Overnight Oats
So I've been completely faithful to my exercise regime: I work out for about 30 minutes a day, 5 days a week with a mix of strength and HIIT cardio as well as a fair amount of walking throughout the day. I've also been watching the caliber and quality of what I eat as well as tracking calories in.
Over the last 10+ weeks I have lost TWO pounds. 2. I totally understand that this is a process that takes time, stick with it, muscle weighs more than fat, blah blah, but seriously, a girl could lose some steam over 10 weeks of hard work with little to show for it. So I sat down and took a real look at what was going on. I'm burning on average 2300 calories per day (thanks fitbit!), and I'm only taking-in about 1400 per day. So I calculated my BMR (basal metabolic rate) I have a relatively accurate idea of how many calories I'm burning each day. I realized I'm a fair number of calories under where I should be! I should be eating closer to 1800 calories per day to keep a 500 calorie deficit (that's the safe mark for losing 1 pound per week). There's a good chance I'm putting my body closer to "starvation" mode (that sounds really dramatic and I don't mean for it to). So now it's time to adjust. I'm going to stop being afraid of putting food in, and start fueling my body and really paying attention to how this process feels.
I started this morning with a big batch of overnight oats that I made last night. I found this recipe from a website called Kid Tested, Firefighter Approved from the time I did a plant-based food challenge a few years ago (I love food challenges). I KNOW this one is good and only uses real foods to sweeten it. You can find the original recipe here, but because I'm me I tweaked it a little:
2 bananas
2 cups milk of your choice (I used cashew milk - it's my favorite non-moo milk)
1 cup green leafy veg (I used frozen spinach)
splash of vanilla
3 Tablespoons of chia seeds
Blend the crap out of it
Pour this mixture over 2 cups of rolled (not quick) oats
**the recipe calls for 1 cup but I think that version is really loose, so I added the second cup of oats. That also gives it some staying power.
Make this the night before and store in the fridge, and in the morning you will have tasty oats! I stored mine in a 6-cup Glad container and it's totally full.
I topped mine with some dehydrated strawberries (because I didn't buy any fresh. Also it's winter so nothing is in season) and a very light drizzle of honey.
I dished out 1/3 of a cup but I might actually go back for seconds. It's really good and I'm still a little hungry.
So this week is going to be a big experiment with this increase in calories! It makes perfect sense that in order to get your metabolism up you need to feed your body so that part of it all makes sense to me. Now I just need to get on it!
Over the last 10+ weeks I have lost TWO pounds. 2. I totally understand that this is a process that takes time, stick with it, muscle weighs more than fat, blah blah, but seriously, a girl could lose some steam over 10 weeks of hard work with little to show for it. So I sat down and took a real look at what was going on. I'm burning on average 2300 calories per day (thanks fitbit!), and I'm only taking-in about 1400 per day. So I calculated my BMR (basal metabolic rate) I have a relatively accurate idea of how many calories I'm burning each day. I realized I'm a fair number of calories under where I should be! I should be eating closer to 1800 calories per day to keep a 500 calorie deficit (that's the safe mark for losing 1 pound per week). There's a good chance I'm putting my body closer to "starvation" mode (that sounds really dramatic and I don't mean for it to). So now it's time to adjust. I'm going to stop being afraid of putting food in, and start fueling my body and really paying attention to how this process feels.
I started this morning with a big batch of overnight oats that I made last night. I found this recipe from a website called Kid Tested, Firefighter Approved from the time I did a plant-based food challenge a few years ago (I love food challenges). I KNOW this one is good and only uses real foods to sweeten it. You can find the original recipe here, but because I'm me I tweaked it a little:
2 bananas
2 cups milk of your choice (I used cashew milk - it's my favorite non-moo milk)
1 cup green leafy veg (I used frozen spinach)
splash of vanilla
3 Tablespoons of chia seeds
Blend the crap out of it
Pour this mixture over 2 cups of rolled (not quick) oats
**the recipe calls for 1 cup but I think that version is really loose, so I added the second cup of oats. That also gives it some staying power.
Make this the night before and store in the fridge, and in the morning you will have tasty oats! I stored mine in a 6-cup Glad container and it's totally full.
I topped mine with some dehydrated strawberries (because I didn't buy any fresh. Also it's winter so nothing is in season) and a very light drizzle of honey.
I dished out 1/3 of a cup but I might actually go back for seconds. It's really good and I'm still a little hungry.
So this week is going to be a big experiment with this increase in calories! It makes perfect sense that in order to get your metabolism up you need to feed your body so that part of it all makes sense to me. Now I just need to get on it!
Comments
Post a Comment