Day Two Hundred and Eighteen!!!!!!!!!

Daily Meal Routines 


It is good to remember that your nutrition is your lifestyle choice. How you design your daily meal plan is going to be based in how you want to live life. Therefore, it makes sense that if you want to change your lifestyle, you are going to have to change how you eat and what you eat.


Historically, ‘science says’ that people do better eating three meals a day with maybe a snack in between. Generally speaking, if that is what you do or strive to do, most probably you grew up this way. The three meal a day meal routine is based in a belief system. 


Sometimes, I think what happens is for those of us that do not enjoy breakfast the skipped meal gives permission to eat more at night. I think the thought is, if you eat breakfast you are not going to want to eat at night. This actually isn’t true. When people eat in the evening after dinner it is actually a lifestyle choice. Eating is apart of relaxing, being in community with your TV, provides a sense of enjoyment whether you are with others or alone, adding to a sense of belonging and comfort, and so it is a practiced ritual. 


To change it, would mean you would have to find something else to do. And whether you ate breakfast or not or had your mid afternoon snack or not, doesn’t actually have any influence on night time snacking. Calories rule and are always going to count for your daily total intake of food. So when you think about it, what is most beneficial about your day is to pay attention to your daily carb intake total as well as your daily calorie intake total. Therefore, you can plan your daily nutritional intake based upon that. If the daily number choice is what rules your new lifestyle, then it actually really won’t matter so much when you chose to eat during the day, so long as you follow your new lifestyle rule. 


If you are looking at becoming a vegetarian, as a new lifestyle choice, you might have to also look at the fact that it might actually be a lot easier for you to gain weight on such a diet, because of the carb and calorie daily rule. The challenge is being able to fit in those protein sources. 


Something else to consider is that when family members want a different diet it can become more complicated in order to prepare a simple meal. Generally speaking, the core of the meal can be the same and then family members can pick and choose from the core, and dress up their meal differently depending on individual tastes. 


Some people love repetitiveness in their food creations because this makes food preparation simple and easy, but sometimes people experience taste fatigue, and so it is good to be able to have different options for dressing up food differently. Like for example, I love devilled eggs! But a girl can only take so much mayonnaise and paprika. So, I experiment with my devilled eggs, I add in bacon, or tuna, yesterday I tried adding in capers and they were delicious! Today, I will try adding in smoked muscles. Same amount of carbs and calories, totally different taste experience!