What I actually eat these days

Fruit, nuts & high fibre cereal for breakfast

At the moment I'm focussed on losing weight, but I'm not "going on a diet" in the sense that I'm only eating this way temporarily. I'm trying to permanently improve my diet, not just change things until I get to a specific weight. I don't plan to go back to eating the way I used to. To give you an idea of what I've changed, here's what I used to eat in a typical day:

Breakfast: Cheerios or oatmeal or a couple pieces of toast with butter or peanut butter, plus tea with milk or a big mug of hot chocolate. Eggy pancakes or french toast on weekends, smothered in maple syrup.
Snack: I'd graze on something mid morning or afternoon, usually, unless I was out, often something carb-y or maybe fruit.
Lunch: Sandwiches, or leftovers, or melted cheese on crackers, any of which would involve lots of cheese.
Dinner: Big portions of pasta, rice, or potatoes featured heavily in our diet with maybe a serving or two of veggies & usually meat every day. I was eating a lot of bacon for a while there too.
Snack: Depending on what was in the house, I might have chocolate, cookies or popcorn or eat a lot of a big bag of chips.

Veggie snack

Another thing I'm curtailing is binge eating at social functions. If I went to a family gathering or a house party, I'd probably spend a lot of time hovering near the chip bowl, eating at least half a dozen cookies or squares or whatever sweets were on offer & drinking at least a couple glasses of pop. I've been trying to cut out pop for ages, but I just love fizzy drinks & mineral water is rarely available, so I usually end up drinking a few hundred calories in the form of ginger ale, or cola.

Here's a typical day's food now:

I ate four of these

Breakfast: Bran Buds plus fruit & topping of chia seeds, hemp hearts, flax seed or almonds & soy milk.
Lunch: big salad with homemade dressing (Eat To Live recipes or just balsamic)
Dinner: lots of veggies--typically steamed, sometimes braised--plus smallish serving of high carb food like pasta, bread, rice, quinoa, etc, sometimes a little meat
Snack: fruit, or veggies with hummus, or rice crackers, or roasted chickpeas.

I also have of hot drinks throughout the day--tea, Akava (a barley-based faux instant coffee), hot chocolate (My 'recipe' is not very sweet: 1 Tbsp cocoa powder, 1/2 tsp honey, dash of vanilla, 1/4 cup unsweetened soy milk, hot water)

My diet is nowhere near 'perfect'. I do lots of "cheating" with birthdays, our anniversary, sneaking chocolate & cookies after I put the kids to bed, or occasionally bingeing on a massive bowl of popcorn (but that's mostly air, right?). However, I try hard to limit myself--I'll have just one cupcake instead of eating as many as I feel like. Two months in, I feel like I can follow these eating habits & still enjoy my life (chocolate, beer, occasional french fries) so I'm hopeful I can make it stick.

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