Category: Food

I sat at my computer all day long.  I was working, not just wasting time, but I didn’t manage to sneak in a workout.

I ate well today.  My weight has been holding steady for three days in a row at 279.8.

I posted on my other site that I had learned to use jQuery a little, and received an offer to review a book about jQuery.  I agreed, and now have my new book.  As luck would have it, a new project I’m working on required jQuery.  I hope I have time to review the book before starting another project that uses jQuery.

Basically, I’ve been busy as hell.

I’ve been talking about raising my calorie intake so that my workouts don’t cause me to start burning the muscle instead of fat.  The trouble is that I can’t seem to eat 1500 calories, and still eat healthy, but yet, I’m not hungry.

I ate 1144 calories today, and I feel no desire to eat anymore.  I mean, I could handle a scoop of ice cream, but I don’t want to start down that road.

Do I not need many calories because I sit at a desk all day?

My mother lost a lot of weight last year.  She did it mostly with diet.  Her exercise came from work, not working out.  She has gained some of it back, but she’s still in decent shape.

I talked to her on the phone today about my weight loss plan.  She kept lecturing me about carbs.  She kept repeatedly telling me to buy “light” bread because it has fewer carbs.  This is despite the fact that I repeatedly told her I’ve had two slices of bread in the last three weeks.

My diet is rather low-carb.  My mother tells me I can eat an 8oz pork chop, because it’s just protein.  No carbs!  I really don’t need all the fat either, so I keep my meat portions smaller.

I’ve noticed that everyone has their own weight loss advice.  Most of it is valid, but most of those people don’t realize that there are other just as valid ways.

If I ever come off as preachy, or as close-minded as my mother, please slap me.

There was ice cream in the house.  My wife bought some vanilla ice cream to go with apple pie on Thanksgiving.  There was some left.

Before I got serious about dieting, I would have polished it off the very next day.  This time was different.

I really wanted some of that ice cream.  So I had one single scoop.  That was my treat for the day.  At roughly 140 calories, it certainly won’t kill my diet.  My wife and daughter finished it off, so I’m not tempted anymore.

One of the things that has always hurt me with weight loss, is the fact that I love food.  I love to eat a lot of good food.

My new plan is to ignore that, and eat only what I need.  Holidays throw a wrench into that plan.  I don’t want to insult my wife, or not enjoy the holidays, so I decided to eat a little of everything for Thanksgiving dinner.

I enjoyed the meal immensely, and although I overate, it wasn’t by as much as it would have been before.  Also, due to the amount of food I ate, I’m not trying to log the calories I ate for each item (as I usually do), but just estimating the whole meal.  It may not be very accurate, but there should only be a few days a year like this.

Being self employed, my work life is, um, different.

Some days I’m at a client site, and some days I’m at home.  My primary client expects me to work on-site most of the time.  Working there is similar to a regular job.  The location is in downtown Louisville, so there are plenty of restaurants within walking distance, including places where it is relatively painless to eat healthy.

However, today, I have to work at a different client site.  My options are more limited.  When grocery shopping I didn’t take this into account, so I don’t have a healthy lunch ready to go.

I did go overboard in buying bananas.  I have more than I can eat before they go bad.  I suppose I’ll bring two bananas, and eat one at around 12:00, the other around 3:00, and hope I don’t get stuck there past 6:00 or so.

My wife wanted pizza today.  This was to be the first time for me eating pizza since the new diet began.  I ordered a large (14″) with sausage.  It was cut into 8 pieces, and I ate two pieces.  That came out to 700 calories.  I hadn’t eaten a lot today, so my total calorie consumption is only 1214 for the day.

I used to work in a pizza place.  I drank a lot of Coke, and ate pizza whenever I could.  I was proud of myself today for limiting myself to two pieces, and drinking water.

My weigh-in tonight was 286.6, the same as yesterday.

I needed to make counting my calories as easy as possible.  I have a spreadsheet to keep track of everything, but I needed an easy way to look up calories.  Especially for food consumed at a restaurant.

I found CalorieKing.  I’m not signing up for there service, but I do use them to look up calories for various foods.

There is some guessing involved though.  Here’s a sample of my calories spreadsheet:

Date	Meal	Food	Calories	Daily Totals
11/07/07	Breakfast	Kashi Strawberry Fields	120
		2% Milk	61
		Coffee – 2 cups	10
	Lunch	Skyline Chili reg 5-way	840
		Unsweet Tea	5
		Coffee – 1 cup	5
	Dinner	Salad w/chicken & dressing	300
		Coffee – 2 cups	10	1351
11/08/07	Breakfast	Kashi Strawberry Fields	120
		2% Milk	61
		Orange Juice – 6oz	84
		Coffee – 2 cups	10
	Lunch	Subway Veggie – 12in w/mustard	460
		— mustard	6
		Coffee – 1 cup	5
	Snack	Yogurt – vanilla – 1 cup	190
		Banana	105
		V8 Juice – 8oz	50
	Dinner	Spaghetti w/ ground turkey	439
		Coffee – 2 cups	10	1540

You’ll notice that I put 5 calories for a cup of coffee. I drink my coffee black with no sweetener, but I think there are a few calories from the oils.