You Are What You Eat?

Changing your lifestyle is not just about working out every day but you have to have a closer look at what you are eating too - and how much. When I wrote down what I normally ate and went through my "food diary" with the Personal Trainer, she only had a couple of things to change, mostly reducing the amount of sugary fruit juices and adding protein to my diet. When the disappointing two-month results were in, Sanna decided to make a new diet for me after all - cutting even more of my (full grain) carbs and the overall portion sizes of basically every meal of the day. It was time to step it up, since the exercise alone wasn't doing the trick.

So what have been the biggest changes? Well, for example my breakfast has changed from porridge with berries or quinoa-spelt muesli to boiled/fried eggs - turkey/tuna/salmon - vegetables - nuts/seeds/olive oil - combo. I have also increased my protein intake considerably, even making myself a nice protein smoothie after my gym sessions. I eat more nuts, seeds and avocado or add extra olive oil or coconut oil to my food. I changed my sugary fruit juices to freshly pressed vegetable juices instead (apple-celery-cucumber-broccoli-kale-ginger, yum!) and have just one glass per day. My portions have become smaller, too. Oh, and I have changed my milk chocolate to raw dark chocolate - but I wasn't eating too much chocolate earlier anyway. Honest!

I also had to readjust my eating rhythm, trying to eat every 3 hours or so to keep the food intake steady. It has definitely helped me since I don't get incredibly hungry anymore. Also, sometimes having just an apple as an afternoon snack didn't really keep me satisfied and I felt hungry again in no time. The added protein has changed that now.

During the workdays my meals are divided more or less like this:

07:00 Breakfast
12:00 Lunch
15:00 Afternoon snack
18:00 Dinner
21:00 Evening snack

In addition I try to drink at least 1 litre of water during the work day and additional 1 litre at home. Plus another 0,5 - 1 litre during a training session, so in total about 2-3 litres or water per day.

Oh yeah, I read this Forty Reasons Your Diet Isn't Working article the same day I had the first meeting with the Personal Trainer and found it quite interesting. Some of the mentioned reasons I already knew, some can be figured out by using common sense, but there were a couple of new tips and tricks there too, if you are interested.

What are your favourite diet tricks - or healthy treats?