Calorie Tracking

First off, thanks Kris for the great suggestions and motivation yesterday. I will hit up Sports Authority for a hand held water bottle for sure.

I think I want a Polar HRM cause they work with the machines at LA Fitness and lots of friends love and recommend them.

I'm still going to shop for some pocketed running pants somewhere

Now...CALORIE TRACKING!

I know it works because I have witnessed my friend Corryn exercise and track her bootie off to the tune of 20 lbs (congrats girl!) in person and over on Still Chasing Skies. Her blog is insightful and not all about weight loss, but I want to give her credit for her awesomeness :)

I also know it works because when I log everything I eat all week I lose about 1 1/2 a week, sometimes a bit more if I exercise a lot.

But man, sometimes its so annoying, and not because I want to make a crappy choice and "get away with it" or because I want to eat more, but just because some things just seem to take forever to enter in, whether its a hand written log, or online, or on my phone. 

Does anyone else get this frustration?  Mostly the stuff that gets annoying are things like add as I go salads at the salad bar, stir fries, homemade tacos.....I get so frustrated that I just want to eat Lean Cuisines every day cause they are easy, but they are not as healthy as homemade stuff so that's not good!

Today I had a little salad from the salad bar:

spinach leaves
grape tomatoes
a scoop of egg crumbles, mostly whites
a sprinkle of bleu cheese crumbles
a few walnut halves
a small spoonful of sunflower seeds
balsamic vinegar
olive oil

I mean this is healthy, right?  But gah, I don't have measuring things at the salad bar at work! I can't always make my lunch at home, my work has healthy options so I don't feel I have to...but boo tracking this sucks. Separate entries for each one, trying to figure out a good measurement.

This makes me think I always have to pack lunches at home so I can measure as I go, <whine> do I haaaaave tooooo? </whine>

I think this is also why I don't track on vacation, not because I'm eating crap or trying to hide or be off plan, its just that I'm on vacation I don't want to work....or be starting at my phone during a family meal at a restaraunt or running to a computer.

I think I might fit into the majority on this, I *do* track 99% of the time...that 1% being the few times a year I'm on vacation.

Am I being a baby about this?

Let's Talk Weight Loss Plans!

I've been doing Weight Watchers on and off for years, back when I was 22 years old (over 10 years ago), I did it for the first time...I lost 45 lbs, my goal weight was supposed to be 132 lbs..I was at 135..and stuck, I was unhappy because I was always hungry and people said I was too skinny. But I was unhappy because I couldn't get to my WW goal! What? Yeah..well, obviously I couldn't stick to it.  I didn't exercise back then either..okay some walks...but I just ate my points for the day full of fat free, high fiber stuff and moved on, boring and not maintainable!

Flash forward 5 years from that...I did WW again..but I also was learning to do lots of cardio! The WW foods I ate didn't change, but I was at least getting more fit because I had a personal trainer and I worked my tuckus off at the gym...I looked better, but still, it wasn't maintainable, the food wasn't a good balance for me and I had to work out WAY to much and life got hectic.

Boom...here we are...I'm 34 years old, at my pretty much highest weight ever, and guess what, even though WW has changed, its not something that I can stick to, probably cause its easy for me to bend the rules and if I can't get to a computer its easy for me to throw a weekend or a vacation out the window. I forget to log one day and its out the window for the week sometimes. Or, I log and I go over my points and I give up...also, its just online, nobody else is really in my court...nope not working for me.

So as I discussed a little yesterday, I'm now counting calories using My Fitness Pal I even have the little "how much weight have I lost" tracker at the bottom of my blog. I started it at zero because I want to track from the beginning of this blog :) This program also has a very easy to use android app for my phone, which pretty much works everywhere (other than WW which was hard on my phone).

I worked out a level of calories (1300-1400), and a workout plan 2x a week weights, 3x a week minimum cardio with my personal trainer.  She also helps me choose the right foods to make up those calories, I am wiping out as many processed foods from my life as possible.

Wanna see what I did yesterday?

Exercise:
30 minutes of legs/core using free weights and body weights

Food:
Breakfast:
1 cup skim milk - 86
Thomas Bagel Thin - 110
1 TBS Creamy peanut butter - 95
2 cups of coffee - ? 0?
Viactiv soft chew - 20
Banana 00 105

Snack:
1/2 cup blueberries - 41

Lunch:
5oz can of chunk light tuna in water - 80
1/2 a cucumber sliced - 10
4 dill pickle spears & juice - 0
(mixed the juice in with the tuna and the cucumber slices)

Snack:
Chobani Black Cherry 0% Greek Yogurt - 140

Dinner:
6 ozs of rotisserie chicken breast, no skin - 162
Medium sweet potato, no skin - 194
5 g of parmesan cheese - 20
1/2 cup of edamame - 120

Snack:
1/2 cup 2% Cottage Cheese -  100
4 medium sliced strawberries - 15

Total calories: 1297


What do you guys do? What do you eat? What do you think of my plan?