An Interesting Fact
The other day I decided to start tracking my calories. I’m only a handful of pounds above my pre-pregnancy weight but I just want to eat healthy and get more in control of what I’m putting into my body. So I went to www.sparkpeople.com where you can record your food, set goals, etc and found that I can’t join because I’m a nursing mother.
Crazy, I thought. I’m just nursing. It’s not like I’m pregnant or anything. But they have a sister site called www.babyfit.com for pregnant women, nursing mothers, and women trying to conceive. They have guidelines for how many calories you should be eating based on which category you fall into.
Through this I discovered that nursing mothers need MORE calories than pregnant women! MORE! It takes MORE to produce milk than it does to grow a baby. This is just something I didn’t know…
So I only ended up tracking my calories one day. It is, after all, a lot of work. I may go back to it though. I did learn a lot about myself in that one day though. I can easily eat the calories I’m supposed to but because of what I choose to eat (think about how many carrots you could eat to equal the same calories as a pop tart…that sort of thing…) I end up hungry at the end of the day and that’s when I want to pig out. Definitely not the best time of day for it - if there is a good time of day to overeat… The other problem I have is that I’m a little carb heavy. They do percentages for you and it recommended like 55% of your calories coming from carbs and mine was about 57-58% so not crazy over but still too much of that and too little protein.
Based on all this and some general observations I think I’m going to try to eat less at each meal (I’ve been trying to eat larger meals and not snack in between which doesn’t feel very good) and choose healthy snacks. I just have to figure out what those would be and take the time to make them which is probably the hardest part. I could either grab a handful of m-n-m’s or scramble up an egg… The m-n-m’s usually win out.
Oh and I’m also going to make exercise a bit more intentional. I find myself tired a lot so I end up trying to sneak rest in all day but it would be nice during one of Asher’s awake times (which is a lot of the day now) to go with him for a walk. He loves it outside and I think it would do us both some good to get the fresh air.
So here’s to taking control! I created a budget and feel more in control of our spending. I created a meal plan and feel more in control of my cooking. Now it’s time to bite the bullet and really pay attention to what is going into my body. After all: Garbage In, Garbage Out.