What I Ate to Lose a Stone in a Month

For as long as I can remember I’ve led a healthy lifestyle which includes working out and eating a pretty healthy diet.

While I’ve been running and working out consistently, my diet for the past year or so hasn’t been up to scratch and I found myself eating chocolate on a regular basis for breakfast because I hadn’t been organised enough to prepare something the night before.

I’d then feel really hungry by lunchtime and grab something else unhealthy and feel that I’d ruined the whole day and may as well have something equally unhealthy for dinner too!

I finally decided that enough was enough! I’m a fully-functioning adult and I know what I should and shouldn’t be eating and it was about time I started looking after myself a little better.

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I wanted to share with you all exactly what I ate in a month and I’ll tell you, I found it easy and I said on multiple occasions that I didn’t understand why I hadn’t been eating this way forever because it was easy to maintain.

Spoiler Alert: one reason I found it so easy was because of meal prepping. THIS WAS THE NUMBER ONE REASON I managed to lose weight and eat healthier!

Meal prepping is not expensive, I promise you.

Here are the meal prep containers that I purchased and they are SUPER AFFORDABLE and #1 the key to sticking to your meal plans.  Affordable meal prep containers.

While I did lose a stone in a month eating this way, please do bear in mind that everyone is different. I am very petite so do not need to consume as many calories as someone who may be considerably taller or more active than me and I am also no dietitian or doctor but this is just what I ate, which I believed to be a fairly healthy selection of foods.

So what better way to share with you what I actually ate than to show you photos of every morsel that passed my lips, even if it was something small.

I also tracked my calories on My Fitness Pal and tried to stick more or less to the recommended calorie limit, however, I always find it much more representative to look at what I’ve eaten.

It’s fine to just track calories and see a number at the end of the day but I could have eaten anything (I find mostly beige foods are the culprit) but that doesn’t mean WHAT I ate was particularly nutritious food and that was my main goal.

If you’ve never taken photos of what you’ve eaten I’d urge you to try it, you might be surprised how ‘healthy’ your day was.

If you’re looking for a meal planner template, check out this FREE cute planner here.

I’ll give you a little breakdown daily of what it was that I ate and anything else that might be particularly pertinent to my day such as workouts or how I was feeling. Also, I wanted to share that my main aim was to eat much healthier and weight loss was not the main goal here.

I found that eating these foods made me feel much less hungry generally as I was eating more healthy foods and more food too! So here goes…..

Day 1
Didn’t start off great as I didn’t have much food in the house so I had to go through the cupboards and improvise. It’s bank holiday today so none of the shops were open! So far, so good….

Day 2
Another ‘what I had in the cupboards day today’ kinda beige… I can’t wait to go food shopping tomorrow!

Day 3
I spent the whole evening meal prepping! I’ve had a headache all day too which sucks.

Day 4
I felt really tired today. Today is the first day I didn’t have a headache, not sure if my change in diet is something to do with it. Went for a walk at lunch and walked the Pupper to the vet and back.

Day 5
I had to resist some cakes at work, I’ve done so well these past few days, I don’t want to have one! I kept making eye contact with them from across the room but I’m having a cheat meal tonight. I feel a little fuzzy headed and I can’t concentrate. I also feel a bit bloated and I haven’t been able to work out as normal because of it. I have walked the dog and walked at lunch every day so far.

Day 6
Oops, I had cake for breakfast but it was for charity so it would have been rude not to right! Went to the cinema and instead of having a drink, hot dog and snacks I restricted myself to popcorn only.

Day 7
I had a massive lie in today as I’ve been super tired this week (still clawing back that hour we lost)

Day 8
Today was the Devizes half marathon and I wasn’t particularly overwhelmed with my time or the course in general. Ate lots of calories but not much food (around 1800 which is shocking)! I meant to treat myself with a cider when I got home from the half marathon but didn’t realise I’d accidentally picked up an alcohol free one…. devastated!

Day 9
Considering I went up to my calorie goal, this was all I ate all day! Looking back at the past few days I’ve eaten so much amazing food, feel a bit disappointed in this but there’s always tomorrow.

Day 10
Really loving these meal prep containers. I’ve been portioning out all of my veggies for the week and these keep it all really fresh for days. If you’re looking for some cheap ones to get you started, click here for the ones I purchased – these have 2 compartments but you can purchase them with 3 if you’d prefer.

Day 11
I didn’t enjoy or eat all of my dinner (photo #5) so I had to make another dinner…

Day 12
I felt a little fuzzy headed today and had a job to get out of bed. I was expecting to have loads of energy and be bouncing out of bed but that hasn’t been the case. Unfortunately the dog has kept me up every night this week which might be why I’ve been feeling so tired. Today was a cheat day!

Day 13
I didn’t bring proper snacks to work with me today so I felt a little bit hungry through the day. Made it up with dinner though.

Day 14
Feel ridiculously tired today.

Scrambled egg on wholemeal toast | turkey sausages, carrot, potato, courgette, broccoli | kiwi, grapes + apple| cashews

Day 15
Frenchay 10k race today, it was really lovely I’d definitely do it again.

Day 16
Today’s breakfast didn’t go well so I didn’t have anything to eat!

Day 17
Went for a run tonight and the wind was terrible it sucked all of the energy out of me.

Day 18
While I’ve been finding it fairly easy to eat much better it can be quite difficult to keep up with meal prepping, working out, working my 9-5 and everything else. I have managed to avoid headaches lately but I definitely haven’t been drinking enough water so must work on that.

Day 19
Thursdays are takeaway nights! I can’t believe how easy it’s been to completely change my diet with not much effort at all!

Day 20
This little rascal of a pupper stole my original piece of salmon straight from my plate but luckily I’d meal prepped one for tomorrow so had to eat that one instead!

Day 21
I feel much slimmer the past few days, I almost have no interested in weighing myself because I know that I look and feel better and I don’t need a scale to tell me that, even if I haven’t lost any weight. My love for strawberries and grapes as a combination is real.

Day 22
I felt super hungry today for some reason.

Day 23
Can I make beautifully seasoned new potatoes without burning them? No I cannot… Rocked out some yoga today for the first time in ages

Day 24
I felt super hungry today, which is unusual. I also nearly got hit by a cyclist on my run because he was looking down at his phone

Day 25
Work function today so a different lunch to what I’ve been eating but managed to get my snack in!

Day 26
Really felt terrible today after yesterday’s meals! I felt bloated and I felt really tired. I feel like today was the day I ‘fell off the wagon’. I wasn’t happy with some of my food choices which were based around ‘I feel really hungry and need to eat now’ and I grabbed whatever I could. I didn’t eat a proper breakfast either because I was lazy.

Day 27

Day 28
Eating loads today in prep for tomorrow’s race!

Day 29
Bridgwater 10k today which is why I had the cheat meal. Also managed to get a PB today so I’m over the moon with that!

Day 30
Lots of round food today!

And there you have it! This to me is a ‘diet’ that I can keep up with. Yes I’m eating quite a few cheat snacks and meals along the way but I’m also eating the healthiest foods I’ve ever eaten. For the first time I’m feeling excited about cooking and I’ve been loving finding new recipes on Pinterest.

Useful Tips
I made sure that I weighed out foods like chicken, cheese and potatoes to get some perspective on portion control. Things like fruits and vegetables I didn’t calorie count I just used a rough estimate as to a portion.

Sticking to set meal times every day helped so if I did feel peckish I knew it wasn’t going to be long until I’d have to wait for my next meal / snack.

Cut out any drinks that weren’t water or peppermint tea.

I made sure that I didn’t have ANY snacks in my drawer at work which in turn forced me to plan my meals the night before and I left my purse at home so I wasn’t tempted to buy something from the shop or the vending machine.

Buying meal prep containers really gave me a renewed enthusiasm for trying to eat healthy and the key to eating consistently healthy foods was weekly meal prepping. I’d then organise my fridge into days and just grab anything on that day’s shelf. It also made me less likely to waste food as I was using everything up just by prepping into separate containers. For the containers I purchased click here

I made sure not to cut any food or food groups out of my diet with the exception of limiting dairy products and using milk alternatives and reducing calorific drinks like fruit juices and Starbucks.

I NEVER went hungry, if I’d eaten over my calorie goal but I still felt like I needed more food, I’d have an internal conversation with myself and ask ‘are you really hungry’ and if I was I’d eat something.

While I was also running and working out, I’d take any opportunity to walk anywhere instead of taking the car whether that was to the vet, the shops, a friend’s house and I felt much better for it.

I have a dog and I walked her daily as well as walking every lunch time.

I hope this post has given you some inspiration to overhaul your diet if you feel like you want to. It was nowhere near as difficult as I thought it would be although I did suffer with headaches at the beginning (probably junk food withdrawals) so I didn’t workout as much as I usually would.

If you’ve managed to overhaul your diet or you’ve got some other tips please leave them in the comments section.

Happy Meal Prepping!