What I Actually Eat in a Day at 55

This post is a companion piece to episode 151 of the Beautifully Whole podcast. You can listen to the full episode here if you would rather hear me walk through it in my voice.

Every wellness feed I scroll through has a version of the same video. What I eat in a day. Usually it is a woman in her twenties or thirties, in a beautiful kitchen, showing you a smoothie bowl she probably does not actually eat every day. I love a good aesthetic bowl. But I want to give you my real version. What a 55-year-old woman with a colostomy actually puts in her body on a normal Tuesday. Because the food conversation looks different in your fifties than it did in your thirties, and it looks different again when you are managing an ostomy on top of it.

Before I get into the food, one caveat. I trained at the Institute for Integrative Nutrition, so I come at this from a holistic health background. And one of the first things you learn there is that no two bodies are the same. What works for me on a given day may not work for you on the same day. This is not a meal plan. This is a picture of my rotation. Take what serves you, leave the rest, and pay attention to what your own body tells you.

What I Actually Track Now

I used to track everything. Calories, macros, water, workouts, all of it. I did fitness competitions in my forties, and that kind of precision comes with the sport. It also comes at a cost when you carry it for too long. I am not obsessive about it anymore. Now I track three things, and I let the rest land where it lands.

• Calories, mostly to make sure I am eating enough. Under-eating is more of a risk for me now than over-eating
• Protein, because I aim for about 140 grams a day, which is roughly one gram per pound of my ideal body weight
• Fiber, between 25 and 30 grams, which is where my body handles it well without triggering issues

Water sits behind all three. I aim for 80 to 100 ounces every day. Rule of thumb, half your body weight in ounces. Hydration moves everything downstream. Your bowel motility, your skin, your joints, your energy. You cannot supplement your way past dehydration. You just have to drink the water.

Why I Am So Focused on Protein and Muscle at 55

The short version of the science, and I promise this is the only science in this post. I had a full hysterectomy just over eleven years ago, which put me into surgical menopause overnight. I lost my estrogen, my progesterone, and my testosterone in one afternoon. Not a gradual decline over years, a hard cliff. Women lose muscle faster after menopause than at any other point in life, and losing hormones the way I did accelerates that further. Every single day since then, everything I do around food and movement is designed to protect the muscle I have and, where I can, add a little bit more.

Here is the piece that ties this whole post to the longevity conversation I have been having with you all summer. Muscle means longevity. It is not just about how you look in a fitted shirt at 55. It is about the version of you at 75 who can still get up out of a chair without her hands, still walk her grandchildren around the block, still lift her own suitcase into an overhead bin. Every pound of muscle you protect now is protection for the woman you are going to be in twenty years. That is the whole game.

Also, if you keep your metabolism firing by maintaining muscle, you get to eat more food. Which I would like to submit as one of the great motivators of all time.

How My Morning Actually Starts

I am an early riser. I have been for 25 years. I get to the gym first thing, before my day has a chance to argue with me about it, because I know myself and I know that if I try to go after work, I will not go. But before all that, the very first thing my morning includes is water.

Every night before bed, I fill my water bottle and set it on the kitchen counter. In the morning, while my coffee is brewing, I drink from the water bottle. Coffee is not first. Water is first. Your body is dehydrated when you wake up, and the amount of downstream good you do by starting the day with real water is enormous. Then I have my coffee, with half and half or light cream, no sugar. I sit with it. I read my Bible. I do my morning routine. And then I make my breakfast before the gym.

Breakfast Rotation

I eat before the gym. My body needs the fuel to actually work hard once I get there, and I do not perform well on an empty stomach. My breakfast rotates through four options.

Protein pancake

Two egg whites, a quarter cup of low-fat cottage cheese, a half cup of rolled oats, a shake of cinnamon. Blend it. Pour it into a pan. Cook it like a pancake. I stir a few berries in before it hits the pan. If I let it cool it holds together like a muffin and I can eat it in the car on the way to the gym. Quick, easy, high protein, real food.

Greek yogurt bowl

A Chobani twenty-gram protein Greek yogurt with a sprinkle of Purely Elizabeth granola and blueberries. Feels like dessert. Delivers actual protein. Ten minutes of joy in a bowl.

Overnight oats

I make these the night before, sometimes three at a time so I have them ready. Twenty-gram protein Greek yogurt, rolled oats, a splash of almond milk, a teaspoon of chia seeds if my body is handling fiber well that day, berries stirred in. Fridge overnight. Eat cold in the morning.

Veggie omelette

On mornings when I have time, one whole egg plus a half cup of egg whites, chopped vegetables cooked soft (they have to be soft for my body, not raw and not crunchy), folded in with a piece of good sourdough on the side. That is my longest breakfast and my favorite one.

What I Eat Around My Workout

I lift weights three to four days a week. Two upper body, two lower body if I can get four in. Three days if life is busier. I have added yoga to the rotation because sitting all day and never stretching was making my hip flexors so tight that my lower back had started to hurt, and my massage therapist figured out that the pain was actually coming from the front of my body, not the back. Stretching goes on the daily list now.

The workout itself needs fuel on both sides. Breakfast handles the carbohydrate before. After the workout, I have a vegan meal replacement shake with about twenty grams of protein and six grams of fiber built into it. I bring it with me and drink it on the drive home from the gym. The fiber matters because it comes pre-broken-down in the shake, which means my body processes it easily, which matters when you live with an ostomy and adhesions and cannot afford to gamble on how a rough fiber source is going to move through you.

This is the one supplement piece I want to talk about specifically. I am careful about who makes what I put in my body. There is real data showing that supplement quality on general marketplaces is inconsistent at best and misleading at worst. What you see on the label is not always what is in the bottle. So I stick with a company that does its own third-party testing on every batch, and I use their vegan meal replacement, which is called Life Shake, for my post-workout protein. If you have been asking me what shake I use, that is the one.

The link below is an affiliate link to products I personally use. If you purchase through it, I may earn a small commission at no additional cost to you. I only ever share products I use and recommend.

You can see Life Shake and the rest of my longevity system on one page here: View the full system

Lunch

My lunch is a formula more than a recipe. Lean protein, complex carbohydrate, cooked vegetables, a healthy fat, and sometimes a little fruit if I want it. That is it. The specific ingredients rotate, but the shape stays the same.

On the protein side, I lean heavily on skinless boneless chicken breast, ground turkey, and fish. Chicken breast on the grill or in the air fryer is done in ten minutes. Steak lands on my plate once or twice a week, usually at dinner. On the complex carbohydrate side, I use a lot of pre-cooked quinoa and brown rice from the freezer section at Whole Foods, plus sweet potato, regular potato, and sometimes pasta. Healthy fats are almost always olive oil or avocado. Nothing exotic.

Here is where the ostomy shapes what I can and cannot do. The big fat leafy salads I used to inhale before surgery are almost entirely off the table for me now. Iceberg, romaine, and kale in particular do not move well through my system, and I know this from repeated experience of trying anyway. When I do want a salad, I use butterhead lettuce, which is softer, with some chopped raw peppers, and cucumbers with the seeds scraped out. Even that is a sometimes food. Most days, my vegetables at lunch are cooked. Sauteed, roasted, in a stir-fry with the protein and grain. That is what my body handles best, and after ten years, I know my body.

What I Do About Snacks

Some days I snack, some days I do not. It depends on how much protein I have already hit by mid-afternoon. If I am running low, I have a sparkling protein drink with forty grams of protein in it, and that pretty much closes the gap for the day. If I have not had my yogurt bowl at breakfast, I might have it as a snack instead, because it still feels like dessert to me even in the afternoon. Turkey jerky sticks with an apple or a handful of berries is my other go-to. Nothing fancy. Real food, roughly proportioned to protein, most of the time.

Dinner, and What Marriage Actually Looks Like

Dinner in my house is a little unusual, and I want to tell you about it, because I think there is something in it about how two long-married people can love each other and want different things and still get to have both. John goes out to dinner almost every single night. He needs people. He needs a bar stool and a menu and a friend to catch up with. He was in enterprise sales his whole career, and social energy is oxygen to him. I am not that. I work with people all day. By dinner, I want to be in my own kitchen with music on. So he goes out. I stay in. Most nights we are both happy about it, and once or twice a week I go with him and we are both happy about that too. It works.

On the nights I am home, dinner usually mirrors lunch. Lean protein, complex carbohydrate, cooked vegetables, healthy fat. Nothing that is going to surprise you if you read the lunch section. Sometimes I want pasta, and when I do, I make the good stuff. Rumo pasta from Italy is my regular. Brami is a higher-protein pasta that has a legume added, and I like that one when I want a little extra protein in the dish. Last night I made cacio e pepe at home with pasta, an ounce of grated parmesan, a lot of pepper, and some pasta water. Then I browned lean ground turkey with Italian seasoning and stirred it in like a turkey sausage. It was so good I made it again tonight. Some meals earn a second night.

I eat by 5:30 most nights because I get up early, and I like giving my body a real window to digest before I go to sleep. I know this timeline is a luxury of working from home. If you are working outside the house with kids and commutes, your dinner window may look nothing like mine. The principle still holds though. Wherever you can, finish eating with real time between your last bite and your first pillow. Your sleep will thank you for it.

What I Order When We Do Go Out

When John and I do go out to dinner together, I lean into the boring parts of the menu. Chicken or fish with sauteed vegetables and something starchy. Sushi is a favorite. Some nights though, I want a burger. Or pizza. And I have a burger. Or pizza. Life at 55 has taught me that a burger every so often is not the enemy. The daily foundation is what does the work. The occasional celebration is what makes the daily foundation sustainable.

If You Take Anything From This, Take These

There are a handful of non-negotiables that I hold every single day, and they are the ones I would give you if you asked me where to start.

• Drink your water. Aim for roughly half your body weight in ounces every day, and start with water before coffee in the morning
• Get your protein. Aim for close to a gram per pound of your ideal body weight, and spread it across the day rather than trying to hit it all at dinner
• Get your fiber. Twenty-five grams for most of us. Add fluid alongside it or fiber will do the opposite of what you want
• Eat before you lift and eat after you lift. Muscle needs fuel to build and fuel to recover
• Cook your vegetables if your body prefers them that way. This is not a moral question, it is a digestion question
• Plan enough that you do not end up at 4 PM eating standing up over the sink

None of that is dramatic. All of it works. And if you keep it going for years, it compounds into a body that is still yours, still moving, still strong, at 65 and 75 and 85. That is why any of this matters. Muscle means longevity. Everything I put in my body is in service of that one idea.

If This Was Useful

If you want more of this, both the food side of my week and the pieces of life at 55 that do not make it to the feed, my private email community is where I go deeper. Real conversations, small enough that I still read every reply.

Join the community here: Beautifully Whole community