’s better to measure once a week/2 weeks at the same day & moment than checking it every day.
When I workout, I also track my workouts. How to do this? Simply write down the time you worked out, the exercises you did, your repetitions and the weights you used. By using apps like my fitness pal you could easily track how many calories you burned in your workouts. Another option is using an activity tracker (or a combination of an app + activity tracker). However, I can’t say this enough: don’t get too obsessed with tracking your progress!
I hope I helped you fitgirls out by showing how I track my progress! :- ) Now get into action & go chase your goals!!
XoXo