02/06/08 - Meals for the Day
Yum, Yum, Yum.
Breakfast: 265 calories, 4.5 grams fat, 44 carbs, 8 grams fiber, 15 grams protein
Mmmm…leftovers of last night’s pasta. The whole grain pasta was really tasty and very filling. (probably because it’s really high in fiber.) Last night while measuring out my dinner, I went ahead and made a container with one serving of pasta and one serving of sauce so I could have quick and easy lunch today with the kids.
Also made myself a salad in a flash since I prechopped all my veggies on the weekend. 
Lunch: 422 calories, 12 grams fat, 71.5 grams carbs, 12.5 grams fiber, 17 grams protein
I was craving a snack this afternoon and realized I was no where near where I should be in terms of protein, so I figured it was time to break out the old diet staple: fat free cottage cheese. I had some cherry tomatoes, so I cut up a few of those and tossed them on top for some extra flavor.
Snack: 170 calories, 0 grams fat, 11 grams carbs, .5 gram fiber, 31 grams protein
The rest of the family was working on leftovers tonight to clean out the fridge, so I snagged a can of Progresso soup out of the pantry. After doing the math for the day, I decided I could imbibe in some toast too. That may sound boring to some, but toast is one of my favorite foods. The Progresso soup is an awesome diet option because they’re pretty hardy and they tend to only have around 200-250 calories if you eat the entire can.
The bread was Brownberry Oatmeal bread and was one of the highest fiber breads I could find in the store. It was pretty tasty as well.
Dinner: 470 calories, 10 grams fat, 72 grams carbs, 6 grams fiber, 30 grams protein
After looking at my numbers for the day and realizing I was sitting at about 850 calories after exercise, I decided to enjoy a cookie and glass of milk while Greg dove into a bowl of vanilla pudding. This is a dark chocolate chip cookie from Kashi. A lot of people hate them, but I think they’re delish. It’s paired with a small glass of hormone free skim milk.
Snack: 220 calories, 5 grams fat, 34 grams carbs, 3 grams fiber, 10 grams protein
Exercise
Made it to the gym again today and had a great workout on the Elliptical. Went with the cross-training option which alternates resistance levels and ends up doing some serious muscle building along with giving me a great cardio workout. I followed this up with some yoga style stretching and then 20 minutes on the weight machines. Total calories burned: 475.
Daily Total: 1547 calories, 31 grams fat, 242 grams carbs, 30 grams fiber, 103 grams protein
1547 calories - 475 calories = 1072 calories
(Ok, now that I’ve seen those numbers, I’m TOTALLY eating some cookies and milk tonight. Will update later to reflect.)
February 6th, 2008 at 11:24 pm
so - i work out and burn about 450 calories, and i only consume about 1200 calories. so in reality, i’m only eating about 750 calories? how much more should i be eating if i am trying to maintain?
February 7th, 2008 at 8:34 am
Erin,
That’s part of the point of working out and reducing calories. The simple answer is yes, you probably need to eat more calories if you want to maintain your rate.
The long answer is this:
Your body needs a certain number of calories just to function each day. This is called your “basic metabolic rate.” That number is based off things like your height, your age, your total weight, your percentage body fat, etc.
I actually have a scale I bought at Target that shows me my basic metabolic rate. With my current height, weight and muscle mass, my body will burn about 1600 calories a day if I do absolutely nothing. Any physical activity that burns calories (even just walking around my house) increases this number. That means on an average day, I’d need to consume anywhere from 2000-2400 calories to “maintain” my current weight. (Basic metabolic rate + calories burned by activity = calories needed to maintain weight.)
When I post here, I don’t count the calories burned just by existing, or walking around as it’s too much work to track all those activities.
So, I post my calories ingested and subtract the known calories burned from intentional exercise and I get a pretty good idea of where I am in terms of meeting my basic metabolic rate needs.
So if I need 1600+daily activity calories (so around 2000) to maintain and my numbers here are around 1000 a day, I end up losing at least 1000 calories a day in weight.
Looking back, that all sounds more complicated than it is.