Food Diary

Not really for public consumption, but I'm trying to keep track of what I've been eating. 

Weight loss has been pretty slow lately, and I bet it's because I'm sticking to the THINGS on my diet, but haven't been paying any attention to the calorie count.  I mean, you can get fat on white rice and fish if you eat enough of it.  There are fat people in Asia.  Granted, not many, and certainly fewer than we have here, but if you eat too much, even of good calories, you'll gain weight.

It's amazing how accurate this stuff is once you start paying attention to it.  These formulas really do work.

Other than downright cheating on my diet, which I've done a lot of this week, the other big problem is almonds.  Love them.  Never used to like them that much but right now, I like them more than I like peanuts. 

Used to be I liked peanuts a lot and didn't care for almonds much at all.  This diet changes the way things taste, though. 

Trouble with almonds is that, although they're relatively healthy for you, you can't eat many of them because they're just tiny little calorie bombs.  Unreal.  Granted, if it came down between eating a bag of potato chips or a bag of almonds, you should go with the almonds, but if I had any willpower, I'd only eat maybe an ounce of them a day.  That's 28 almonds.  That's not even a warm-up event in my book. 

You can see from my diet today that I ate between 1/3 and 1/4 of my daily calories in almonds, alone.

I may need to eliminate them from the diet, entirely.  They're just too much of a temptation and I don't have the willpower to eat them in moderation.

Other than that, the rest of my diet looks pretty solid.  Still tweaking to account for trying to lower cholesterol, though.  I will probably start eating sardines twice a week, along with eating two tablespoons of ground flax seeds a day, for no reason other than to try and lower cholesterol.

The other thing that's tough is that some things aren't so much good for you, they're just better for you than what you're probably eating instead.  For instance, olive oil is basically good for you.  But you're supposed to use it to replace UNHEALTHY THINGS that you're currently eating.  So, if you're gaining weight on your current diet, if you ADD olive oil and make no other changes, you will end up in worse shape.

Same with the almonds.  If you use them to replace potato chips, you come out ahead.  If you eat all the same stuff AND eat almonds, you are basically worse off than if you ate no almonds at all.  Yeah, you'll gain some polyunsaturated fatty acids (which are good), but the extra calories will more than offset any benefit of eating more beneficial fats.

There's a concept I've formed, but that I haven't heard described by anybody else.  I've called it "additive nutrition" and "displacing nutrition".

Here's what I mean.  Additive nutrition means you eat something and it actually helps you.  For instance, flax seeds.  Even if you did no other changes to your diet, eating some flax seeds every day would give you additional fiber and Omega-3s.  It adds to your health.  There'd be a few extra calories, but the additional fiber and Omega-3s would probably put you far ahead.

Displacing nutrition means that the value of something is not so much in the value of the thing, itself, but in the fact that by eating that thing, you aren't eating something else.  For instance, white rice or a baked potato. 

Not particularly great, nutritionally, but chances are you won't eat a mound of white rice, then go get a super-size order of french fries.

The rice doesn't do much other than give you some clean carbs to work with, but it displaces something that's very, very bad for you.

Most good foods are a combination of the two.  For instance, oatmeal provides clean carbs and lots of soluable fiber.  That's additive nutrition.  But if you eat a half cup (uncooked) of oatmeal, chances are you'll be too full to eat a sausage mcmuffin with egg.  The oatmeal displaced a very, very bad food.

I've basically displaced all the bad stuff in my diet.  Other than days when I cheat on the diet, I really don't eat anything that's bad for me.  Trouble is, I've probably been eating too much of what's on the "nice" list.  Sometimes you don't have to go to the "naughty" list to get in trouble.

Today's food diary tells me that without a doubt, this diet would be a smashing success if I could just moderate or eliminate the calories from Almonds.  So, that's my next goal.

For those who don't follow me on Facebook, I weighed in at 193 the other day (post-run, dehydrated weight) for a total weight loss of over 10 pounds in about a month. 

Running has improved and I hope the plantar fasciitis stays in control.  I'm running about 4.75 miles a day, 5 or 6 times a week.  Total workout time, about an hour. 

Yes, I really, really am running that slow right now, but that's the price I pay for a decade of slacking. Unfortunately, that's what the HRM says is probably the exact pace I should be running until I build some aerobic base.  Yes, I'm embarassed.

I'm also hitting the gym for weight workouts 3 or 4 times a week.  (Chest and shoulders on one day, with trainer.  Legs another day, with trainer.  Abs, arms and back on my own.)



Starting from zero (again) sucks. 

For those who stumbled across this, you can use this web-site to find out the calories of various things:

http://caloriecount.about.com/calories-peppers-sweet-yellow-i11951



8-21-10:

Oatmeal

2 x Protien Shake      
2 x V-8
2 x Apple
2 x Flax Seeds
2 x Rice
Chicken Breast
4 x Almond Ounce
1/2 Yellow Pepper
1 Can Sardines