Am…musings

I’ve struggled with my weight from the age of five. In one Weight Watchers class or another (maybe when I was a kid because this is kind of silly), I remember asking about eating pickles for a snack and how to count them. “Don’t worry about it,” said the instructor. “Eating too many pickles never made anyone fat.” This is likely a true statement, but I learned this week too much of any good things can hamper weight loss.

I’ve been trying to eat healthier … lots of fruits, vegetables, low-fat protein and whole grains. Generally, with the exception of cocktails with the neighbors, a half-cupcake for Valentine’s Day or a few too many pieces of thin-crust pizza at a work lunch, I have been doing well. And I felt justified having those indulgences because of how well I was eating otherwise.

The only problem … the scale has been relatively motionless other than several pounds initially. Then, when I gained a half-pound this week, I was extremely frustrated … near tears is more accurate. I had pretty much made up my mind to forget about dieting … why deprive myself if I wasn’t going to lose weight. Luckily, I’m not doing this on my own and after a pep talk from my doctor, I decided to stick with it.

I’d basically been counting the foods I’d been eating from each food groups, but it occurred to me that maybe I should count calories. This has always seemed like a major pain in the a** to me, but I figured it would be the best way to really know. My daily calorie goal is 1,400. Turns out it’s not hard to rack up that many, even with healthy foods. Here’s an example:

protein shake 160
coffee w/little cream 30
2T natural peanut butter 210
medium apple 72
protein bar 180
salad w/veggies, 1 1/2 T. goat cheese, 2 T. lite dressing 160
strawberries 45
low-fat cheese stick 70
light frozen dinner 270
green beans 40
single-serve light popcorn 130
Total: 1367

And prior to this week, I’d made dinners that, I’m pretty sure had far more calories than the 270 in the Lean Cuisine, even though they were healthy. Add to that, several glass of wine throughout the week at roughly 100 calories a pop, plus halves of cupcakes and pizza, and I’m sure I was way over the edge of the calorie cliff.

Of course, a girl has to have her fun so I did have a sliver of birthday cake and a few cocktails yesterday, but now that I’m counting calories, I made adjustments to make up for it … instead of jumping off the cliff.

This entry was posted on Saturday, February 28th, 2009 at 3:41 pm and is filed under uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.