funny food days

Hey, how many of you have days where you do not eat the usual, balanced way that you normally do as part of your routine?

I am asking this because I want to eventually work to help other people over come food related issues as well as improve their fitness, and one of my main areas of interest is why people make food choices, and how they feel about the choices that they make.

Firstly, I will start by giving you an example of  one of my “ funny food” days.  Normally I eat fruit for breakfast, lots of fresh salads  at lunch and dinner,  with homemade potato chips or another good carb at lunch,  and some protein at dinner.   I always save room for an evening snack too, like smoked salmon, a healthy home made cookie, nuts, a few tbsp peanut butter, or goats cheese.

The way I usually eat is fairly normal and straight forward. However, I made home made cookies yesterday (macadamia nuts, almond butter, raw cacoa nibs which are choc chips but the pure form with nothing added to the actual cacoa, and goji berries), and today, I basically got most of my calories through eating all the cookies over the period of the day. In spite of eating most of my calories from this one source, I did not over eat or binge. In fact, my day started fairly normally:

3 am snack: 2 small cookies ( I try not to do this often, but I wake up and get bored lol)

Breakfast: small bunch of grapes

Lunch
Lots of fresh salad with home baked potato chips with natural tomato sauce to dip chips in

Afternoon
A few more grapes and the rest of my home made cookies, about 4 of them. About 150 calories each at the most.


Does any one else  have similar days?   For example, you may get most of your calories through snacking on nuts all day. Another example, is if you have exams, and instead of going to the gym in the evening and coming home and having  your usual dinner of meat with vegetables,  you decide to miss the gym and study instead, and end up just eating snacks of chocolate and fruit through out the night rather than having your usual dinner.

Thanks in advance for any responses, I really hope I get some as I am really interested to know if many other people can relate to this.

Last week and this week I have had exams everyday, and on the weekend that just went past I only left the house twice - once for a 30 minute jog, and the other for a one hour walk to get some stuff for breakfast. And I basically did nothing but study, all weekend.

So I didn't really have structured meals, I pretty much snacked all day.
I really dislike doing this, but it kind of just happened.
My snacks on saturday went something like this:
a cup of green tea at around 7am
snack1: small tub of Jalna natural yoghurt, I added some blueberries
s.2: apple with peanut butter
s.3. carrot sticks and hummus
another cup of tea
s.5. bowl of porridge/oatmeal with a teaspoon of honey, a small handful of walnuts
s.6. pistachio larabar
s.7. this was like my "dinner snack", and I had a tomato, spinach and red onion salad, with some boccocini

Wow, that I didn't realise how much food that was. Although on Sunday, I ate a bit less. Not really on purpose, only because I had one thing on my mind: exams
I was too stressed to think about food.

I usually eat very healthy, with a typical breakfast consisting of oatmeal, yogurt and cereal, or eggs with toast, lunch of soup and whole wheat pita bread, and dinner of some lean protein and tons of veggies. My snacks are typically a tbsp or two of natural peanut butter, apples, carrots and hummus, or whole wheat pretzels.

I'm super into baking however, particularly around the holidays! Some days I get lots of cookies and pumpkin bread in, but I almost always stay within my allowance. I also love coming up with ways to make my favorite recipes healthier by cutting fat/sugar/etc.

Skippinggirlyvinegar -    your day actually looks pretty balanced to me compared to what mine was haha.    You did not eat a large amount of any particular thing -  you snacked, but had balanced, reasonably sized snacks, which looked fairly normal to me.  I sometimes eat like that, when I have regular smaller snacks, such as hummus with carrots or yoghurt with berries,  rather than have a large 3 meals.  Well done on your food choices, you made such healthy choices and you ended up having a great variety of some really healthy foods!   A lot of other people studying to not have the same commitment to their food plan!   Is there a particular reason why you dislike eating this way?  Because you actually ate exceptionally healthy.

Baby_angel_love - natural peanut butter is a fave snack of mine. I like the idea of baking my own things, because I change the recipe and so it adds variety to my snacks. It is important for me to keep things interesting;  smoked salmon one day, goats cheese another, raw chocolate or peanut butter another day, and home made cookies another time. These are all fave treats of mine.  However, I do not usually ONLY eat cookies all day, like I did today.

Loved reading the responses, but it did  make my day look pretty bad haha - because my version of a funny food day is usually to have a large amount of a particular food, in the place of other foods. So far, you  guys have both shown normal structures days/ meals/ snacks.

Come on, there must be another person who has done what I did today?

Hahah, yeah, I've done that.

I made the MOST AMAZING tomato rice soup ever (from the veganomicon cookbook - if anyone has it, MAKE THIS NOW). I ate it for breakfast, lunch and dinner one day, and lunch and dinner the next day. xD I had some other snacks like fruit and veggies and such throughout the day, but the bulk of my food was from the soup. I didn't go over my limit, but it wasn't a very balanced day. 

Emma - Thanks, that is exactly what I wanted to here haha - it is nice to know that I am not the only one who can eat the same thing all day!  I also added some normal things in to,  but like you said, the bulk of my calories were from those darned cookies.  The soup sounds REALLY NICE too…  sounds like something I could easily eat for all my meals haha.

There are certain foods I like so much that I could easily eat for all my meals in a day, if I wanted to. Usually though, when I have LET myself do this in the past, I end up getting sick of the food. For example,  I had a peanut butter obsession at once stage, so I told myself   “ FINE, eat as MANY of your calories from peanut butter as you like, but just for a day, to get it out of your system”.  The peanut butter never tasted “bad”, however, it definitely did not taste as good after eating it for most of my calories. Needles to say, I do not do this any more. The times I eat the same food all day are accidental, like today.

In my opinion, it is more 'normal' to have such days where you feel like picking and it ends up being slightly less 'healthy' eating than normal than it is to eat perfectly structured balanced meals every single day.

As long as you go back to regular meals with your regular foods afterwards, it does you absolutely no harm. In fact, it might help make you feel more accountable for your diet and enjoy food a bit more.

personaltrainer: yeah, my friends think its a bit strange that I find eating like that so weird. Most of them ate chocolate and cookies while studying on the weekend.
I think the main reason why I dislike it is because it felt like I pretty much ate all day and it was very unstructured.
I ate at least every two hours, and didn't really have any "proper meals". And in my family, we eat dinner at the table, no tv, no doing other things while eating: we just sit and eat and talk to each other. We're into slow food hehe
I'm usually one of those people who has set times for everything:
ie. breakfast at 6:45am, small snack [usually some fruit] at 10, lunch at 1 [wrap, salad, sandwich, soup etc.], afternoon snack at 4 and dinner at 6:30-7:30.

But I hope I unintentionally have more of these days, because I can understand how, like smash_uk said, this sort of eating is perhaps more normal than eating perfectly balanced structured meals day in day out.
 

I also used to have a structure too! But now, I just eat when I need to and try to do what feels best on the day. Some people thrive on having a healthy plan to follow, however, I am recovering from eating disorders, therefore I try to think about food as little as possible. In the past, I would have a set routine where I would need to have breakfast, lunch, dinner, and a certain number of snacks because it felt balanced and in control. Unfortunately, it only lead to thinking and planning what I was going to eat, so instead of sticking to a set plan each day, I have learnt to trust myself to make good decisions without planning in advance. 

In spite of not planning my food, I still know the foods I usually eat and I have all my favorite treats around should I feel like one, so in that sense I do plan and have control over what I eat. The difference now, is that I do not care what time I eat or how many meals and snacks.

A funny food day for you is deviating from your normal schedule, where as for me, it is when I decide to have a few extra tablespoons of peanut butter as a snack, instead of having my usual lunch.