Critique my Day please!

[Missrachelk]

Hi Whole30 community!  This is my first post here, but reading has been really helpful t me so far.  I am on day 22 and have been doing great, but after some discussions in another group with several people also doing W30 I feel the need to analyze and possibly adjust my eats.  Please let me know if this is better suited to another forum.

 

  What was being discussed in my other group was almond butter - whether it was indeed allowed and if so if it is a good choice.  That makes me think about nuts in general and maybe trying eliminating them all together to see how things go without them.  But I honestly can't think of anything else that would provide fat and be palatable, portable and easy to eat.

 

I have an 8.5 month old daughter and am in the thick of sleep training with her so I am (naturally) exhausted - and therefore hitting the coffee pretty hard (3-5 cups a day, black).  I am still breastfeeding her, but she eats a good amount of solid food as well.

 

So - today I have had:

 

Black coffee

2 eggs fried in ghee, 1/2 avocado, couple peices honeydew

 

'big ass salad' romaine, cucumbers, red pepper, carrots with chicken, a hard boiled egg and homemade vinniagrette

 

snack - banana with almond butter (fresh ground)

 

chicken and veggie stir fry (bok choy, carrots,  broccoli, water chestnuts, cashews) with 3/4 of a sweet potato with ghee and cinnamon.

 

more coffee

 

I feel very satisfied and am content with what I ate today.  I just wonder if I am hitting the nuts too hard and need to back off.  What do you think?  My objective is to feel better but more so to lose weight.  I have 40# to lose and want to get it off by the end of 2013.

[Tom Denham]

Your meals seem a little light for a breast feeding mom. I would especially like to see you make breakfast a little bigger - at least 3 eggs plus the avocado and honeydew melon.

 

Big ass salads are not always very big after chewing. I wilt a lot of greens, so am familiar with how a huge bunch of greens can turn into a relatively small serving by adding oil, heat, and spices. The chicken would need to be a good serving to make things work.

 

The nuts/nut butter you are eating sound okay given that your overall meals seem small to me. You would do better to increase the protein, fat, and starchy carbs overall while reducing nuts.

 

Using coffee to jack yourself up is not a good idea if you are wanting to lose weight. Your hormonal rhythms are already off if your daughter is calling your out in the middle of the night. The coffee makes things worse. The real secret to weight loss is getting your hormones on a good schedule and sleeping good.

 

Hoping to lose 40 pounds over the next 6 months is not very realistic. That would require losing 6.66 pounds per month. I never lost more than 2 pounds per month when I was losing weight, although I lost 2 pounds per month for 15 months in a row. You might lose 6 pounds per month for a few months, but as you get closer to your natural set point, weight loss is likely to slow to 1 or 2 pounds per month and you could easily have a plateau month when you lose nothing.

[Revived]

off topic but I would also suggest that the caffeine may be affecting your little girl.  when i breastfed my son, i had to cut out caffeine completely because it made him very fussy and a horrible sleeper.  it took me quite awhile to admit that it was the caffeine but once i cut it out, he was more peaceful.