- No eating after 7pm. No water. Nothing after 7.
- Try juicing for breakfast.
Look, I work 40 hours a week. I have a life outside of working out. I am a late mover and shaker, and I hate going to the gym in the AM. So I go at night, after work. By the time I get to my classes at the Y or get to do a run, it's already 6pm. Add in a shower, a drive home, and preparing dinner, and it's after 7. This is a NEARLY IMPOSSIBLE GOAL. But I'm trying.
And Trainer Amy said if I work out prior to 7pm (which is typical), I need to eat something small pre-work out, then after the workout I can have something small with protein (yogurt, eggs, chicken). But that is the ONLY exception.
I'm an evening snacker. Realisticly, I'm an all-day snacker. Or all-day eater. Whatever. But I don't like telling my body that it can't have its nightly snack, whether it be a granola bar or frozen yogurt. It's habit. As a child, we got a snack at night, after dinner but before bedtime. On Sunday nights we went crazy and had a bigger snack- like ice cream in a warm waffle right from the waffle iron... but I digress.
Runner's World covered the "no eating after dinner" topic on it's online version in June 2013. Researchers from Brigham Young University looked at the short-term effect of night eating restriction on daily calorie consumption, weight, and even mood. They recruited 29 young men and asked them to avoid consuming calories (water was okay) between the hours of 7 p.m. to 6 a.m. for two weeks. During these two weeks the participants recorded every bite they consumed, and their weight, mood, and level of hunger at breakfast were monitored. There was a one-week break, and then for two more weeks (a control period) the subjects were monitored as they returned to their usual way of life. The average weight change was a loss of nearly 0.9 pounds during the two weeks of nighttime fasting and a gain of approximately 1.3 pounds during the control period. When they avoided eating between the hours of 7 p.m. to 6 a.m., participants reduced their daily calorie intake by an average of 238 calories. Which helps to explain the weight loss of almost half a pound a week.
So... maybe it's worth trying? I'm going to go with the "no eating after dinner" instead of the 7pm. I'm trying to push dinner up in my day, but I also don't want to eat dinner then work out on a full stomach. Because that's just gross.
This was a new one. Trainer Amy looked at my food journal on MyFitnessPal and saw way too much junk- and not enough protein or vegetables. I tried to argue that there's not a lot of veggies and fruits in season, but she quickly shushed me. The bottom line is that I'm opting for carbs and not going for the more filling, vitamin rich breakfast. She gave me some juicing recipes, told me to grab some protein powder to add to the juice, and sent me on my way.
For the first few days, I made her "blue power juice"- 1/2 c frozen strawberries, 1/2 pear, 1/2 apple, 2 c. baby kale/spinach/swiss chard mix, 1 baby cucumber, 2 carrots. I tried to use the roommate's juicer but I couldn't figure it out. So I blended instead of juiced.
It tasted like dirt.
It still tasted like dirt when I had it day 2... and day 3... and when I made it on day 4 and couldn't fight it into my stomach, I gave up on the "blue power" and made my own juice. My juice started out as an entire orange, a whole apple, a whole pear, and 2 carrots. I was then guilted into adding 2 c of the kale mix (by a 9 year old!)- and I threw some strawberries in there for good measure. This was AWESOME- it didn't taste like an old shoe at all! But I know, deep down, that I should have added more veggies. And I totally forgot the protein powder. Oops.
Which leads me to my juicing rules:
Juicing rule #1 Go easy on the fruits- while fruit is good for you, it's the vegetables that you need in the juice. Fruits are some vitamins and a lot of sugar. Vegetables are full of vitamins and...taste like dirt. But when you consume 4 servings of fruit in a juice, your insulin may spike and you will crash. Hard.
Last night, I grabbed a few new pointers and ran to the grocery store. I picked up some lemons, a bunch of mint, a pineapple, and a hunk of ginger root. I mixed the base of the "blue power juice" and omitted the blueberries. I added a half of a lemon (naturally low in sugar), half of an orange, a small bit of ginger, and some mint. It was great. It looked like a puddle of mud in my Nalgene this morning, but it was actually tasty! Still probably too much fruit, but it's ok. I'll get to more veggies. Eventually.
Juicing rule #2- juicing is totally different than blending. My roommate laughed when I said I couldn't figure out how to use the juicer. Then he read off the reasons why juicing is superior to blending. Dude, I just need juice. I don't care how it's made. But apparently I *should* care. A juicer extracts liquid nutrition from vegetables and fruits and leaves the fiber behind. This absence of the bulky fiber is the main difference between juices and smoothies (blender). Since most of the fiber is gone, it's best to drink the juice on an empty stomach- and don't expect the juice to make you feel full. Which leads to..
Juicing rule #3: It's OK to still eat breakfast while juicing! I love that I'm getting my vitamins in and all of that, but I NEED FOOD. I wasn't feeling too powerful after the first few "juicing breakfasts" so now I drink the juice and have walnuts or some other small breakfast item about 30-60 minutes later. The problem with this theory is that I've now added 300+ calories to my diet in the AM without feeling full. Maybe if I go back to rule #1, the calories will go down.
Juicing rule #4: Juice the soft stuff first, then the harder veggies. Otherwise everything will get stuck inside of the machine and you will spend 20-30 minutes digging out carrot pulp from a device that only a skinny knife will fit into. And we all know how me and knives don't get along.
Good grief, let's hope I survive this next week...
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