Food and plans

Another thing that you will see in each of my daily blogs will be what food I eat. Each day I will be posting everything that I eat and I'll try to estimate the calorie count of each thing that goes into my body. Ive decided I need to cut out all unhealthy foods.

By unhealthy i mean processed and fast. Not necessarily low in fat or calories, but just low in nutritional value as well as wholesome content. So this means no partially or fully hydrogenated oils. Ill be checking labels and if it doesn't have only real and unaltered fat from animals or vegetables in it, I will not be putting it in my body. This sucks because i have a sweet tooth, so it looks like if I want to have something baked or sweet, I'm likely going to have to make it myself. I'm also going to cut out all high fructose corn syrup containing products. So no juices, sodas, or sweets with that. If it is sweet, it better be plain old sugar or honey. I wont be jumping onto the no fat low cal food bandwagon. I believe that most low fat low cal foods are heavily processed and don't really have much to offer my body except guaranteed hunger an hour later. This means that I'm only going to be buying full fat dairy products with the exception of yogurt. Its really damn tough to find yogurt in anything stronger than lowfat, and im fine with that. The nutritional value of it is so high that I can give that up. Everything will be whole grain, and i'll be leaning more heavily on organic produce and dairy products. Meats will be lean, with an emphasis on fish more than chicken or beef. And snacking will have to become mostly fruits and vegetables due to their high nutritional values and low calorie values.

I am also going to have to cut out fast food completely, this will be really tough because my office is directly across the street from a burger king, and I love their 99 cent menu. I wish i was strong enough to act on my disgust for fast food. It tastes so good but it is so wrong. It really is America's original sin. We dont have a healthy relationship with food, its all too fast and too processed. I am going to be meal planning and cooking every meal that I have for the next month (starting new year's day). If I eat out, which will have to be rare, i'll do my best to make smart choices.

So tonight I was curious about what I have to do to lose weight. Its simple, I have to take in less calories than I consume. Its simple math, everybody knows this. So I went to a site that can roughly calculate how many calories a person burns based on their height, weight, age, sex, and activity level. I'm 5'10" tall, weigh approximately 280 pounds, 27 years of age, male, and unfortunately I had to pick the sedentary box for my activity level. To my surprise, my body consumes (needs) roughly 3000 calories a day! If I work out 1-2 times a week then my caloric needs will go up to about 3500 calories. Thats a whole lot more than i expected and a bit of a relief. Everything that I have read says that for about every 500 calories a day that I keep out of the equation, i can lose about a pound a week. So if I were to eat 2000 calories a day and do no exercise, I should lose 2 pounds a week. But that wont do, because I'll miss my goal come Feb. 1st by about 12 pounds. I need to lose 5 pounds per week. Im hoping that my loss will start out high as i begin so that I wont have to completely starve myself. But it is becoming more and more of a reality that I need to quickly step up my activity level so that I can burn more calories. My goal my first week is to consume 1500 calories each day and use 4000 calories each day through exercise and my own basal metabolic rate.

So this is what I did today :

Breakfast
*leftover spaghetti with 1.5 - 1 once meatballs and about a cup of cooked spaghetti (with marinara sauce). This was about half of what I was give at the restaurant yesterday and im guessing its realistically 3/4 of what a real serving should be.
- calories - 450
*about half of the tiramisu that came with my lunch yesterday with Kori (thank goodness it was gross)
- calories - about 250

Lunch
*3/4 of a cup of regular cottage cheese and 2 tablespoons of pear preserves.
- calories - about 280
*Egg-salad made with 2 large eggs, 1 Tbsp mayo, 1 tsp mustard, salt and spices served with 6 breton crackers.
- calories - about 680 (wow, a lot more than i thought was possible...eggs are jam packed with energy at 220 cals a piece. Next time ill be taking out the yolks)
Snacks
*3 breton crakcers
- calories - about 80
*Bottle of Gatoraid when i was riding
- calories - 140
Dinner
*Salad with low cal balsamic dressing, chicken breast strips and broccoli and carrots
- calories - to be determined

Total today (without dinner yet) - 1880 (perhaps ill omit the chicken with my salad)
Estimated Calories Spent - 3000 (basal) + 1273 (1 hour of biking 7 miles at 12-15 miles per hour)= 4273 Calories
Caloric loss = 2393 Calories!

Not too bad considering I havn't started yet.