A More Structured Day

After posting about my snacky day on Wednesday, I thought I would show you that sometimes I do eat in a more structured way! These are my eats from yesterday - one of my better food days for a while (although I still ate too much and gained weight, but I'm ignoring that!!) Recently, even when I have stuck to regular meals, a lots of snacks have crept in - both during the day and then in the evening in a major way. Yesterday was better in this respect.

I started the day with porridge. For the last couple of mornings, I've been following Maria's lead and making my porridge the night before, ready to heat up in the morning. Whilst this doesn't save loads of time, it does take the decision making out of breakfast - my porridge is already made up so I end up eating it before the school run, rather than making excuses/running out of time and then getting super hungry later. Yesterday's porridge was made with oats, mashed banana, milk, peanut flour and freeze-dried strawberries, and then I topped it with agave nectar and Justin's chocolate peanut butter in the morning.

I'd actually planned to top the porridge with a Alpro pudding (aka Emma's favourite breakfast!) but between thinking of that late on Thursday night, and actually making the porridge Friday morning, I'd forgotten. My memory has been atrocious lately - I blame lack of sleep! This still tasted really good - banana + peanut butter + chocolate will always be a winner!

One of my friends came round with her daughter yesterday morning - for the children to play and us to catch up - so I had an unpictured cup of tea (sweetened with vanilla stevia drops) mid-morning. I then couldn't resist sleeping when Toby had his nap - I was so tired I could barely keep my eyes open - so lunch ended up being a late one.

To stave off the hunger whilst lunch was cooking, I had a large iced coffee. I usually make my iced coffees using leftover coffee from my coffee machine, but as I hadn't made a pot yesterday, I quickly made up an "espresso shot" using a bit of hot water and a large tsp of instant coffee. Then poured a large glass of milk with lots of ice in it, and added the coffee and stevia. A quick version of how they make iced lattes in Costa! I enjoyed this in the sunshine in the garden - I'm absolutely loving the current weather, a nice treat before winter starts!

Lunch was well worth the wait. We'd had lentil daal for dinner on Wednesday, so I decided to use some of the leftovers to make a lunch inspired by my last trip to Herbies. I roasted a pepper and a couple of courgettes at 180C for about 20 minutes (although I actually only ended up using about 1 courgette for lunch)...

I couldn't decide which shape to cut the courgettes into!

I then made up a wrap with leftover (warmed) lentil daal and the roasted veggies...

I was going to make tahini carrot salad to go with it, but like I say...my memory is rapidly disappearing! It was still delicious though, I love making a bit of extra effort with lunch, so worth it!

I then managed to resist snacking all afternoon - I was super hungry by the time dinner rolled round! Not necessarily a bad thing though - I'm getting a bit fed up of never really being hungry for my meals as I'm constantly grazing whenever I go into the kitchen. I kept dinner simple (and quick!) by cooking wholewheat spaghetti served with a sauce of simmered passata, garlic, frozen peas, leftover roasted courgette and basil tofu, with some pesto stirred in at the end. I also had a little grated cheddar on top. Blurry photo, but tasty dinner!

After dinner, I was still quite hungry. I waited until I'd put the children to bed, and when I was still hungry I decided to eat something else. I figured that was better than an evening full of snacking! I was going to have something like fruit with yoghurt, but in the end tiredness won out and I grabbed the nearest thing - Graze cinnamon apple flapjack...

This was lovely. I've had the honeycomb flapjack before and adored it, but I'm not sure that I'd had this flavour before. So soft - definitely much better than shop bought flapjacks!

So there we go - 3 meals + 1 snack + a couple of non-water drinks = a pretty good day in my book. It was a bit depressing when I plugged it into the calorie counting site I use and realised it was still more calories than I "should" be eating, but it was a lot less than I've eaten in a long time - my eating has been a bit out of control lately!

Do you find that sticking to the structure of 3 meals + a few snacks helps you to stay in control of your eating? Do you plan your meals in advance? I usually, at the very least, plan our dinners a week or two at a time - it helps to avoid that 5pm panic of "aaargh, I don't know what to cook and my mind has gone blank" moment - but my breakfasts and lunches are a bit more relaxed. It's easier to eat what I feel like eating for meals that I only have to cook for myself! I'm liking the idea of making my porridge the night before though - starting the day with a good breakfast does seem to help the day to go in the right direction.