Today's Eats - in the car

How about a peek into my day of eating? On a school day when I'm gone for 16 hours of the day. And during a week when I didn't cook my lunches for the whole week because I was gone on my cooking day. And right in the midst of a very stressful, overly busy time in my life. Ever wonder what a day of eating would look like with all those caveats?

Today - Thursday, May 5th - you'll see several people around the WLS blogosphere who are also sharing their day's eating. So after you get done ready about my adventures in food here, go visit the rest of them to see what they're doing. Also, why not find a way to share YOUR day's eating too? If you have a blog of your own, make a post and share the link in my comments section. If you're on Facebook or Twitter, share your eats there. Or hop on a forum and start a new thread with your eats. Here are the other bloggers:

• Beth (aka "Melting Mama")
• Andrea (of WLS Vitagarten)
• Rob (of Former Fat dudes)
• Shelly (of The World According to Eggface)
• Nikki (of Bariatric Foodie)
• Tom (of Beariatric.com)

Our goal of showing you what a WLS patient eats in a single day is to help you understand that we are all different. There is no absolute right or wrong way to do this post-op life thing. We have to each develop our own routine and eating plan that works with our schedules, preferences and the way our body works. We hope this sheds some light on the mystery of what long-term post-wls patients actually eat.

Let's talk about my day first. The food here is for yesterday's eats. Wednesdays are school days for me, so that means I leave my house around 7:15 a.m. to go to work, head to class after leaving the office and get home around 11:00 p.m. after class. Typically my routine is to have meals prepped over the weekend so I have a packed lunch for each day of the week and sometimes a packed dinner for school nights. But I was out of town this past weekend, so I'm off routine this week. I have no pre-planned lunches and there's not even much in the house to use for dinners. So I've been winging it all week.

I ate in my car. A lot. Way more than normal. LOL! I always have my morning protein drink and muffin on the drive to work. But since the weather was so nice I also had lunch in my car while soaking up the sunshine. Then on school nights I typically eat a small early dinner while I'm driving between the office and school. I did eat my late night snack at home though. So this day's eating was a bit of a "grab as I go" type of day.

The short version of my day's eats:

7:15 a.m. - Hot Vanilla Caramel Protein Tea

8:15 a.m. - Banana Oat Muffin

9:15 a.m. - Coffee with SF Vanilla Creamer

1:30 p.m. - Arby's Chicken salad wrap and a few french fries 

3:00 p.m. - Fun-size peanut butter M&M's

5:30 p.m. - Wendy's chili and mandarin oranges

11:00 p.m. - 2 mandarin oranges & 2 cheesesticks

The pictorial version of my day's eats:

Fast food!? Twice? And CHOCOLATE? Dang Pam... you're a bad WLS patient! Yep. It was just one of those days.

I've logged my food into FitDay and copied the journal entries below for your inspection. Notice that the Arby's chicken salad wrap is a strangely inputted. I am only recording 75% of the wrap sandwich because that's how much of the multi-grain tortilla I ate, but I picked out all of the remaining chicken inside the discarded wrap. So I added some regular chicken salad (my homemade version) onto the food log to make sure I accounted for all the protein I really did eat. I do this often when I can't make the electronic food log do what I want it to do. It helps me remain as accurate as possible in my logging.

So really, even though I ate fast food (twice) .... if you look at my numbers, they weren't that far outside the norm for what my goals are. In fact, my calorie intake was spot on. Just that the fat intake was a bit high (which I don't worry too much about anyway) and my protein percentage was a bit low (even though I hit my gram-intake goal) so it threw off my percentages for the day. My daily goal is around 1200-1500 calories with 40% from protein, 35% from carbs and 25% from fat.

So here's how the numbers shook out:

Calories: 1,490
Fat: 63g - 37%
Carbs: 148g  - 38%
 fiber: 21g
Protein: 98g - 25%

What did YOU eat today? Share on your own blog and link to it here in the comment. And go visit the other bloggers who are talking about their food today too.

~Pam