Living in Maintenance -- Long Term Healthy Habits

One of the primary goals we have when working with clients is to help them establish healthy habits that will last a lifetime. Near the top of that healthy habits list is knowing how to live a life of maintenance (staying at a healthy BMI/weight).

Everyone is at a different stage in the health journey so this post will be more meaningful to some than others, but I thought I would share a glimpse into an average day of maintenance, what a typical day might look like in my life. So here is what my day looked like yesterday.

Breakfast (45 minutes after waking up)
 - Oatmeal w/ almond flakes, sunflower kernels, agave nectar and craisins

This is my go to choice for breakfast...I probably have it 5+ days a week. It's a great way to start the day and is quite tasty too. I used to think that the only way oatmeal tasted good is if it was drowning with butter and brown sugar, but the mix of fruit and nuts I now use tastes just as good and is much healthier.

Here is the nutrition profile for this meal:
By the way this is about 2/3 cup of oatmeal (dry) which is a pretty good size bowl.

This picture is from an app I use on my iPhone called MyFitnessPal. It's super easy to use and is a good tool for anyone wanting to track calories and nutrition. I use it occasionally just to check in and see how I'm doing with my nutrition. I've also used it in the past when I was training for a marathon to make sure I was getting enough of the right kinds of calories.

Mid-morning snack:
 - One Apple

Exercise
 - 25 Minute Jog/Walk during lunch

Lunch
 - Campbell's Split Pea with Ham Soup
 - Lowfat Yogurt with Granola

Mid-Afternoon Snack
 - Snap Peas and Baby Carrots

Dinner
 - Salad with Tomatoes, Cucumbers, Black Beans and Sauted Chicken
 - Banana Bread

Evening Snack
 - Seedless Red Grapes

All in all I consumed about 2,050 calories during the day.

For those of you that really like charts and graphs here is a nice pie chart of the Carb/Protein/Fat split

My  TEE (Total Energy Expenditure) without exercise for my age, height, weight and average activity level is 2,130 calories, but I also jogged a bit so my total calories burned for the day was over 2,500. So I was a little under my goal for the day, which results in my app giving me this screen at day's end:

I'm currently 165 pounds so this shows I'd lose about a pound a week if I ate and exercised like this every day.

Oh, and also important is that I consumed somewhere around 60 or 70 oz of water throughout the day as well.

So that's that. Hopefully this helps give you an idea of what a healthy day of nutrition look like.

Until next time,

Shane