One Week in December

This was a rather luxurious food week for me, very much the sort you might expect in December. Three times lunch or dinner consisted of various cheeses and pâtés with crackers and chutney, while I enjoyed a glass or two of wine or port five of the seven days. Not that this meant giving up my usual treats of fruit cake and dark chocolate, which I also had most days!

So as you might expect my average daily calories this week were about 2030, nowhere near my usual goal of less than 1800. Even worse in my estimation was the average daily protein being just under 20%. Now I don’t mind the carbohydrates being 48% or the fat being 28%, that’s pretty normal, but it was one of my harder training weeks so I really can’t afford to get much less than 25% protein. I still have another hard training week to go before a rest week, so if I am to adequately recover between sessions I really need to get my nutrition right. I’ve been lucky so far to not have caught a cold or the flu, since a hard training program can depress your immune system, especially if you don’t get enough rest or enough to eat (another reason why trying to lose weight by dieting hard while training hard doesn’t really work). On the plus side, I’ve been much better at getting more fruits and vegetables in my diet over the past couple of days, so maybe my usual five a day has helped keep the seasonal viruses at bay.

Ah well, all the pâté and most of the cheese has been eaten now and I’m out of gluten free crackers and Christmas cake. Once again, the simple way to prevent myself from eating these foods is not to bring them in the house, which will be the strategy this week. Hopefully I can have one last less calorific and higher protein week before the madness of Christmas truly sets in.

The Score:

Calories:	Protein:	Carbs:	Fat:	Alcohol:	Fibre:
1867.40	78.41g	234.33g	67.63g	0	21.29g
	17%	50%	33%
Calories burned through exercise:		Rest Day

What I ate:

Time	Item	Amount
07:45	Vitamins - Centrum Advance A to Zinc, 400iu of Vitamin E, 1000iu Vitamin D3 and 500mg Glucosamine sulphate	1 each
	Cold water	200mL
	Sainsbury's Be Good to Yourself smoked bacon medallions	50g
	Gluten Free fruit muesli	70g
	Alpro Soy milk	120mL
	Sainsbury's pressed apple and cherry juice	200mL
08:30	Black Tea	500mL
10:00	Raspberry and Echinacea tea	250mL
11:15	Sainsbury's Freefrom iced rich fruit cake slice	1 slice
11:30	Herbal fruit tea	250mL
13:45	Lee's Hippy Farm Beans (from Leon's recipe book)	315g
	Alpro Soya Original	200mL
14:15	Green Tea	250mL
16:30	Bounce Peanut Protein blast	49g
	Camomile tea	200mL
18:45	Caffeine free black tea	450mL
	with skim milk	60g
	and sugar	2 tsp
20:15	Roasted butternut squash	201g
20:30	Mrs Crimbles's Cheese crackers	30g
	Waitrose Long Clawson Creamy Blue Stilton	18g
	Sainsbury's Italian Parmigiano Reggiano	13g
	Essential Waitrose Brussels paté	35g
	Waitrose smoked salmon paté	30g
	Waitrose Carmelised red onion chutney	25g
	Tomato	76g
22:00	Ellactiva Chocolate Calcium Chew	1 chew
	500mg Glucosamine sulphate	1 pill

Plus 500 to 1500mL of cold water sipped from a water bottle throughout the day.