The Calorie Edition

Today I did not make it to the gym.  My heel on my left foot is hurting.  I don't even have to stand on it for it to hurt.  While my sneakers help, the pin is still there.  I have PT this afternoon, so I'm officially resting it.  I also broke my elevator streak this morning at work.  *sigh*  I'm not thrilled, but I'm trying not to beat myself.  The minute the heel pain eases up I'll be back to my goal.  Someone out there help me stick to that, okay?

What I can offer on this fine Monday is a bit more thought on my calorie counting.

Friday, May 25	1536
Saturday, May 26	2045	Counted after the fact
Sunday, May 27	2656	Counted after the fact
Monday, May 28	1829
Tuesday, May 29	1655
Wednesday, May 30	1604
Thursday, May 31	1759
Friday, June 1	---	Tracked food but ate at a place with no nutritional data
Saturday, June 2	1812
Sunday, June 3	2136	Pizza is impossible

Last calorie edition, I said that anything within 50 calories of 1600 was a successful day.  That post claimed a 55% success rate.  Above shows a success rate of 10%.  I am not happy with that at all.  Adding all the numbers above together and dividing by 9 (since I don't have a total for one of the days) I get an 1892 calorie average.  That is 300 calories above my daily target.

That number does include two weekends which are higher.  To get a more well-rounded number I'll take all the days tracked over a full weeks (23704) and divide by 13 days which gives me a 1824 calorie average.  That's 224 over my goal, but better than 300.  I'm not in love with that number, but I'm okay with it.  Given that I'm trying now, I really wonder how many calories I was eating before.

In this process of trying to meet my big goal, I am learning a lot.

1. Pizza.  *sigh*  When you are dieting, don't eat pizza.  It really isn't worth it.  I ate 575 calories just in pizza crust yesterday.  It was wonderful, delicious and just what I wanted.  However, I would have been satisfied by making pizza out of a whole wheat pita which has the added benefit of being potion controlled.  Meals like that help me to understand how I've gained the weight I have in my life.  What felt like a reasonable dinner totaled 937 calories.  Not reasonable if it is anything less than an exception.
2. Weekends are hard.  Those are the times when I eat impulsively or intuitively.  I did better this weekend than last, but I was still much higher than where I wanted to be.  Keys to doing better include eating at restaurants which provide nutritional data and eating whole meals as a family.  Eating on the run with no insight into what I'm grabbing is disastrous almost every time.
3. Estimating calories in a dish is a needed skill.  Friday I did well, but I had an excellent lunch which I had no idea how to count.  The dishes were complex and prepared by a restaurant chef.  I can make an educated guess on the ingredients, but I know restaurants are notorious for fattening up otherwise benign dishes.  I need to figure out what to do on days when I eat foods which I have no idea how to calculate.  Maybe a flat number?  As a coping mechanism, my husband has agreed that we will only eat at one place a week where I can't figure out the calories with some accuracy.  I'm okay with that solution for now, but I'd like to become better at estimating this.

All that said, I will not be changing my daily target to account for exercise, at least not yet.  Until I get my weekly average down a bit more I'm not adjusting the numbers.  It doesn't make sense yet.  My weekdays are pretty solid, but they are making up for my weekends right now.  Maybe the focus next weekend should be to control my intake there a bit more and see how I'm feeling on Monday.

The tiredness could just be because I'm working hard to make ALL this happen.  The combination of exercise, job, kids and diet would make anyone tired, right?  So I'm holding steady again this week.  Monthly weigh-in is Wednesday which will give me another statistic to add to the pile.  I can't wait to see what spin it has to offer!