500-1800 cals a day, 40-50 g protein and 30-60 g fat

[squigglepink]

Love balsamic vinaigrette, ill be doing the scrambled egg vibe next week for lunch. Do you have omlettes for lunch Maidentomother? I think i need to up my game in the lunch department.

[maidentomother]

I actually don't eat eggs very often. Maybe once every 2 weeks at most. I don't like just egg whites but egg yolks are blue friendly so I just keep portions of whole eggs small & infrequent. I would not recommend daily omelets for pink by any means! I think it's ok to have egg whites more often if you like them, but it's easy to go over on protein eating them.

I work at home so I eat at all different times.

[squigglepink]

BUMP as per Atomic x

[Throwaway_panther]

Definitely try MyFitnessPal for a week or two. Definitely makes it easy to keep track of your totals.

^ This. I'd add WEIGH and/or at least measure your food. It's very easy to overeat without realizing it unless you're using a food scale.

I'd be concerned about 500 calories, though. That can potentially hinder fertility.

When I conceived my daughter, a typical day was:

Breakfast: Black coffee; occasionally black coffee with almond milk and a sugar free syrup (like Torani brand).

Lunch: Nothing usually.

Dinner: Most of my calories at once. Typically smoked salmon and white rice with any sort of veggie (literally any -- I ate any and all veggies), or some sort of chicken. Lots of bean-based protein dishes.


----

I actually looked back at MFP (since I tracked very rigorously before conceiving), and the day I most likely conceived was the following:
Breakfast
Coffee - Brewed from grounds, 1 cup (8 fl oz)
Califa Farms - Unsweetened Pure Almond Milk, 2 oz
Torani - Sugar Free Salted Caramel Syrup, 1 tbsp (30mL/1 fl oz)
Sparkling Ice - Strawberry Lemonade, 8.5 oz
Dinner
Best Nest Wellness - Prenatal Vitamin, 1 Tablet
Fresh Basil - Basil Leaves, 5 leaves
Progrsso - Balsamic Vinegar, 16 g about 1 Tbsp
Trader Joe's - Artisan Breads French Baguette- Corrected, 4.3 oz slice
Tomatoes, red, ripe, raw, year round average, 47 g
Bel Giosio - Sliced Mozzarella, 2 oz.
German Potato Salad 9/17/2015, 284 serving(s) (homemade recipe)
Priano - Pesto, 1.5 Tbsp
Dessert/Snacks after dinner
Jello Dark Chocolate Sugar Free - Sugar Free Chocolate Pudding, 1 Snack
Jell-o (Jello) Light - Sugar Free Rice Pudding Creme Brulee, 1 snack (106g)
Krakelingen - Euroshopper, 1 gram
Graze - Raw Bar - Pumpkin, Sesame &, 0.25 bars
Chinese - Eggdrop Soup, 0.5 fluid ounce

Total Calories: 1,093 (-100 from weight lifting) -- don't recommend! I was struggling with some ED issues :/
Total Carbs: 138g
Total Fat: 45g
Total Protein: 35g
Total Fiber: 8g
Total Sodium: 2008mg

[Beautifulrainbow]

a couple of days ago I relised I started dropping below calorie limits (by not eating anything after meals) so I added extra last night I ended up with so much and felt a bit sick once I finished I think my stomach has shrunk

Yesterday was

Breakfast
Coffee

Lunch
2 slices of brown toast, 2 clementines 3 Carmel rice cakes
Cup of coffee

Dinner
4oz portion of salmon ( I know you not ment to have it but I really wanted it)
Cheesy pasta with peas broccoli in it.
Extra peas and broccoli
Greek yoghurt
2 oranges
16 sweets
Totals
1622 cals, 64.1g protein, 52.9g fat

I had a bottle of beer too after but not sure how many calories are in that but don't think it was over the upper limits

[maidentomother]

squiggle, should I keep going? Or am I boring you? I ended up eating the eggs the next day btw!

[atomic sagebrush]

Maidentomother, amazing, thank you.. I need the list of YES YOU CAN and NO YOU CANNOT - much easier for me to follow.. I managed to read somewhere on here tomatoes are a no-no! My husband was like, how you going to cope?!! LOL, anyway, thats the bets news today!! Woohoo.. yay for tomatoes!!

The list of AVOID is great - because i dont eat any of it. Another yay!!

Thanks for your thorough input here Maidentomother.
You would think with my controlling nature i would be typically counting and controlling what i eat.. all ive done is stop eating breakfast and stopped snacking. My dinners are the same vegetarian meals and my lunch is pretty boring.. I need to sort my calorie business out!

Its great to hear what everyone is eating on the LE - because im all for stealing your meal ideas.. especially lunches xx

BUT I DON'T WANT YOU GUYS TO DO THAT. I DON'T WANT YOU TO DO EAT THIS, NOT THAT. That is why I have fought against this approach from the very beginning, it is because it makes it far too easy to then go on to miss the forest for the trees. The important thing is limits, limits, limits of diet and not "magic foods" because if a food swayed this way or that the whole human race would have died out a long time ago. Maiden has been doing this a while now and that part of it is second nature to her now, but if you are a new swayer and trying to find the magic pink foods to eat, you're setting yourself up to undermine your sway really bad. You have to at least spend some time tracking the limits till you get a feel for it instead of looking for the easy way where you eat the same foods every day without understanding what the point of the diet even IS.

Sometimes you're going to be in a situation where you HAVE GOT TO eat one of the "naughty" foods. People put way too much emphasis on the foods and get so freaked out and panicked over "bad foods" that they end up harming their sway in a Mary-Martha way because they went to their grandma's and had a roast beef sandwich. These things are ok now and then. It's really not that big of a deal overall to have red meat a couple times a month when you have to. It really, really isn't.

OR, when you decide to put a food on the forbidden list, it messes with your mind so much that it's all you can think about, and you start craving it. Then to satisfy yourself, you end up eating 500 rice cakes and drinking a gallon of Crystal Light and etc etc etc off the "approved" list till you end up going over on the totals anyway and then you end up saying "eh screw it" because you already blew the diet and you end up having what you wanted to eat in the first place, plus half a birthday cake and the crusts off your children's peanut butter sandwiches for good measure. IF you had just had the whatever-it-was in the first place you probably wouldn't even have exceeded limits, but when the focus is on foods and not limits, people lose sight of this.

Other people feel so complacent that they end up eating too many "good" foods that they think are pink friendly but go way over limits and end up inadvertently swaying blue without even realizing it. A quart of whole milk, 4 eggs a day, a chicken breast, pasta with butter, tahini and strawberry jam on homemade white bread, huge servings of yogurt, eating 3000 cals a day and then flabbergasted when they get boys.

IT IS NOT THE FOODS THAT MATTER. It's the limits. Some foods make it easier or harder to stick in the goals of the diet (and are avoided out of practicality) and other foods are easy to avoid so you may as well avoid them most of the time like red meat (and are avoided just because we may as well), but PLEASE do not do this yes you can, no you cannot approach, there is a reason I refuse to do it that way and it's rooted in 8 years of watching thousands of people sway in about every way you possibly can think of and it is because the diet limit approach is just better. I know it takes a minute to catch onto it, but it's BETTER. It's better for your health, your sway, and your sanity and that is why I do it that way even though it would have been very easy for me to make magic food lists 5 years ago and be done with it.

[atomic sagebrush]

Im addicted to cheese. Help!

As long as it fits in the limits of the day, you can have it.

What I did that made it easier for me, was that I switched to American cheese, Velveeta, and cream cheese primarily (still had mozzarella on pizza now and then) nd then when I was really dying for a hunk o' cheddar, I HAD ONE. I focused on what I really wanted in that moment and honestly I rarely miss cheese as a part of a meal (so I'd have burritos without cheese, etc) and then only had cheese when I was dying for a slab (which wasn't that often). I never deprived myself of anything, I just always allowed myself to focus on it when I did want it instead of eating it mindlessly, if that makes sense.

[squigglepink]

Thanks Atomic. I totally appreciate the limits of the diet. Im doing so well with skipping breakfast and no snacking. I have a cup of coffee in the morning and late afternoon. Im not really craving anything - i think i battle more with what i would naturally go for that i need to work on - for example cheddar cheese on toast/wrap/bread etc could be replaced with something else/another type of cheese or i would eat cheddar cheese every day.
I think the reason i liked the idea of a list of foods to avoid is purely because i used to eat what i want, when i want, how i want. Ive never forbidden, dieted, restricted, limited my food. It was more a guide im after rather than a 'do not touch this' approach.. Ive only been a vegetarian for a year and a bit and i dont want to touch meat, not even for variety. Perhaps the easiest way for me to approach the LE diet is to know what is better for me to eat over something else.(as per your cheese example) Im only on my second week but i feel better already. Its opened my eyes to how much i used to snack. How much cheese i eat. How many tea and biscuit breaks i had etc etc.. Im not over or under weight but i definitely think i can make much better choices at home and eating out. So next week im going to try track limits and see how i go.
Thanks again for the feedback. Always helpful x

[squigglepink]

squiggle, should I keep going? Or am I boring you? I ended up eating the eggs the next day btw!

Ha - no, not boring. Keep going if you have the time! Ive realised how dead boring my lunch is. So i need the inspiration! x