Food diary
 

Well, based on the great tips I got here on 3fc, I have started a food diary. Yesterday was my first day, and I gotta say it really does give you pause before you eat something. You really DON'T want to write down that chocolate bar. I think if I can stick with this, it will help me eat healthier and drop the stubborn pounds. I am still shaky with calories, though. It gets too tough when cooking. For example, yesterday I made a veggie lasagna for dinner with fat free cottage cheese, 6 lasagna noodles, 2 zucchini, tomato sauce, one egg, and a bunch of spinach. It is too much work to figure out how much a slice of the lasagna had, but overall the rest of the day I ate very simple raw foods that went into the diary very easily.

Today for breakfast I had 1 cup greek yogurt and 1/4 granola. I have been full for 4 hours! In fact, I am uncomfortably full but the meal should have had only 200 calories. I figure this is much better than skipping breakfast altogether, like I used to, and then splurging on a big lunch. :dizzy:

Hi kwinkle,

So glad that brewhaha on the other board didn't scare you away. :fr: Sometimes people get feisty.

I use the sparkpeople recipe calculator to figure out recipes. It can't tell you how many calories are in a tablespoon of a recipe or a cup, but if you know how many servings you'll get, it can tell you that. I do a lot of cooking from Everyday Food magazine and that has the nutritional info in it.

Eating breakfast is definitely a good idea. Study after study shows that people who eat breakfast consume fewer calories over the course of a day compared with people who skip. Time and time again, my thinnest, fittest friends emphasize the importance of protein at breakfast (which you achieved with the yogurt). I know I LOVE cereal, but it always leaves me hungry well before lunch. Today I had an egg+egg white scramble on half a sandwich thin and that held me until lunch.

Some people have a rule that they have to record something in their food diary before they eat it. I bet that's a really good way to avoid going off-plan -- especially if you're using a program that shows the calories! I haven't done that yet, but part of my maintenance plan is to plan out my day's food in advance so I don't spend so much time thinking about what I'm going to eat next.

Kwinkle, congratulations on the food diary. I find it helps me tremendously.

Same7, thanks for the tip about writing down the food before it's eaten. It's always good to have another tool.

Hi, kwinkle! Welcome to the featherweights!

I second the idea of planning ahead with a journal. I use fitday, similar to sparkpeople, and I plot out what I will eat daily. It really helps to see the breakdown of fats, protein, carbs, fiber etc.

I'm not saying I always stick to my plan, but I keep trying... at least if I diverge from my plan, it is a conscious decision (a bad decision, maybe, but still a decision) rather than entering each day as a feeding free-for-all :D

Hope the planning/keeping a food journal help you drop the weight you put on recently. I can definitely relate to rapidly gaining weight and having it take forever to come off...