What am I doing??

A couple people have asked me how I am losing weight and what plan am following. I am not really following any plan in particular. I guess one book I read that I am loosely following is The Flat Belly Diet. This diet is a Mediterranean diet with an emphasis on healthy fats. They recommend eating 4 times per day at 400 calories each time (for a woman). And including a healthy fat at each meal. Examples of the healthy fats are olive oil, canola oil, olives, avocados, nuts, seeds and dark chocolate. Here is an example of my day in food.

6:00am wake up-coffee. I drink 2-3 cups with a little bit of cream (100 calories)
8:30 breakfast-1/2 cup oatmeal cooked in 1 cup water, dash of cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, 1/2 an apple grated, 1 tbsp pumpkin seeds, 1 tsp sugar 300 calories
So that's 400 calories for breakfast. I pretty much eat this everyday.

11:30 lunch- today I am having my tuna with chick peas which is 350 calories if eaten with lettuce, no bread or crackers. Sometimes I have it with bread or crackers, I just take less of the salad.

2:30 second lunch - today I am having a yogurt parfait. 1/2 cup plain yogurt, 1/4 cup homemade granola, 1/4 cup fresh blueberries, tsp honey. This is 350 calories

5:30 Dinner- today we are having grilled chicken breast with spinach salad. In the salad I have baby spinach leaves, cherry tomatoes, cucumber, sliced green olives, feta cheese and Renne's yogurt dill dressing (1 tbsp). Dinner is 400 calories

8:00 snack. Since I have 100 calories left I usually have a Chai latte for a snack which is about 100 calories.

So that's my usual day. As you can see I am eating every 3 hours so I am never really hungry. I drink a ton of water and herbal tea in between meals. I don't drink milk or juice. The first two weeks I was measuring everything.. but now I am good at eyeballing it. As of yesterday I have lost 7 pounds and Mike has lost 12. Now for guys you can have more calories. So Mike does 5 meals per day at 450 each meal that gives him 2250 calories per day although most days he comes in under that because he says he is just not that hungry when he is eating every 3 hours.

I didn't really have a goal in mind when I started this but we have a wedding to go to on May 31st, so my goal is to lose another 14 pounds by then. If I do I will weigh what I did when Mike and I got married :)

The keys to to our success, I think, are writing down what we eat, measuring smaller portions and supporting each other by doing this together!

Happy Monday my friends!!!