Posts Tagged "diet"
Don’t count on it
For the past month or so I have been working hard on watching what I eat and decided to use the LoseIt app to help count calories. My main issue has always been portion control; my servings were, without a doubt, bigger than the suggested servings. It was silly of me to think that what I assumed was one serving was actually one serving. Half a pizza does not count as one serving.
Sorry self, even your math isn’t THAT fuzzy
Counting calories helped me to begin to gain a better idea of how serving sizes actually work. I did take the extra step of measuring my food to make sure I was calculating my calories correctly. Plus, watching the effects of exercise on the amount I can eat was really gratifying. It was like I earned an extra meal! The most encouraging thing was knowing that I could still fit in the occasional snack of milk and cookies or ice cream or splurge on a burger and fries but still remain within my daily caloric allowance. It was dieting without the dieing part.
I did find it hard to calculate calories when using a recipe that didn’t already list the calories [though I did find some nifty recipe calorie counting apps to help] and it was incredibly hard to figure out the calories in food I didn’t prepare, whether it was from restaurants that weren’t already included in the list on the LoseIt app or available online of from when my mom would cook. Half the time I wouldn’t know what went into a dish or the amounts she used and had to guestimate. Because really? How many calories are in the red bean buns without the red beans? Or kimchee fried rice? Do you see my conundrum?
Another issue I faced was the demotivating affect of watching what you eat without experiencing any weight loss. Before I was diligently watching what I ate, it was a little disheartening to not experience a weight loss [and worse, a gain] but I couldn’t really say I was eating well. Now that I was more aware of how much I putting into my body and working out, maintaining the same weight week after week was not fun and quite frustrating. I did end up dropping a few extra pounds but that was when I had my sore throat and couldn’t really be bothered to eat anything anyway.
Taking all these feelings into account, I’m contemplating stopping actively counting my calories. I will still look at the caloric information for everything I eat and do my best to maintain some semblance of moderation, but I’m not planning on cataloging my calories anymore. Instead I’m just going to try to make more of an effort to eat more smaller meals throughout the day, which I suspect was part of the problem during my calorie journaling. Hopefully I can eat something every few hours without starving myself, which is a good way to keep your metabolism humming along and stop your body from going into starvation mode and hording any nutrition it can get. I just need to get smarter about what I eat.
We’ll see what happens. Hopefully this works and is something that I can stick with and integrate into my current lifestyle.
Read MoreEat two apples and run in the morning
I have always had somewhat questionable eating habits. Why have dinner when I can eat this pack of dinner rolls [I have done this more often than I care to admit], or, I’m kind of hungry but instead of making something to eat, I’ll just graze on all of these random things, like popcorn and maybe a bowl of cereal. Or this piece of bread. Mmm…bread.
I kind of have this thing with bread. Can’t.stop.eating.
Anywho, as one who’s secretly not really but kind of obsessed with her weight, I understand the value of eating properly and working out. There’s no use in running if I’m just going to eat whatever I darn well please as if there were no consequences and then get all butt-hurt when I find out I didn’t lose a pound, or worse, gained one or two. I’m also not one to purposely starve herself in order to lose that extra weight either because I love eating just too much to do that.
So in an effort to improve my eating habits [and to eat more vegetables, because, sadly, one does not outgrow eating vegetables] while working on losing the last pesky seven pounds that seem to just want to hang around for no apparent reason other than being there, I have embarked on a new program. To tackle the losing weight portion, I downloaded the Nike Training Club app to supplement my running days. Admittedly, I’ve only used it once but the workout I completed did leave me huffing and puffing and sore for a few days [oh, the lunges!]. I’m excited to do more workouts and the best thing was this app was completely free! Go Nike.
Second, in the hopes of reigning in my eating habits, I downloaded the LoseIt app to track my calories. This little app, also free, calculates how many calories you can eat to reach whatever weight loss goal you have. It does take some work to actively log what I’m eating, but since its accessible by both the iTouch [with and without wireless connection] and my computer, it’s not too hard to remember to log things in. Logging my food intakes forces me to actively think about what I’m eating. When you start looking at calories, you’ll think twice about reaching for that bag of Gummi Bears. I could either have 17 Gummi Bears or two pancakes [with some extra calories to spare] for dinner. Though, its kind of hard to estimate your caloric intake for some foods that you don’t have recipes or nutritional information for.
Its exciting to see just how much exercise affects the amount of food you can eat. I try to remind myself that working out is not an excuse to go crazy though its kind of hard to resist that urge. But what’s the use if you’re not going to loosen up every once in a while? I’m not using this app as an excuse to become psychotic about what I eat, but to drive me to make smarter decisions about what I eat. Yeah I’ll have the occasional cheeseburger and fries because it tastes so good, but I won’t eat it every day, not when there are better, healthier choices that will fill me up just as well, and most importantly, curb my tendency to mindless graze throughout the day.
Hopefully this will be that good push I need to work off those seven pounds and then I can go into maintenance mode. I’m looking forward to seeing how this all works out. Even if I eventually drop the calorie tracker, I do see myself continuing this new eating habit well on in life.
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