Friday, January 23, 2009

Musing on Eating

Ugh, sometimes I hate that I have to eat because the only things I want to eat are bad for me and I feel like I shouldn't eat anything and I know I'm not eating enough fruits and vegetables, but there is a limited number of veges and fruits that you can find frozen or canned (and so I get sick of it) and it seems like whenever I buy fresh, I only eat half before it goes bad and I've wasted the money.  Sometimes I just get sick of the eternal struggle of trying to "eat right." 

Sometime last week, I was thinking to myself that I had hardly eaten anything that day, so I probably easily ate within the 1800-calorie goal I have. So I decided to count up all I'd eaten and see if I was right. I'd had two bowls of Frosted Mini-Wheats cereal with 2% milk (I eat 2% with cereal, but I drink fat free. I know, I'm weird). Then I had a peanut butter and jam sandwich on whole wheat bread with two glasses (about 20 oz total) fat free milk for lunch. I had a s'more as a snack with some fat free milk (around 6 oz). I had 2 corn dogs for dinner with at least 16 oz of milk (healthy, I know). I also had a cup of juice to wash down my vitamins (to cover the icky taste of the vitamin). Anyway, so I added up everything I'd eaten and it was around 2100 or 2200 calories. I'm like, "So I ate around the amount you're supposed to eat in one day? But I feel like I ate nothing." So I basically learned that when you eat the amount you're supposed to, you don't feel full (or at least I don't). 

So since then I've been trying to eat around 500-600 calories each meal. Technically, I'm supposed to eat around 2400 calories since I'm nursing (i.e., pumping), but I only have a month left of that, so I figure it'd be okay to start cutting calories now (and so far my milk supply has not changed). I've taken to drinking more water than milk. I was going through a gallon every 2–3 days, but now I'm only drinking about 2 cups of milk with breakfast and 1 cup with either lunch or dinner. I'm hoping eating less calories will help me lose the baby weight. I think I wrote before that I'd lost it, but that must have been a fluke because since then I've weighed at least 4 lbs above pre-pregnancy weight. Also, before I got pregnant I was overweight by about 15 lbs I'd guess (maybe 20) and so it'd be great to lose that as well. I think my problem this whole time has been I had no idea how little 2000 calories is.

Which brings me to another question: Is it even possible to eat all the servings in the food pyramid that we're supposed to eat daily and eat only 2000 calories? I just don't see it. But as I was researching, I ran into www.mypyramid.gov, which is great. You can put in your information (age, weight, activity level, height, etc.) and it will tell you how many calories you should eat to maintain your weight and how many you should eat to lose weight. Additionally, it will tailor the number of servings on the pyramid to what you need. It even has a separate section for pregnant women and women who are nursing. It has a bunch of other resources like menu planning and such that I haven't really looked into, but I liked what I looked at.

So overall, I kind of feel like I'm starving all the time, but not really. I'm just used to feeling full and for the last week I've just felt blah—like I'm not really hungry, but at the same time I want to eat more, but I figure I might get used to feeling like this and be okay with it, and I'm not going to be completely rigid about it. I don't consider it a "diet" because to me that has the connotation that you only do it for a short time to lose weight and then go back to your old habits and gain the weight back. It's more that I just want to get better at eating the right amount of calories and eating more vegetables (I say veges because I'm fairly good at eating fruits—yummy!).

And, yes, I only have a month till I'm done pumping because my son is almost a year old if you can believe it! That's so crazy. I'm looking forward to it, though. That's 3 hours a day that I won't be stuck to the pump. Sure I could do a lot of stuff, but I wasn't free to do anything. It will be nice to have that time back, and not be trying to take care of Alex and pump at the same time, which I often have to do. So exciting!

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