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.
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.
You are way more dedicated than am I in the tracking. My new rule is that if I have lost weight I don't have to write anything down. So far it's working. Never thought you'd see laziness as a motivator, huh?
ReplyDeleteLet's see now--do you mean dedicated or do you REALLY mean obsessed? I'm "dedicated" or whatever to keeping track because of my experiences in the past, when I stopped keeping track and then bounced back! That's happened too many times not to teach me a lesson. I don't want to gain back the weight I worked so hard to lose. It's getting obvious that I'll have to keep track long after I've reached my goal in weight loss. Sigh.
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