I write down what I eat every day in my food journal. Even when I am sick and letting myself run crazy through all the simple carbohydrates in my kitchen. Doing this since January 2019 has helped me realize that food intake is something I will have to track for the rest of my life, every day, if I want to get control of my weight. It’s especially true now, when I am letting myself stray off my normal meal plan (3 per day) and calorie count.
My food intake and calorie count
Breakfast – 2 x bratwurst sausages, grilled (300)
- 600 calories
Lunch – skipped
- 0 calories
Dinner – cereal (350); vegetable curry (200); pretzels and cheese (200); corned beef wrap (250)
- 1000 calories
Snacking – tea with half and half (80); cookies (300); ice cream (250); Nestle Drumstick ice cream cone (280)
- 910 calories
Total for the day: 2580 calories (limit 1800)
Calorie limits
Right now, while I am recovering from this cold, I am not sticking to my normal eating routine. Eating whatever and whenever I want (while sick) feels like a return to my old habits, when I was gaining weight. To gain weight, I calculate I had to be eating more than 2800 calories per day. I’m not doing that, but it still feels like I am throwing away months of work. It’s also not as satisfying, for two reasons. The first is that feeling I mentioned, that this is out of control and will result in weight gain. The second is it all feels very chaotic. My meals are all over the place.
I didn’t get hungry for breakfast until 10.30AM, then I wasn’t hungry for lunch, then I ate dinner piece meal starting about 4PM and finishing around 6PM. I ate a lot between those two hours, most of it high in carbohydrates. It is a bit weird to realize that someday I will be trying to eat this many calories to maintain my goal weight. (As I’ve said before, I don’t have a definitive goal weight yet, since I have little experience being thin. I just picked a number that seemed reasonable. And as a matter of fact, I am still not thin, since I have more than 60 pounds to lose until even that number, 205 pounds.) But I am getting ahead of myself. I only had to nap once today. I hope that means my appetite will get back to normal. Tomorrow I want to try to get back into my normal eating routine. That was working for me. I miss my challenge, of being sure I am really famished just in time for a meal, which I would satisfy with something really desirable.
It will be interesting to see what this interlude does to my weight loss. It will probably take a few days or a week to get my body back to losing weight. We shall see.
-The Doctor
Hey doc, great job so far!! So 2800 calories/day would be sedentary lifestyle using HB or MsJ formulas. The other way to approach the problem is to keep your intake (or even increase it details later) and increase your exercise to slightly active (i.e. walking 4MPH 30-minutes 3-4 days/week) or lightly active (waking 4MPH 30-minutes 5-7 days/week). This additional effort helps charge your system during your weight loss journey with a TDEE of around 3100-3300 calories/day. The side benefits include: heart healthy, better weight loss/control, higher energy levels, better sleep, and one of the methods for keeping the weight off after you reach your goal. If you are sedentary it is too easy once you reach the goal to then overeat and undo all of your work. As for increasing your intake (your choice) as you start to change from weight loss to maintenance (numbers game) you can take your TDEE and start “closing the gap” over time to get used to your new maintenance diet. This closing of the gap is maybe more tricky than the weight loss effort itself.