Food journal revealed

Yesterday I wrote a long post about my exercising/weight loss journey.  In that post, I mentioned how important I thought that food journaling was to my weight loss success.  Here, I thought I’d show how I used the iPhone/web program Loseit to track my food and exercise.

After creating an account, I inputted my current weight and height, my goal weight, and the date I wanted to reach that weight.  Loseit calculated how many calories I could consume per day based on the theory that losing one pound requires that you burn approximately 3,500 more calories than you consume.  So without any specific exercise, I was limited to a little under 1,500 calories per day.  The screenshot below is a summary of a week in September.

My bootcamp trainer, Dustin Maher, suggested that we try to eat well 80% of the time.  I liked this a lot, as it gave me permission to “cheat” every once in a while while staying on-plan.  In general, I tried to keep an eye on my weekly calorie budget rather than on the daily budget. (Click on any of the images below to see a larger version.)

After each meal, I’d key in the food I ate to Loseit.  I set it up with recipes for foods I made regularly, so entering my meals was pretty straight-forward.  A couple times while eating out, I’d discretely check the Loseit database to compare menu items.  Sometimes I was amazed at the difference in calories between items.  It really opened my eyes to how many calories I consume if I let my stomach do the ordering!

I also entered any exercising that I did (I coded bootcamp as “circuit training”), and I came to rely on the extra calories that a workout or two allowed.  Some days when I’d over-indulged, I’d go for a run at night to make it balance out a little better.

In addition to the overall calories consumed, I kept a close watch on the percent of fat, carbs, and protein I ate.  I aimed to get 100g of protein each day.  That took some very conscious planning as I think I eat about 20g per day if left to my own devices.  I tried to keep my fat consumption at around 40% of the total and carbs and protein close to 30%.  Rarely did I succeed, but having that target really helped shape my food choices.

I found that my weight loss didn’t seem highly correlated to my food consumption for the week.  Sometimes after a weekend of overdoing it, I’d lose a couple pounds.  Other weeks, I’d eat nearly perfectly but lose almost nothing.  However, as I kept working consistently week after week, it all seemed to workout over all.

In general, I think we eat pretty healthfully in our house.  We don’t have lots of processed food (does mac & cheese count?), we eat as much local, organic produce and meats as we can afford, and we aim for yummy, wholesome meals.  However, when not making a point to eat healthfully, those wholesome meals are more likely than not to contain lots of cheese or butter or pasta.  Mmmm.

<side note…look!  this day I ate marshmallows for a snack!>

Last fall, Bryan and I attended a nutrition seminar by Tracie Hittman.  She’s a nutritionist who works with my bootcamp trainer, Dustin.  She really recommended limiting gluten and suggested taking gelatin supplement, which we did.   We also whole-heartedly jumped on the Greek yogurt band wagon.  They recommended eating whole or 2% dairy (yay!), and eating a bowl of greek yogurt and honey for breakfast is fantastic.

Sometimes I think that what was as important as any one piece of inspiring advice was just surrounding myself with healthful messages from all angles.  My bootcamp friends were motivating, and we started running 5Ks together.  I enjoyed Dustin’s blog, and found great content in his daily blog that filled my mind and heart with positive, healthful ideas that kept me motivated to keep working on my own story.  For example, check out this man’s amazing 120lb journey.

 

Hope this is helpful!  I’ve been pleased that even after stopping tracking food, I was able to lose weight for another couple months.  And now that I’m in “maintenance mode,” the insights I gained into eating from my food journaling seem to have stuck.  If you’re in the process of trying to lose weight, I know you can do it!

❤