Jun
20
A Day In My Life - Wednesday
Filed Under Eating Healthy
We’re doing a little exercise this week at 60 in 3. I’m going to write down every item I eat this week along with nutritional information. At the end of the week, we can see how good or bad my diet is. The point of this is not to get you to eat what I eat. Instead, it’s to teach you a bit more about individual foods and a healthy diet. I would recommend that you do the same exercise when you can. It will teach you a lot about what you eat.
Breakfast
Today started out much like yesterday. Breakfast consisted of three breakfast patties from Whole Kitchen, some olives and a peach. The patties are meatless, containing soy instead. All three totaled up to 240 calories, 14g of fat, 9g of carbs, 6g of fiber and 24g of protein. The olives added 45 calories and 5g of fat and the peach (use the 1 medium serving size) added 59 calories, 14g of carbs, 2g of fiber and 1g of protein.
Total for breakfast is 344 calories, 19g of fat, 23g of carbs, 8g of fiber and 25g of protein. A little lesson from today’s breakfast comes in the form of the olives. Most people assume little additions like this add flavor and nothing else. They rarely even think of the calories or fat and just write off the olives as a garnish. Well, this little garnish accounted for about 13% of my calories from this meal. Always keep in mind that there are no free rides in nutrition. Everything you add to your food counts. 9 olives accounted for 13% of my calories. That handful of peanuts you grab on the way to work might have upwards of 100 calories. Even those diet sodas can still add sodium, which your body doesn’t really need any more of.
Lunch
Una Mas Veggie Burrito. Nutrition facts can be found here. 692 calories, 27g of fat, 91g of carbs, 22g of protein. Fiber number unknown but I’m guessing at least 10g. Not too bad by itself. However, many people choose to add a little something extra. Would you like a bit of chips and guacamole? It’s just 833 calories! How about some chips? All Mexican places provide a few free chips with their meals. Come on, how much harm could there be in a few chips? How about 661 calories, almost half of them from fat!
Which is the lesson learned from this lunch. Stay away from the appetizers, the free chips, the mayo, the ranch dipping sauce and all the other ways restaurants have of stuffing calories down your throat. Eat your main course slowly and then pause for a while. Don’t munch on those chips, they’re nothing but fat. Just pause and see how hungry you really are. If you’re still hungry fifteen minutes after you’re done with your main item, you may want to order a smaller additional item. Just keep to the healthy stuff and avoid junk like chips. Maybe order a side salad and eat it with your main course. It will help you feel full without adding a lot of calories.
If you’re keeping a food journal, do make sure to note down junk like chips. Too often I hear people say “I have no clue why I keep gaining weight, I always watch what I eat”. These are the same people who don’t include the chips when they figure out calories for lunch and they’re the same people who smother their salad with ranch sauce but then only count the calories from the veggies. Don’t cheat on your food journal. The only person you’re cheating is yourself.
4pm Snack
Cheese sandwich. Two pieces of American Cheese. Each 110cal, 9g fat, 0g carbs, 0g fiber, 7g protein. Two pieces of whole wheat bread. Each 80cal, 1.5g fat, 17g carbs, 3g fiber, 3g protein. Grand total of 380 calories, 21g fat, 34g carbs, 6g fiber, 20g protein.
Notice how a small snack can have a large amount of calories. This was a simple cheese sandwith with two pieces of cheese. I’ve seen people down two or even three of these for lunch. That’s 760 to 1140 calories. Even worse, most of those calories come from the cheese. This is something most people ignore. Lay two or three pieces of cheese on your sandwich and you can quickly turn a healthy snack into one with an enormous amount of calories.
8pm Dinner
Went out with some friends for dinner. Had a wonderful time and ate a bit more than usual. Still a little thought goes a long way. We started out at a wine store.
2 glasses of red wine with nutritional information found here (use the 1 serving choice) total up to 146 calories and 8g of carbs. A bit of cheese eaten with the wine is about the same as the slice of cheese I had for lunch today, so add another 110cal, 9g fat, 0g carbs, 0g fiber and 7g protein. Plus I had a few cashews which add another 161 calories, 13g of fat, 9g of carbs, 1g of fiber and 4 of protein. So total for the predinner starter is 417 calories, 22g of fat,9g of carbs, 1g of fiber and 11g of protein. Notice that this is all before dinner.
The numbers for the wine and the cashews are really surprising. I knew nuts had a lot of calories but I never imagined it was so much, same for wine. Note that I used the 1oz serving size for the cashews. How many times have you eaten just 1oz of cashews? Again, this is the whole reason for this sort of exercise. It forces you to be aware of what you eat. Next time I’ll know better.
To this whole thing I also added a tofu dish. The restaurant we ate at does not have nutritional information but a quick Google search later brought up this information about a similar dish. So it looks like my main dish had 540 calories, 19g of fat, 51g of carbs, 40g of protein and I’m guessing about 5g of fiber. Note that my little predinner snack had almost as many calories as my main dish. Heck, I could have skipped the cashews, had one less glass of wine and made plenty of room for dessert!
Total For The Day
Calories - 2373
Fat - 108g
Carbs - 208g
Fiber - 30g
Protein - 118g
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