diet? ha!

No, I don’t really have a diet but you can call it that if you want to. I try to have a net calorie intake of 1350 per day. Sometimes I’m a little under, sometime a little over, but I try not to be too hard on myself either way. I used to keep a little list on my phone of all the calories I had per day but then my friend introduced me to myfitnesspal which is so handy! I love that you can scan barcodes on it to find how many calories a food has.

Take beer for example. Do you have any idea how difficult it is to look up the calories in a beer unless it’s a specific part of their advertising, like with the budlight that’s only 99? As if I would drink that though. I have standards when it comes to my beer. It’s damn near impossible. But with myfitnesspal it’s so simple!

But back to my “diet”… I don’t try to restrict what I eat. Hypothetically, if I have a day where all I want to eat is ice cream, then I let myself. The key is that I don’t exceed my 1350 calories. Not that I’ve had an ice cream only day but there are some days that come pretty close. And despite my dependency on Trader Joe’s macaroni and cheese, I’m still losing weight. Still, I have this nagging feeling I should try to eat healthier, like adding more veggies to my diet. Things like broccoli and spinach are super low in calories, so I could have large quantities while still staying under calories. Mwahaha.

One thing I just started taking into account is the calories I burn while at work. Currently I work at a restaurant where I’m on my feet all day, walking back and forth, and doing lots of heavy lifting. The closest I could come to describing that on the exercises listed on myfitnesspal is the “Walking, 2.0 mph, slow pace” which shows 153 calories burned per hour. I try to only record the time where I was really working (not the half hour spent hitting my head against the wall when it’s dead) and sometimes record less time than what I actually worked but I feel it’s pretty accurate. I just adjust based on how busy it was and how much I was moving.

In summary, myfitnesspal is a great tool to use and I highly recommend it.

You should be warned though, it’s kind of a bitch to add your own recipes. There are some things I’ll add up the calories on my own and put under the “Quick Add Calories” rather then trying to search for it or create my own recipe. For example, today I looked up calories in raw mushrooms, raw spinach, and then used the food labels to check how many calories where in my salad dressing, artichoke hearts, and feta cheese; I then added them up in my head and only recorded the calories. If you’re all caught up on the nutritional information, (i.e. how many carbs, fats, or whatever you’ve consumed) then you may want to go to the hassle of adding recipes… but as you’ve seen from my ice cream anecdote, I don’t really care about that shit.

By the way, that salad was really tasty. I’m thinking I may pick up some canned beets or peas to add to it next time, bulk it up a little. If I have room in my budget, some edamame beans would be way good.

01/09/2012

Today I did great up until the ice cream. Go me. And the stupid thing is that I’m stress eating. I used to cut, then there was drinking intermixed with the cutting, and finally I traded the two in for exercise. Tonight I can’t ride and I’m trying really hard not to cut anymore. Actually, I haven’t cut since April of 2012; I’m really proud of myself.  So what did I do instead? I reached for the ice cream. Maybe next time this happens I’ll try cleaning or something. Ideally I’ll just be able to ride though.