Wednesday, October 30, 2019

My favorite meal for OMAD

So here I am at day 9 of trying to commit to the OMAD lifestyle and abolishing heavy whip as a dietary cornerstone.

I have continued to be fine without the heavy whip, and I am grateful.

I have also learned that my daily coffee consumption is directly related to my heavy whip consumption, and I am down to about four cups a day from double that.

I have lost seven old pounds and am depuffing. Dairy is naturally inflammatory, so dumping it is always a great way to also get rid of body water. I have four old pounds to go before we get into new pounds territory, and last year when I decided to simply maintain my weight, I had eight pounds to go to get to my goal but was already at a healthy weight and great stats. I was in a safe zone to hang for awhile.

So we talked about fasting as a discipline, not as a punishment or as starvation. Starvation is when your body will eat your organs and muscles and has already eaten through its fat stores, and you have no nutrition happening. This isn't that. When you eat after your fast, you eat WELL and with nutrition as the focus.

I use my free Zero App to track my fasts and time between them to work on my eating windows, and this has been working really well.

I do weight myself and have a fancy Renpho scale that tracks everything, and I do believe in using scales. I also measure my chest, waist, hips, thighs, and left bicep as well, because when nothing is happening on the scale, a measuring tape will reveal activity you may feel in your clothes and see in the mirror.

I also use my free FatSecret app to design meals and track my macros. I don't love that it doesn't automatically subtract fiber and sugar alcohols from my daily totals, but it's been the best app I have found so far for my current needs. As a homeschool mom of two middle schoolers, I am doing math daily, so I am capable of subtracting those myself.

All that said, when you are eating keto, you are basically looking for a macronutrient profile of 70-75% healthy fats, 20-25% proteins (naturally fattier ones are best), and no more than 10% carbs (always subtract out any sugar alcohols and fiber). Even fewer total carbs is better, and if you are trying to lose, 20g of total carbs or less total carbs is the magic number.

OMAD is tricky in that you still need lots of calories within that one meal. If you cut too many calories, it will slow your metabolism down making it more difficult to lose weight. And because you are only eating one meal, the meal has to be very calorically and nutritionally dense. Hence, this is why I will sit and design my one meal, and even prep it, so that I am ready to nourish and satisfy my body when it's time to eat.

This is my favorite meal to break my fast:

3 Organic hard boiled eggs seasoned with pink Himalayan salt and pepper      
                       204 cal.           0 carbs                           18g protein               12 g fat
A whole medium avocado seasoned with pink Himalayan salt
                       260 cal.           12 g c/10g fiber.              2g protein.              24g fat
20 raw pecan halves
                       98 cal.              2 g c/1.4g fiber                1g protein.              10g fat
Nicole's Tomato Basil Soup
                      145 cal.             8g c/2g fiber/3g sugar.   10g protein.               8g fat
4 pieces of uncured bacon, oven baked
                      160 cal               0g c                                10g protein.             14g fat
1 Nicole's keto no grain banana walnut muffin
                       242 cal.             10g c/4g fiber/3g sugar.  7g protein                20g fat
1 tbsp Kerrygold Irish butter
                       100 cal                0g c                                0g protein               11g fat
___________________________________________________________________
                      1,111 cal.           32 c/7g sugar/16g fiber.    48g protein.            99g fat

I will also add a tablespoon of nutritional yeast and a teaspoon of organic flax seed into my soup, which has a base of bone broth, full fat organic unsweeted coconut milk, and is PACKED with spinach.

I may add a bell pepper to scoop up my avocado, and sometimes the eggs, bacon, and avocado will go into lettuce scoops to make "sandwiches" if I have them on hand.

The total net carbs above is 16g, which firmly places me losing, which is my current goal. When I want to stabilize my weight, I may add a meal, increase total calories and macros, and increase my total carbs, but not over 50 or so. It's usually in 30-40g range, and I will still track my macros, especially if the scale starts to move, and then make adjustments.

This is a very filling meal, and it's harder to get fiber into your meals than you may realize. The veggies, and in this case, spinach, don't have as much as you think but do have important nutrients your body needs.

The big winner is for fiber is the avocado, and when I do two meals, I will eat an entire avocado with both meals. One strategy to make the two avocado thing work is to add a second meal in a small eating window--I generally will use a 1-3 hour eating window depending on what is happening during my day--to get the extra calories and fiber in. If I can eat more, I do. It's how long I am fasting, what I am eating, and how often I am eating that tells my body what to burn for fuel and turns off fat burning. Doing a nutritionally dense meal like this is VERY filling.

We could get more technical about hormones being turned on and off by food and what all that means along with what is so great about eggs, bacon, bone broth, and avocados, or why spinach is a miracle when it comes to getting in the right amount of daily greens, but for today, I will just introduce the meal itself.

Simple, easy, filling, nutritionally dense, and very easy to enlarge if you are a bigger person or are still hungry simply by enlarging your portions of any item or all. This is all that fits for me without trying to add a second meal into the small eating window, and usually I am so full, I can't do it.

My FatSecret App, like I mentioned, will not subtract out fiber from total carbs, but my ratios are approximately 75%/20%/5%. It's one of the reasons this is a cornerstone meal for me right now: it's easy.

There is nothing wrong with easy, friends. That is why Slimfast is trying to sell you a keto bar. Please don't buy it and stick with real foods. What we are all really after is healthy, nutritious real foods in their whole state with nutrients that are naturally bioavailable without preservatives. That essentially eliminates anything prepackaged from Slimfast.

The soup and muffins are my own recipes modified out of other recipes, and at some future point, we can get into those too.

May your day be blessed and one meal less, Nicole

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