Okay, here's something I've been wondering about. The meal plan I'm following is, basically, very close to the Sugar Busters one (in fact, it's the original plan - the Montignac one). In this, I'm not supposed to count calories, but recently I've been using FitDay.com to track what I was eating, as I've found out I do better when I can read what I've eaten, and not only vaguely remember it a few days after.
My problem is the following: sometimes, I have the feeling that I don't eat enough, calories-wise. I know I'm not starving myself, at least not on purpose, because I don't get through pangs of hungers, and I don't feel like I'm setting tough limits on what I eat. Still... I wonder. Here's an example of what I mean, in today's meal plan (measures are approximative, as I don't weigh my food), but it's not rare for me to eat similarly on many days in the week:
- Breakfast: cereals (according to what's marked on the box, the quantity I eat is about 370 cal), skim milk (about 100 ml), a kiwi, a small cup of coffee.
- Lunch: about 100g of whiting (with a tiny bit of olive oil so that it doesn't stick to the pan), and 200g of green beans (boiled, no fat, no dressings).
- Dinner: 150g of mushrooms, 150g of cod (same as above, just a bit of olive oil).
I'm not a fan of dressings, so usually, I just eat my food as it is. I don't snack in-between, and if I do, it's a kiwi or a tangerine, nothing more. I have a fairly sedentary work, on the computer, yet I exercise 4-5 days a week (cardio-training, step aerobics, weight-lifting), I also walk often enough, as I have a dog and thus evidently I need to take him out, this can range from just 10 minute of walk to one hour (4/5 km). I drink water only, and a bit of coffee or tea here and there.
So, for such a day, if I use the food logging tool at fitday, I reach about 1000-1100 calories for the day, which I know isn't very good, as under 1200 the body tends to enter starvation mode. This isn't my goal, evidently... I simply don't feel the need to eat more than what I put in my plate, is all (plus exercising has a tendency to "cut" my hunger for 1-2 hours, so I don't feel any). Yet I wouldn't want to keep on eating not enough and ending up not losing weight because of that...
Now... the thing is, as I use fitday.com to calculate this, I may also simply be committing mistakes! All measures there are US ones, while I'm French and use the metric system - I can't always calculate the calories from what's written on the box, i.e. fresh fish, the mushrooms, etc... Some things are also very weird to me (for instance, they measure cereal intake in cups... but cups is for liquids, right? Shouldn't it be measured in oz. rather?), and thus I don't exclude the possibility that I'm simply not entering the right amounts of food.
Does such meals seem... weird to you? Clearly not enough? I left the quantities in grams and milliliters, because if it's the latter case and I convert, I may just indicate wrong amounts again. I'm really wondering though, so if anyone could tell me whether I should eat more or am just logging my foods the wrong way, this would be very much appreciated...