About a week ago, I stated here that I’ve started keeping track of what I’ve been eating. Like I said before, doing so has lead me to an increased awareness in terms of the caloric density of things. Consider salad without the dressing. I could a whole whack of that and it’d still be under 100 calories. For dinner this evening I boiled two cups of frozen broccoli and cauliflower. That’s a whole lot! Even so, that only totalled 60 calories. That’s insane! By contrast, consider a measly cup of white rice. That actually comes out to 242 calories.
I don’t think I’m on a proper diet or anything. I’m not cutting out nasty things from my diet. Instead I’m just making sure that my daily intake falls within a particular range. I still have chips or the occasional chocolate bar. The only difference now is that I know that if I eat something nasty or high calorie it only means that I don’t have that many calories left for later snacks or dinner. I’ll use today as an example. For lunch, a colleague and I went to a Chinese restaurant for takeout. I got a combo with a big pile of rice, barbecue pork, and Peking duck. On paper it doesn’t seem like much, but the 2.5 cups of rice alone goes beyond 600 calories. Based on the website I’m using, the whole thing came out to just under 1200 calories. Bloody hell! Including what I ate for breakfast, I was only left with about 300-500 calories to stay in range. Knowing that I’d done that, I messed with my dinner plans a little bit. I ended up eating 2 cups of broccoli and cauliflower with about a cup of chopped leftover turkey. I tossed in some almond dessert tofu and in the end I had a satisfying dinner that didn’t make me go over my daily quotas. See! All is well.
Really, one week in, so far so good. My mathematical mind is treating it all like the numbers game that it really is. It’s also that part of me that’s actually measuring out servings. I have a bag of Ruffles in the cupboard that I’ve slowly been eating through. The label says that a serving is about 20 chips so I’ve damn well been counting out 20 chips. In all seriousness, 20 chips is satisfying enough. I have a box of Mini Wheats. For breakfast I’ve been counting out of those little 27 biscuits and measuring out half a cup of milk. I’m well aware of how anal this all sounds. I mean, there doesn’t seem to be any freedom. However, if it means I can quantify the effects of food I’m quite willing to do it. I’m finding that measuring out and eating “one serving” or certain foods is actually enough. It’s surprising, and yet it shouldn’t be.
So far, there hasn’t been much temptation to go over the caloric range. When I’m in my own place, I have control. There’s pumpkin ice cream in the freezer that I want to get to, but I know that I have to make room for it if I want some. Lately I haven’t been doing so, so there it sits, and I’m OK with that. It’s when I go out, or to my parents’ place that things tend to go off the rails. A few days ago I was visiting them and somehow in one meal I managed to stuff down lobster, pork, rice, yogurt, cashews, and mushrooms. Yeah…I went over that day. Luckily, that was the day that I’d done the 21K run so I was legitimately all right with going over. Tomorrow, I’m meeting with some friends and we’re going for hot pot for dinner; I’m already trying to work out my plan of attack. I can’t just starve myself until then, but I intend to save as many calories as I can until that meal.
So, is all of this insanity worth it? Well, combined with some exercise, this whole endeavour is showing some positive signs: I’m actually down a few pounds. Of course, we’re only a week in, so perhaps it’s too early to tell. I don’t know. In any case, I plan on keep up with this for at least a few months. I’ll keep y’all posted.
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