Deficit + Menu

More often than not when I meet with someone about losing weight, I get the same confusing answer to a basic question. I always ask a client two basic questions to start with: how much do you eat on a daily basis and how active are you. These two questions are the most important and require honesty. Rarely do I get a straight answer. I usually hear them say how they barely eat anything and workout 5 days a week as hard as they can or they just don’t know. Both of which are fine, because my job is to educate people on what works for them.

A client that busts their tail 5 days a week in the gym and sees no results, is certainly overeating at some point during the week. There are cases of under-eating coupled with no weight loss, but that is rare and usually, only a plateau that will pass. If you are consistently eating in a deficit and still not seeing results, then your activity level is likely inconsistent. If you still aren’t losing weight, then your method of tracking might be wrong.

For those that are eyeballing their food, measuring it rather than weighing it, or only tracking during the week are really doing themselves a disservice. If you want to track your food, you need to be disciplined and consistent. Once you have tracked for a while you can eyeball foods or skip a few days of tracking because you have taken the time to learn what works and will naturally make healthy choices. When I take days off of tracking I naturally eat less than what I should, it is not purposeful, I just know how much I need from consistently tracking.

Healthy choices don’t always come naturally. I thought I made some pretty healthy choices before I started tracking. I would eat yogurt + granola + grapes for lunch almost every day during the week because it was so easy to throw together. Little did I know just exactly what I was consuming. I was not overweight, but my body composition just was not what I wanted it to be. I went to the gym at least 5 days a week and really never saw any kind of progress. My calories weren’t out of whack, but my macros sure were. I was consuming very little protein and a whole lot of carbohydrates and fat.

I get asked a lot if I grew up eating really healthy foods. My mama did not fry all of our meals by any means, we ate your typical spaghetti, red beans and rice (my favorite), Italian chicken (chicken baked in Italian dressing), mashed potatoes, etc. We ate well and as kids, we didn’t need to limit our calorie intake as we do now as adults.

When I went off to college my idea of breakfast was two pieces of bread with a slice of Kraft cheese on each piece, lightly melted in the microwave…15 seconds, because 30 seconds made it too runny and hot. I ate the salad bar but gorged on pizza and strombolis for supper. I got burrito bowls because the tortilla was too many carbs and then proceeded to cover my bowl with cheese dip and eat it with chips. I ate that probably 4 or 5 times a week. I was not too concerned with educating myself on proper nutrition in my college days. I wanted to look and feel better but never put in the work to do so.

As an adult, I knew I had to make a change with my nutrition so that my time spent in the gym was not in vain. I do not see the point in spinning my wheels. If I am going to invest my time and energy at the gym, the last thing I want is to undo all of that work because I have no willpower or knowledge about food. You can work out all you want to, but if you do not educate yourself on proper nutrition, then you likely will not reach your goals. Starving yourself will only lead to failures in the gym and is just a plain bad idea. Eating healthy does not have to be hard or expensive. You can eat clean basic meals without breaking the bank and reach your nutrition goals.

Duke’s Mayo Bird + Orzo + Zucchini and Tomato

I am excited to test out cooking my first turkey. Usually, when I think of cooking a turkey for Thanksgiving my mind immediately goes to frying a turkey. Josh got a new grill over the pandemic break, as did several others because they have been out of stock for a while.

I will not be using Duke’s Mayo on my bird, even though this recipe came from the mayonnaise company’s website. I happened upon it on Pinterest and it just looked great. I am going to make some changes and hopefully still come out with a delicious first bird. If you aren’t worried about keeping it healthy then don’t worry about my substitutions.

When I calculate this for my macros, I am not going to add in the wine and orange juice. The bird will not soak up all of the juice and will lose water so knowing the amount it takes in would be very difficult to track.