Metabolic Efficiency - Day 7 - A week!

Wow - so I've made it through a week of metabolically efficient eating. And lived to tell about it. ;-) If you didn't see my summary post of the data so far, you can find it here. Based on that data I need to try to bump up my carbohydrate intake a little. Even so, my energy levels are stable and when I get hungry I'm not ravenous. It all seems so...simple. I'm getting used to eating this way, and except for the little bit of bread and cookies this weekend, no whole grains! Remember, this isn't because whole grains are "bad" (see this article on why foods are not bad) but we're backing off foods that might cause an insulin surge and be an instant burn. I want my body to learn to rely on fat burning, and I know it already knows how to burn carbs quite well.

So let's look at today's meals:
Breakfast (no photo): Banana-strawberry-cherry smoothie. (yogurt, soymilk, cocoa, vanilla whey, fruit in a blender). Heaven on my drive to work.
Snack #1: (similar to a snack yesterday - no photo): fruit salad of pineapple, clementines, cantaloupe, strawberries with cottage cheese. I'm sure I also grabbed a handful of mixed nuts at some point.
Lunch: "unstuffed pepper" I was scouring the fridge before heading to work and came up with this - green pepper and then the "stuffing" of my leftover black beans, salsa, and tofu. Microwaved the "stuffing" and alternated bites. Actually stuffing the pepper would have been too messy for my desk.

unstuffed pepper

Snack #2 (no photo): On my way home I ate some celery, carrots and almond butter.  It was a quick trip home as I had to be somewhere at 5pm, so I made a quick protein shake (soy milk with vanilla whey powder).
Dinner: I was definitely a bit hungry when I got home at 8pm, so I quickly made sauted zucchini with shitake mushrooms (and some garlic) and baked salmon. Honestly, I think I make a darn good baked salmon. It was seasoned with salt, pepper, and lemon juice. Not shown is a spinach salad topped with a few pomegranate kernels (or whatever you call the ruby red delights from the pomegranate). Note: my dad used to make veggie stir fry with zucchini, yellow squash, etc when I was younger and I never ate it. But look at me - I cooked zucchini and ate it...and it wasn't zucchini bread!

baked salmon, zucchini and shitake mushrooms

Exercise: I made it to the pool today! A good thing, especially because this month has a swim focus in the USAT National Challenge Competition.  Thirty minutes of easy swimming followed by some stretching in the hot tub. Great way to spend my lunch hour!

I hope you are enjoying my posts. Feel free to leave comments and share recipes. Let me know how my blog might be helping you! See you back here tomorrow!