Steph Says: A Day In The IIFYM Life

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Bwahahahahah, oh that's a good one! Real cute! Oh, my abs hurt from all the laughing. Do I get to count that as my workout?

I LIVE to EAT. Food is life. I love the taste of food. I love the social aspect of it. I love going out to dinner. I love lunch dates. I love brunch dates. I just love food.
If you were to ask me if there is anything on earth I love more than food, I could only name two things: my husband and my daughter. But don't ask me that in the middle of one of her new public temper tantrums. You may receive a VERY different response.

IIFYM, or If It Fits Your Macros, has been an eye-opening challenge for me food-wise, but in a good way. I have realized just how horribly off my serving size estimations have always been. IIFYM is helping me to learn what makes my body lean(er) and my muscles strong. It's also keeping my brain active (I had to relearn 2nd grade math for this) and my tummy happy! Basically, you (or a coach) calculates exactly how many grams of protein, fat, and carbs (macronutrients) your body needs a day based on your weight loss/muscle gain goals. Then you weigh everything you eat and track the amount of macros you consume. I used Paige to calculate my numbers. Her prices are very reasonable and she gave me so much information! Thank you Paige! She figured out that I need to eat 148 grams of protein, 64 grams of fat, and 165 grams of carbs each day in order to continue losing weight. Here's the trick: I weigh and measure almost every single thing I eat. Yes, it's a hassle. No, I don't love that part of IIFYM. But it's worth it because I am seeing the results!

My eating day begins the night before. Before I fall asleep, I take a mental inventory of what needs to be eaten the next day, such as a fruit that's on the verge of going bad or certain leftovers I need to get rid of, or if I know I have lunch or dinner plans. I enter these into the My Fitness Pal app with a rough guess on the weight- I'll verify as I go. Last night I realized I needed to eat some almost-bad cherries and a frozen turkey burger that I had put in the fridge to defrost. Then comes the fun part: I start dreaming.
Ooh, turkey burger. Well, I need a bun for that, and I have a bag of frozen sweet potato fries too...so I need to go easy on the carbs at breakfast to save room. Gotta have cheese too. Hmm...all I have is mozzarella. But I also have turkey pepperoni. And tomato sauce that I need to use. Oh my, a turkey pizza burger?! I am a genius.
Then I go to sleep with visions of sugar plums dancing in my head and a flexible, loose plan of my upcoming day. Things will change, things will weigh more or less than I anticipated, so I'll do some finagling all day long to get it all right.
I wonder how many carbs are in a sugar plum?
What IS a sugar plum?!
Just go to sleep, Stephanie.

When my alarm goes off, I'm actually excited to get out of bed...because it means I get to eat. Starting with my gummy vitamins- 4g carbs.

Today I stayed home most of the day, so I was able to make everything at home and didn't need any "on the go" meals such as protein shakes or quest bars (but I usually have a daily protein shake. Today I was just lucky!) I also ate things that had nutrition facts on the package or could easily be found on My Fitness Pal. If I eat out somewhere, I try to look up the nutrition facts online and overestimate the serving size. If it's something cooked by someone else, or a place that doesn't have nutrition facts online, I guess and/or try to find similar things on MFP. Sometimes I throw my hands up and say whatever, I'm eating this and I'm going to savor every untracked, unweighed bite! but I try to keep those experiences to a minimum. Key word: try. 

Breakfast:

All goes according to plan! This scramble is my low-carb breakfast go-to, and it has a lot of flavor. Plus it's EASY.

Turkey Scramble
1 egg (53g, 5.3f/0.4c/6.7p)
6 tbs egg whites (from the carton- 0f/0c/10p )
Jimmy Dean Turkey Sausage Crumbles (57g, 5f/2c/10p)

Pitted cherries (155g, .3f/25c/1.6p)

Iced Coffee
4oz Fair Life Skim Milk (0f/3c/6.5p)
1 tbs half & half (1.5f/.5c/.5p)
2 packets Splenda (0f/2/c/0p)
Fill glass with ice, then pour in iced coffee! Black coffee doesn't have enough macros to bother tracking. Yesssss!

Lunch:
Crisis time. I realize that my turkey burger (which is supposed to stay frozen until the day you cook it) has been sitting in the fridge a lot longer than I thought. So scratch that, but I need something with protein, and I am still hung up on my pizza burger idea. But wait! I HAVE SOME DELI TURKEY! Crisis averted!

Broil it, baby. Look at that melty cheese!

Angelic Bakehouse Sprouted Seven-Grain Hamburger Bun (58g, 2.5f/22.4c/6p)
Applewood Smoked Turkey Breast (107g, 1.9f/1.9c/19.1p)
Turkey Pepperoni (19g, 2.5f/0c/5.7p)
2% Mozzarella Cheese (19g, 3.1f/0c/4.8p)
Pasta Sauce (30g, .7f/2.2c/.5p)

Alexia Seasoned Sweet Potato Fries (138g, 11.5f/34.4c/3.3p)

Snack:
I had originally planned to eat a little more of this apple, but I ate a few more fries than I was supposed to. There weren't enough fries left in the bag to justify another serving so I just finished it off and adjusted some of my carbs. I weighed out my portion and shared the rest with Rascal. She loves apples, and I feel like a half-decent mom. Aww look, she's eating healthy! *shamefully scrapes Rascal's uneaten bits of corn dog and ketchup into the trash* 

Honeycrisp Apple

Dinner:

I had to do some thinking here because I ate less protein at lunchtime than I had originally planned due to the turkey burger issue. So where I had planned for some kind of mixed veggie, I subbed in some edamame because it has more protein than say, peas and carrots.
It got a little complicated here. The serving size on the bag was 28g of UNSHELLED pods. Last time I checked, the pods were not exactly edible. You ever tried eating one of those? My husband has. He doesn't recommend it. I had to do some searching on My Fitness Pal and some Googling to figure out the correct macros, and to be completely honest I'm still not sure if I got them correct. Life goes on.
Okay. Disclaimer. I am a terrible cook, especially at night. It's like something just goes horribly wrong when I try to experiment in the kitchen, and if it's dinner time, something's getting burned or it's gonna be just plain BAD.  Exhibit A- my Teriyaki Chicken Fried Rice Fiasco.
The chicken alone is delicious. 

Delicious. I don't even like chicken, and I look forward to eating this.
But I had some leftover brown rice and I still needed some fats and protein, so I thought I'd make Chinese! Easy, fun, and yummy, right?

WRONG.
So wrong.

The egg didn't do what I imagined it would. The edamame should just be eaten alone. The rice makes this look like dog food. And the chicken, the delicious chicken, didn't taste like saucy teriyaki goodness. It tasted like chicken. But since I went through the trouble of weighing all this, you bet your sweet bippy I ate it all.

Just in case you like looking at train wrecks up-close. 

Teriyaki Chicken (132 g, 9.4f/6.3c/26.7p)
Edamame (105 g, who knows if this is 100% accurate- 3.8f/12c/12p)
Brown Rice (68g, .5f/15.5c/2p)
Egg (50g, 4.7f/.9c/5.6p)

Dessert/Snack 2:

After that awful dinner, this saved me. I always try to save macros for an after-dinner treat because I am a firm believer in the whole "treat yoself" movement. P28 to the rescue!

P28 Whole Wheat High Protein Bread (53g, 4f/13.6c/15.8p)
P28 Signature Blend Peanut Butter (33g, 13f/7c/14p)

All of that totals up to 151 grams of protein, 70 grams of fat, and 167 grams of carbs. I went over on my protein by 3 grams, fat by 6 grams, and carbs by 2 grams. IIFYM allows you a little bit of wiggle room +/-5 grams on either side of your goals, so while it was not a perfect day, it was close.

And there you have it- my day in macros. Does your brain hurt? Well, it's worth it for me because I get to eat a LOT of food while losing weight- I call that a win!

Two months of IIFYM.
My stomach is tighter, my shoulders are more defined, and my angry face is on point.

I can't believe I just shared this picture. I'm hoping this post was so long that none of you scrolled this far... I'm not where I want to be, but I am on the right path.

I am worth every ounce of trouble.

Thanks for coming along on this ride.