Meals for the Day 2/11/08

02/11/08 - Breakfast

Monday is a gym day, so had to start off with some nice, substantial Kashi.

Breakfast: 265 calories, 4.5 grams fat, 44 grams carbs, 8 grams fiber, 15 grams protein

02/11/08 - Lunch

Came home from the gym feeling pretty starved. Yesterday was pretty light on the fiber, so I decided to bulk up with some greens. Nice, big salad with all the veggie fixings. I threw some chicken on there, but left off the cheese. Also used the new Ken’s “spray” dressing because it’s only got one calorie per spray. 25 sprays did the trick.

Also, a repeat of yesterday’s bowl of fresh pineapple with fat free cottage cheese.

Lunch: 400 calories, 5 grams fat, 48.5 grams carbs, 8.5 grams fiber, 50 grams protein

02/11/08 - Dinner

Who says you can’t eat yummy food while “on a diet?” This was probably the best dinner I’ve had since the contest started.

I grilled some mahi mahi filets with some garlic pepper and salt. I paired that with asian style steamed veggies and some garlic and olive oil couscous. I served the couscous on a bed of chopped baby spinach and topped it with red onion, green onion, grape tomatoes, balsamic vinegar and a splash of olive oil.

Mmmm.

Dinner: 532 calories, 21.5 grams fat, 49.5 grams carbs, 6.5 grams fiber, 33.5 grams protein

02/11/08 - Dessert

Mmm….Kashi cookie and milk.

Snack: 220 calories, 5 grams fat, 34 grams carbs, 3 grams fiber, 10 grams protein

Exercise

Another great day at the gym. I changed up my routine a bit today to keep it fresh. Started off with 15 minutes on the treadmill at an 8% incline. I moved from there to the weights for 20 minutes of lifting, then headed to the elliptical for 25 minutes of cross training. Today might be the first day I didn’t feel like I was going to just die during my work out. I hope that’s a good sign.

Total calories burned: 450

Daily Total: 1317 calories, 36 grams fat, 176 grams carbs, 26 grams fiber, 108.5 grams protein

Net calories for the day: 1317 - 450 = 967 calories

Oh yeah, I’m so having cookies and milk and updating this later tonight.

Meals for the Day 02/10/08

02/10/08 - Breakfast

Breakfast on the go as we were running late to church. Of course Elnora decided I was eating a candy bar, which she didn’t think was fair since she was stuck with cereal.

Breakfast: 210 calories, 7 grams fat, 23 grams carbs, 3 grams fiber, 14 grams protein

02/10/08 - Snack

Wasn’t quite hungry when making the kids lunch, but knew I wouldn’t have a chance to eat again for a few hours while I was running errands. Thus, a bowl of fresh pineapple and some fat free cottage cheese. Pretty tasty combination, some of the best fresh pineapple I’ve had in months.

Snack: 154 calories, 0 grams fat, 25 grams carbs, 2 grams fiber, 14 grams protein

02/10/08 - Lunch

Was out running errands picking up some things before our upcoming trip to UK/Italy and didn’t have time to pack a lunch to take with me. That meant running through Wendy’s for another grilled chicken sandwich.

Lunch: 320 calories, 7 grams fat, 36 grams carbs, 2 grams fiber, 28 grams protein

02/10/08 - Dinner

Thanks to a horrible afternoon of running around that ended up with me not getting home until nearly 7:30, the Mahi Mahi that was thawing in the fridge was going to have to wait until tomorrow night. It also meant there was no way I was going to have time to work out tonight.

Thus, I was on a mission to find something quick, filling and that would keep my daily calorie count down.

A low-fat bologna sandwich on oatmeal bread and a grapefruit was the best I could do.

Dinner: 347 calories, 2 grams fat, 71 grams carbs, 12 grams fiber, 20 grams protein

02/10/08 - Chocolate

Because I had to admit to eating this one piece of chocolate before going to bed last night. It was small. The size of a quarter. I won’t do the full stats, because I updated the day’s count to reflect it, but it was only 25 calories, so that’s not so bad.

Daily Total: 1056 calories, 17.2 grams fat, 165 grams carbs, 19 grams fiber, 76 grams protein

Slowing on the loss…

I knew week two wouldn’t see near as much loss as week one as my body would now be more used to the lower calories, but I’m bummed to see I haven’t lost anything since Friday.

That said, I know why. I’ve been working hard at the gym and here at the house with Yoga to not only burn calories but to build muscle. I’ve been doing weight training since early November and with the Yoga and the cross training on the Elliptical, I’m building muscles even with my cardio activity.

We all know muscle weighs more than fat, so as I build muscle, my weight loss is going to low (at least for a bit.) That’s why I’m glad I bought the scale I have. It not only shows my weight and my BMR to tell me how many calories I need, it also tells me my percentage body fat and my percentage body water.

While I haven’t lost any weight the last several days, I am seeing my % body fat go down. It started at 42% (ugh, can you imagine?) and dropped to around 40% last week. In the last two days, it’s dropped to 37%, while my body weight has stayed the same. That means I AM building more muscle, which explains why I’m losing inches but not weight.

The plus side of this is more muscle = more efficient burning of calories. So, if I can keep this up, I may temporarily stall in my weight loss, but I’ll eventually pick it back up and drop at a better rate. So don’t go getting overconfident my comrades in consumption, I may end up losing this week, but I’m building a lean, mean, calorie burning machine to take you out in the home stretch!

02/09/08 - Meals for the Day

02/09/08 - Breakfast

The usual.

Breakfast: 265 calories, 4.5 grams fat, 44 carbs, 8 grams fiber, 15 grams protein

02/09/08 - Lunch

Now here was a challenging day. Greg had already asked if I’d go to dinner with one of his work friends and his wife this evening and had said they’d requested Smokey Bones. Now I haven’t been there in quite a few years and I didn’t remember being very fond of it. I knew that was going to work in my favor as it wouldn’t tempt me to eat their BBQ, but it would work against me in that Smokey Bones has no publicly available nutritional information.

Then his parents called and said they were coming up for the afternoon and they wanted to go to lunch.

Two meals out in one day. Ugh.

So I planned a really tough work out at the gym in the morning and begged that we go to lunch someplace where I knew exactly what I was eating.

We ended up back at TGI Friday’s where I once again ordered “Dragonfire Chicken.” Just as yummy as last time and pretty filling too.

Lunch: 500 calories, 10 grams fat, ? carbs, ? fiber, 24 grams protein

02/09/08 - Salad

I’d been pretty light on the veggies for the day and wanted to fill up early at Smokey Bones so a salad was a must. I’d passed on the sweet cornbread they’d ordered for an appetizer as I knew I had this salad coming. Of course when I ordered it and asked what dressings they had it went something like this:

Thousand Island, French, Peppercorn Ranch, Blue Cheese, Creamy Vinnagrette, Fill with Fat Special, A side of fat for your salad, etc, etc. Finally I asked if they had oil and vinegar, which they did. Heavy on the vinegar, VERY light on the oil. Didn’t eat my tomatoes either as they didn’t look that great and it was extra calories. Since no info was available, I have to estimate based on looking foods up.

Snack: 100 calories, 2 grams fat, ? carbs, 3 gram fiber, 2 grams protein

02/08/08 - Dinner

I ended up ordering some kind of BBQ chicken special they had, but told them they could keep the cheddar cheese, bacon and onion straws that were supposed to come on top of it. (Egads! That would have doubled the calories and tripled the fat!) Ordered more steamed broccoli as my side and had them swap the garlic toast for grilled pita. When it came, I ended up scraping most of the BBQ sauce (which was this wierd chunky stuff) off and simply eating the grilled chicken. Didn’t finish the pita either as it had no taste.

The chicken was about the same size as the piece at lunch and I had about the same amount of broccoli, but I swapped the rice, mandarin oranges and pineapple chunks for two pieces of dry pita. Thus, I’m pretty darn confident this meal was well under the 500 calories at lunch. My guess?

Dinner: 350 calories, 7 grams fat, 3 grams carbs, ? grams fiber, 20 grams protein

02/09/08 - Dessert

Since dinner ended up being far less calories than I’d imagined and since I’d worked my butt off at the gym that morning, I decided I’d go ahead and have a treat. My meal came with a “half order” of freshly made cinnamon donuts with dipping suace. I had no interest in the dipping sauce, but I did eat two of the donuts. Based on their size and the fact that I’ve made donuts before, I’d guess around 200-250 calories per donut.

Dessert: 500ish calories, ? grams fat, ? grams carbs, ? grams fiber, ? grams protein

Exercise

I planned ahead to spend a good amount of time at the gym today. I knew I was going to have to head to dinner with space to eat a lot of calories, just in case I couldn’t find something healthy on the menu. In fact, I burned 600+ calories at the gym. I spend nearly 40 minutes on the Elliptical doing some cross training for 425 calories, then I logged another 120 over 15 minutes on the treadmill at 8% incline. Then I added in some good stretching and a round of weight training to bring me up to at least 600 calories.

In fact, if you count breakfast and dinner and subtract my work out, I went into dinner having only consumed a net 165 calories for the day. That meant I could pretty much eat up to 900 or even 1000 calories at dinner and still be pretty close to the zone I aim for.

Daily Total: 1715ish calories, ? grams fat, ? grams carbs, ? grams fiber, ? grams protein

Knock off the 600 calories and figure that I estimated the dinner calories on the high side and I was easily in my 1000-1200 calorie zone for the day. Possibly a little higher than I would have liked, but not bad for a day with two meals out.

02/08/08 Meals for the Day

02/08/08 - Breakfast

Friday is a gym day, so had to start off with some nice, substantial Kashi.

Breakfast: 265 calories, 4.5 grams fat, 44 grams carbs, 8 grams fiber, 15 grams protein

02/08/08 - Lunch

Got out of the gym late and knew I wouldn’t be up for fixing myself something when we got home, so I swung through Wendy’s and grabbed an Ultimate Chicken Grill. Debated leaving off the honey mustard sauce and saving 40 calories but dog gone it, I’d worked hard enough at the gym to have earned it.

Lunch: 320 calories, 7 grams fat, 36 grams carbs, 2 grams fiber, 28 grams protein

02/08/08 - Snack

Back to the Zone bar for convenience sake. Chocolate Graham, one of the “it’s ok, but not amazing” flavors.

Snack: 210 calories, 7 grams fat, 23 grams carbs, 3 grams fiber, 14 grams protein

02/08/08 - Dinner

After a ten minute bout of staring at leftover pizza in the fridge and debating if it was worth eating some, I gave in and broke off a piece of crust about the size of my pinkie nail. I ate it. It didn’t taste good.

Hooray! Saved from my own temptations.

I ended up eating another can of Progresso soup and making myself a nice yummy salad. At the last minute, I decided to toss a hard boiled egg on top because it was late enough (7pm) I knew I wasn’t going to end up having time or desire to eat dessert. Pretty filling dinner.

Dinner: 517 calories, 17 grams fat, 60 grams carbs, 9.5 grams fiber, 29 grams protein

Kicked butt today in the exercise department. Pushed as hard as I’ve pushed on the Elliptical with cross training. Then put in a good stretching session to keep things nice and loose from the Yoga I’ve been doing and rounded it out with 20 minutes of the weight machines. Added an extra set of reps to every machine today as well.

Total calories burned at the gym: 500 (BOO YA!)

Daily total: 1302 calories, 35.5 grams fat, 163 carbs, 22.5 grams fiber, 88 grams protein.

Net total calories for the day: 1302 - 500 = 802 calories.

Another Side Challenge…

Elizabeth over at Able Reach is “sympathy dieting” with those of us in the SEOs Fight Fat contest.

She’s also issued a challenge.

If each of the eleven SEOs at SEOs Fight Fat sell a new display ad by February 14th, I’ll dye my hair pink.

To be fair, Valentine’s Day is only six days away. If they want a re-match, I’ll go green for three new ads each by St. Patrick’s Day - March 17th. Do both and I’ll do both. Come close and make me an offer, but I’m not shaving anything.

Anyone biting? I’m doing pretty good on the sponsorship front, but the other folks here need some dollar lovin. Come on you big search firms, vendors and engines! Get off your tushes and sponsor a good cause! It’d be fun to see an SEO have to die their hair pink or green!

Ugh. Second Temptation

Only the second time I’ve been tempted by food since this journey began. This time it’s leftover pizza from a place back home. My folks brought it a week or so ago and the leftovers have been sitting in the fridge. All I really want is the crust. I keep telling myself the crust probably isn’t so bad for me (it’s not greasy pizza, it’s a really “dry” type of crust) but i can’t find nutritional info on it, so I guess it’s out.

Donna and Scottie are putting up a good fight.

It’s for the kids. Yeah…it’s for the kids.

Off to repeat that over and over while I look for alternative options.

My first weigh-in

Well, this morning was dissapointing. After six straight days of fun and happy loss, today was stagnant. Same exact weight as yesterday.

That said, the new weight is 191, a drop of 6 pounds from my starting point. Guess we’re all shocking our systems as I see Donna and Scottie have each lost 5 pounds. No word from Debra or Nathania yet.

That said, I see we’re going to have some serious competition, so I’m going to be kicking up the exercise effort.

The toughest part for me? I know I could lose weight faster, but I don’t want this to be temporary weight loss. I know I have to lose weight by doing a lifestyle change, one that I can keep up in the long run. I couldn’t do Atkins long-term, I couldn’t subsist on 1000 calories a day long term, I couldn’t do a master cleanse on a regular basis.

So,  I’m going to work my tail off to change my lifestyle, develop healthy habits and keep aiming for that 25 grams of fiber a day. Hopefully, it will be enough because those<a href=”http://www.hmbana.org”> milk banks</a> desperately need the funds.

Elnora likes Yoga

So this evening the kids were on the back porch with Greg while I did yoga in the living room. I’m using “The Firm’s” power yoga tape, and seeing as how I’m not the most graceful person, I banish Greg to someplace out of site while I use it.

About halfway through the tape, Elnora (my three year old) came wondering into the room. She looked at me, looked at the TV, put herself in plank position and said “me do just like mommy!” I had to laugh because her form was better than mine.

Wouldn’t you know, that kid followed along  for the last half of the tape? Every time she got in a new position I heard “me do like mommy” again. (It’s hard to hold yoga poses when you’re laughing.)

When it was over, she shouted “do again!”

I told her she’d have to wait until another night. But apparently I’ve found myself a yoga buddy.

The calories I never knew I ate…

Now that I’ve been at this for a week, I’m amazed at how many calories a day I was really eating. A little embarrassed too.

See, as much as the other competitiors want to tease me for taking pictures of everything I eat before I eat it, I have my reasons. I work from home and have toddlers. Now anyone who has spent time with toddlers know there are two things that happen with toddlers and food.

1.) They want to share it.

2.) They don’t eat it.

That means I ended up eating quite a few bites of “shared” food each day just to get my kids to eat. It also meant I ended up “cleaning up” their food pretty often. Emmitt leaves half a banana? Sure, I’ll finish that and throw away the peel. There are two bites of chicken nugget left on Nora’s plate? Chomp, chomp, swallow.

Until I started taking pictures (which meant deliberate planning of any food that went in my mouth) I had no idea how absent mindedly I did this. The first few days alone, I could count 300-500 calories per DAY that I would have eaten if I hadn’t been using my “take a picture” rule.

No wonder I’m overweight!