Three Different Calorie Counts for Today's Food

I entered my food into fitday.com and myfitnesspal.com and both give very different numbers from the calorie breakdown at ediets.com.

ediets.com breakdown

Breakfast - 554
Lunch - 548
Snack - 186
Dinner - 568

TOTAL - 1856 calories

Fitday.com - 2207 calories

Myfitnesspal.com - 2222 calories

Hi, that's over 350 calories difference! Now, granted, I had regular tortilla chips instead of baked low-sodiums in my taco salad, but surely that doesn't account for it! And Myfitnesspal.com is all looking down his nose at me, all "You're only supposed to be eating 1340 calories." Honestly, I wonder if people who undereat like that have a HARDER time losing weight? Because after I awoke from my long deep nap (like 5 hours) I stepped on the scale today and saw 241 pounds.

It's not an official weigh, but in the middle of the day it should be MORE not LESS. 241 - am I losing weight too fast all of a sudden?

I suspect getting deep sleep, occasionally skipping meals, and occasionally having my cheat days, all play a role in my weight loss success so far? That, and of course, not eating so much candy every day. (I went into a CVS yesterday and felt like, while I was there, I should buy a candy bar. Although I knew, intellectually, that I should not.)

Well, it's out of my hands. Mine is not to reason why, mine is but to eat exactly what ediets tells me to and reap the rewards as they happen.

Oh, also, I realized that I'm having 2 eggs for breakfast every morning for the past several mornings. This recipe includes the whole eggs, yolk and all. I wouldn't ordinarily give myself that many egg yolks to eat in one week. I'll have to be more careful next time.

I wanted to blog about superfoods, as I read about them from - darnit - some blogger. I've just spent an hour trying to find this blog post, but I've forgotten who it is. I think I accidentally closed the window on this blog before I had a chance to bookmark it. Anyway, it was someone who had a lot of success by eating a lot of these 25 or so "superfoods." Like, she may have eaten ONLY the superfoods. Many of the foods on that list are foods I've been eating a lot of - tomatoes, almonds, avocado, blueberries come to mind in particular. I thought it was interesting and wanted to focus on "superfoods," pay attention to how many of them are in my diet.

Oh I found the article - not a blog post but a thread in a message board. I got some of the details wrong in my memory, so you can read it straight from the horse's mouth HERE.

July 23, 244.5

Hello. Ok.

MY WEIGHT

I haven't really been able to get a legitimate reading lately because I haven't had a clearly full night's sleep, and the only readings that count are the ones first thing in the morning, after a full night's sleep, and for the past two days I've gotten out of bed after only a couple hours. Still, it appears I'm hanging around 244.5 or dropped maybe to 244. Tomorrow I should be able to get a reading.

DAILY LIFE

I went to work today with some more people who hadn't seen me in a while - one of whom I was particularly interested in. Nobody appeared to notice anything different about me. Which, again, is fine. Possibly they notice and didn't want to say anything, and I say that's sensitive of them.

CLOTHES SHOPPING AND BODY ANALYSIS

On the other hand, after work I went shopping to get size 20 jeans. What a nightmare. Everything's boot-cut, and I was just too annoyed with the whole process of shopping to drive all over town looking for a pair of jeans that wouldn't offend the shape of my legs and flap around my ankles with every step. So I just broke down and bought two pair. They're spandexy, too, so who knows what'll happen to them in the wash. Maybe by the time I'm a size 18 clothing retailers will have some decent jeans at least available in the shops.

I also bought some t-shirts that I saw, and a dress (size petite! and I am tall - it's a little babydolly on me but still a classy royal purple fancy dress) so I need to wear a dress somewhere sometime now. Trying on the t-shirts and blouses, and the dress, I realized my body still has the same problem that drive me to start this diet in the first place 80 pounds ago... on oversized upper belly jutting out in the front. Apart from that, I could tolerate everything, even my fat arms don't really bother me. I keep hoping if I just stick with it, that fat will finally start to burn away and I can restore to a more typical version of me, but it is very stubborn! If I have to get down to 130 pounds, I WILL lose the fat from my belly and hopefully my cheeks will pull in some, too. Anyway, the t-shirts that I bought were really pretty cute and I just have to live with the body I have for as long as I have it. I considered that I would shrink into the t-shirts. Hopefully, I will shrink more proportionately.

DISCREPANCY

I just joined myfitnesspal.com just to see what it was about. I entered that I wanted to aim to lose 2 pounds per week, and they budgeted a diet of under 1400 calories for me. Ediets, on the other hand, has me on 1850! And projects weight loss of 2 pounds per week. That's quite a discrepancy!! Of course, I've been losing on ediets, and it's possible they have been adjusting my intake already based on my weekly weight loss, which was a big jump of 4 pounds last week, which the computer may have interpreted as being too much, although it was the tail end of a plateau.

EXERCISE

I meant to get exercise, but having had not enough sleep makes real physical exertion unsuitable. Maybe tomorrow.

MEAL PICTURES

Pictures are fun. Here's tonight's dinner - that silly crab quesadilla. Tonight, instead of attempting to fold the tortilla over all that stuffing, I just put all the stuff on one tortilla, put the other tortilla on top of all the stuff, used a little more cheese on the top and bottom. There was also less stuffing than yesterday because I forgot to include the onion. I have also got twice as much as cantaloupe as I'm supposed to - that looks more like 2 cups than 1 but I ate it anyway, silly me.

Of course, I post this not because I particularly liked this meal, but just to document my diet a little more illustratively.

CRAB QUESADILLA

2 whole wheat tortillas

3 1/2 oz canned crab meat

3 tbsp salsa

1 oz cheese

1/4 green bell pepper

1/4 red bell pepper

1/4 c. chopped onion

1 Roma tomato

chives and coriander

2 tbsp reduced-fat sour cream

TOMATO & AVOCADO SALAD

2 Roma tomatoes

1/3 c chopped avocado

1/4 small red onion, chopped

squeeze of lemon juice

1 CUP CANTALOUPE

July 11, 249.5

Okay, I did it. Weekly weigh-in and I'm back down to 249.5 like last week. I gained 5 pounds and lost it before ediets had a chance to notice. Plateau OVER am I right? I hope. Work is overwhelming now. I hoped to be done with a project by 3:30 a.m. last night (no sweat, plenty of time, if I just stick to it!) and it took me until 8:00 a.m. and I wasn't finished when I left. This doesn't bode well for the rest of the job to come. A few things don't bode well about it - I think I might run out of time - I can't seem to get anything done on time!!

Ok, my anticipated goal date for 220 has been pushed back to October 24, which is where it was originally, but I was excited about pushing it into early October.

This week's exercise:

Saturday - none
Sunday - none
Monday - weights
Tuesday - none
Wednesday - yoga
Thursday - 30 minutes exercise bike
Friday - none (unless you count climbing ladders for 8 hours)

30 minutes on the exercise bike claims to yield 300+ calories burned. The small room is cool when I walk in, but too warm after 10 minutes into it, so I'm sure I'm creating heat. It's convenient because there's one in the condo clubhouse and I have access to it at any hour, plus I can get some reading done. Yet, last time I was on the exercise bike, I felt guilt. I thought "I can do more." I feel like I should step up, do the elliptical more often. Which may not happen this week because I may not have time for the gym, and I'd be surprised if I get any exercise in.

So today, for the diet, I have to plan this week's meal plan, buy the groceries, and possibly even prepare it all for the whole week today, with all the repetitiveness and convenience I can handle.

june 19, 252.5

Really? 252.5?! That's a 1.5 pound loss from yesterday. I've been feeling a bit stuck around 255 since I first hit 255 on June 11. 255 was a goal for me, so a few days after that I did a cheat day, and my weight came back up. I was getting really tired of having only lost 30 pounds!

Why did I lose it? Well, I'm not sure, but I do know that I was dealing with hunger sensations and cravings yesterday. I went over to my parents' to do some work and they have cookies, and I felt a stirring in my belly for those cookies. I didn't cheat at all yesterday, though, except forgetting to eat crackers with my snack - small failing. Then last night I did go get on the exercise bike for 30 minutes.

Still, a 2 pound drop in 2 days is more than I expected, but here's hoping it stays off! My next short-term goal is 245. Although I think I'm going camping next week so I may have to go off the plan. It worries me to think I won't be able to control myself if I'm not on a plan, and I don't want to be on a plan my whole life. But let me just get down to a weight I can feel okay about before I worry about life without a plan, where I have a little leeway to gain a few pounds if things go awry. That will be a different project - learning to live without a plan. Right now, it's all about losing weight.

It's funny, too, how you can feel it on the nights before the scale goes down. Last night, I thought I could feel differences - in the neck, in the belly, in the waist... What's funny is that you can feel it tactally by touching your body even though you can't feel it within yourself or see it in the mirror. I just wouldn't think I'd be able to feel a 1.5-pound weight loss with my hands on my neck or my elbows against my side, it should be a miniscule difference.

Lying in bed at night, or sitting in a chair, I have sometimes tried to think of myself as being as fat as I look in pictures, tried to feel the spread of my body, and tried to imagine how it would feel different if I didn't take up so much space, but it's hard. In my own body, I don't feel fat. Fat doesn't feel different. I feel normal-sized.

Anyway, excited to see the scale going down again. 245 here I come!

First Entry

Hello! I'm uncharacteristically excited about this new blog. I'm new to Blogger, so bear with me, maybe.

Ok, so, to get right to the point I've started losing weight. On March 28, my frustration with my body's shape and various little miseries got excessive enough that I joined ediets again. On that day my starting weight was 285 pounds. Looking through my diary, I can tell you I had gotten up into the 290s at some point, so 285 was actually down, somehow, from some time before.

In about 10 weeks I've lost 30 pounds, and my first long-term goal is to lose 65 pounds and get down to 220.

I expect I'll go more into details about my personal history and my experience with this program. For right now, I'm sure readers are really more interested to know what works for me, and what doesn't. I've been blogging at ediets.com, but they're not really well set-up for it, and I wondered if I mightn't have a better blogging experience at a site like blogger and collect Googlers.

Since I've had some degree of success this time, I thought maybe others might be inspired by my success, as I was inspired by some of the other blogs I found on the internet. I'm sorry that I didn't get this thing started sooner in the process, when the pounds were dripping off me like butter in the sun. Of course, I realize now is when it gets a little harder, the weight comes off more slowly, bringing less daily motivation from the scale, and requiring me to put in even more effort in terms of exercise, and learning how to maintain this lifestyle with out an externally-derived regimen so that one day I can keep myself thin on my own. THAT will be the hard part.

So this'll do for a first entry. Believe it or not, I actually am all set now to got get on the exercise bike for 20-30 minutes. Maybe it's bad to do before bedtime, but that's when it's getting done, what can I say. It just sucks that the A/C goes off at night down at the clubhouse.