One good day in a week of too much Chocolate

This was one of the healthier diet days I’ve had in the past week. Actually stayed below 2000 calories, 5+ servings of fruit and veg (the bean stew has 2-3 servings of vegetables since its all vegetables and beans in a tomato base), high in fibre, and no junk food. Despite the lack of junk food (the sorbet was only 140 calories and was made with pureed fruit) it was surprisingly high in fat, though most of that was from good fats in the olive oil and avocados. However, it does mean that once again I am short on protein and higher on fats than I would like.

Overall this lack of balance, coupled with an abundance of calories from chocolate, was a major theme last week. I averaged 2325 calories a day with less than 100 calories a day burned through exercise (I only had one body balance workout and one 30 minute race), with 20% of those calories from protein, 51% from carbohydrates and 29% from fat. At the start of the month when I decided to up the amount of carbohydrates to 50% of my diet, the idea was to keep the amount of protein at 25% and drop the amount of fat from 30% to less than 25%. However last week most of my “extra” carbohydrates can from sweet treats, which are also full of fat. The worst part is this was a rest week, so the excess fats are likely to hang around because they were not used to fuel exercise, while the lack of protein may have impaired the muscle building that’s supposed to happen in a rest week.

This week I will be in Switzerland on business, so it’s going to get harder to keep my nutrients balanced. I used to live in Zurich, so I do have the advantage of knowing where to go to get gluten free food. The bad news is that I also know gluten free food is less available and less well known in Switzerland than it is in the UK. So my goals this week: Get in all my workouts and get enough to eat. Worry about calories and nutrient balance next week.

The Score:

Calories:	Protein:	Carbs:	Fat:	Alcohol:	Fibre:
1916.47	98.21g	238.90g	64.41g	0	29.0g
	20.5%	50%	30%
Calories burned through exercise:		Rest Day

What I ate:

Time	Item	Amount
09:00	Vitamins - Centrum Advance A to Zinc, 400iu of Vitamin E, 1000iu Vitamin D3 and 500mg Glucosamine sulphate	1 each
	Cold water	200mL
	Whole Scrambled egg with 2 egg whites	3 eggs
	Genius brown bread toast	2 slices
	with Flora Light	8g
	St Dalfour Blackcurrant jam	32g
	Sainsbury's Orange, Mango and Passionfruit juice	200mL
10:00	Black Tea	500mL
12:00	Raspberry and Echinacea tea	250mL
13:45	Baked chicken breast	125g
	Mashed potato	200g
	with butter	6g
	Stir fried Kale	50g
	in Olive oil	7.5mL
	with Pine nuts	4g
	Bisto Best Chicken Gravy	about 5g
	Sainsbury's Bramley apple sauce	30g
14:30	Green Tea	250mL
17:00	Fresh Strawberries	100g
	Sponser Chocolate Recovery Shake	30g
	in Skim milk	225mL
20:45	Lee's Hippy Farm Beans (Leon's recipe book)	350g
	Fresh avocado	60g
	Alpro Soya Original	200mL
21:30	Sainsbury’s Raspberry Sorbet	132g
22:15	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.