Seeing what's there
I've been contemplating a diet for some time now, and I won't bore anyone with yo-yoing/ballooning weight stories. We (almost) all have them, and anyway, they get told a lot.
So one thing a friend of mine (also dieting) sent me was this:
http://www.caloriesperhour.com/
And I spent the better part of an hour keying in how many calories I burned, and felt quite optimistic. Then I started adding in my meals from the same time period. It scared me to death.
I don't eat that much. Really, for someone my height and weight, I don't. My husband is amazed by how little I eat.
Apparently, it's *what* I eat.
The last 24 hours (which I was counting) was a bit unusual... I ate out twice, had fried foods at both meals, but I thought that I'd eaten pretty modestly, sharing an appetizer and eating a side salad last night, getting chicken nuggets (which I knew were bad) and cole slaw for lunch.
The hidden fat was unbelievable. 65% of my calories were from fat. Now, I'm still getting a 1000 kcal deficit here (think: keep this up for a week and lose two pounds in that time), but seriously. I drank water. I had a salad with very little dressing. But the appetizer (fried, 60% of what came) accounted for (get this) one-half of my total caloric intake. And it was horribly horribly fatty.
So, it's like this. Eat more real (i.e., not processed) food. Eat out *sparingly*. Look look look at what's really in the food, not what you perceive to be there. They hide junk everywhere. You really can't be too careful.
So one thing a friend of mine (also dieting) sent me was this:
http://www.caloriesperhour.com/
And I spent the better part of an hour keying in how many calories I burned, and felt quite optimistic. Then I started adding in my meals from the same time period. It scared me to death.
I don't eat that much. Really, for someone my height and weight, I don't. My husband is amazed by how little I eat.
Apparently, it's *what* I eat.
The last 24 hours (which I was counting) was a bit unusual... I ate out twice, had fried foods at both meals, but I thought that I'd eaten pretty modestly, sharing an appetizer and eating a side salad last night, getting chicken nuggets (which I knew were bad) and cole slaw for lunch.
The hidden fat was unbelievable. 65% of my calories were from fat. Now, I'm still getting a 1000 kcal deficit here (think: keep this up for a week and lose two pounds in that time), but seriously. I drank water. I had a salad with very little dressing. But the appetizer (fried, 60% of what came) accounted for (get this) one-half of my total caloric intake. And it was horribly horribly fatty.
So, it's like this. Eat more real (i.e., not processed) food. Eat out *sparingly*. Look look look at what's really in the food, not what you perceive to be there. They hide junk everywhere. You really can't be too careful.