Macronutrient breakdown of a typical weekday
Now that I have swapped to kJ counting I was curious to calculate the macronutrient values of what I eat. Everyone has a different take on what you should eat to lose weight so I wanted to know what I was doing.
I picked Monday from last week because it had a typical dinner (my work days are the same up until dinner time and most dinners are a variation on meat and veg with some carb). It was interesting looking at the kJ content of what I ate because I tracked Monday at just under 8500kJ but now, working it out all again, I came just over 8000 kJ. My tracking is only as good as the values I enter. (Grrrrr!) I know where a couple of things have gone wrong (rice and cashews) and I have fixed them now.
I looked up the protein, carbohydrate, fat and fibre of what I ate on Monday and here is what I got (rounded):
kJ: 8025
protein: 122 g ( 26 % kJ from protein)
fat: 47 g (22 % kJ from fat)
carb: 232 g (46 % kJ from carb)
fibre: 38g
And looking at the serves, I had about 3 serves of protein, 4 serves carb, 3 serves fruit, 5 serves vegetable, 4 serves dairy and some cashews which I don't know where to put.
The %s give an indication of how much of my kJ intake came from that macronutrient. I know they don't add up to 100% but in cases where there was less than 1g of protein/carb/fat the information sometimes isn't provided. But I got close. And doing these calculations is only to give me an idea - it doesn't have to be exact.
I am happy with this. What I am doing is low fat, moderate protein and moderate carb, and it falls neatly between the two programs that I have been looking at in terms of protein and carb intake. I am getting enough fibre through fruit and veg to balance only having 4 serves of refined/simple carbs. My dairy is a little higher than I thought but I use reduced fat milk and have reduced fat cheese. Most of my fat comes from cashews and that is ok because I don't actually get much fat into my diet any other way.
So, that is what I eat on a weekday. Weekends are more variable but as I still track my kJ and as nothing I am doing is extreme, it should not make that much difference.
I picked Monday from last week because it had a typical dinner (my work days are the same up until dinner time and most dinners are a variation on meat and veg with some carb). It was interesting looking at the kJ content of what I ate because I tracked Monday at just under 8500kJ but now, working it out all again, I came just over 8000 kJ. My tracking is only as good as the values I enter. (Grrrrr!) I know where a couple of things have gone wrong (rice and cashews) and I have fixed them now.
I looked up the protein, carbohydrate, fat and fibre of what I ate on Monday and here is what I got (rounded):
kJ: 8025
protein: 122 g ( 26 % kJ from protein)
fat: 47 g (22 % kJ from fat)
carb: 232 g (46 % kJ from carb)
fibre: 38g
And looking at the serves, I had about 3 serves of protein, 4 serves carb, 3 serves fruit, 5 serves vegetable, 4 serves dairy and some cashews which I don't know where to put.
The %s give an indication of how much of my kJ intake came from that macronutrient. I know they don't add up to 100% but in cases where there was less than 1g of protein/carb/fat the information sometimes isn't provided. But I got close. And doing these calculations is only to give me an idea - it doesn't have to be exact.
I am happy with this. What I am doing is low fat, moderate protein and moderate carb, and it falls neatly between the two programs that I have been looking at in terms of protein and carb intake. I am getting enough fibre through fruit and veg to balance only having 4 serves of refined/simple carbs. My dairy is a little higher than I thought but I use reduced fat milk and have reduced fat cheese. Most of my fat comes from cashews and that is ok because I don't actually get much fat into my diet any other way.
So, that is what I eat on a weekday. Weekends are more variable but as I still track my kJ and as nothing I am doing is extreme, it should not make that much difference.