My Entire May 2011 Calendar

Below you see what a full month’s diet calendar looks like. I waited until today to blog again so that I could show you precisely how my monthly record looks. I can compare my intake from one day to the next and see how my average fluctuates more slowly as the number of days of dieting progresses. When I eat restaurant food my day’s calorie count goes way up, and I work it down day by day by eating less than the average.

On each day’s entry I mark the number of added calories; that is, added to the total calories I’ve had up to the previous day. Then, I show the current total of calories throughout my diet, and divide it by the number of days of my dieting. I note the day of the diet on the lower right-hand corner of each day’s block for quick reference. After the dividing, I mark the average at that point in the diet. On the bottom of the entry, in parentheses, I note the number of calories I would have eaten if I were just maintaining a healthy weight. As noted before, this number may vary according to the site on which you found the number. It’s variable, so I just stick to 1943/day because changing that number whenever I find a new site that looks “better” would be very confusing. I also note if I ate at a restaurant. In May I ate at a restaurant only once. I’m keeping that frequency down (another “average”!) because restaurant food is so loaded with the things I want to cut down on: sugar, fat, and salt.

Much of my weight gain over the years came from buffets and general restaurant food. One example is restaurant breakfast vs. my home breakfast. In a restaurant, you find you have a number of very tempting choices: pancakes with rich syrup and maybe whipped cream; several eggs, sometimes prepared with a sauce such as Benedict; hash brown potatoes fried crisp in fat; pre-“buttered” toast; omelets with fatty cheese; fat-soaked bacon or sausages; ham; waffles; a side bowl with butter, margarine, and jelly to spread; unlimited coffee (by itself with no calories), and if you drink it with half and half (which I don’t—I use only powdered creamer) and/or sugar, many extra calories. Figure out the calorie count next time you breakfast in a restaurant.

My breakfast at home: cereal, hot or cold; skim milk; powdered creamer in my coffee; maybe a fruit afterward or for a mid-morning snack. That’s it. By lunch I may have had 400 to 500 calories. In any case, I try my best to stay under 700 calories until dinnertime. I like to end the day with a large enough intake of calories to cut down on my mid-night hunger. A small steak (mine must be well done but herbed and spiced up) is more satisfying than just about anything else, but I don’t buy steaks often. I think I’ve had seven in the last year.

Below are six of my individual diet sheets for the month of May showing exactly what I ate each day and the number of calories of each food, with the total at the lower right hand side. That total matches the calendar entry. I hope you can read the entries.

If I ever make a booklet about this diet, I’ll show every single day’s food intake. I’ve kept all the sheets. There are now 114 of them.