Calorie Experiment – Week 1 Results

I mentioned in my last post that we had had a busy weekend. That busy weekend lasted all the way until the bitter end, when Jamie had a hockey practice Sunday night. Yeah, not my favorite thing. :/ Especially when the coach sent out a message Sunday afternoon, saying he’d like all the kids there an extra half hour early so they can work on positioning. What that means is that, between the drive there and back, the off ice time, and the on ice time, that was four hours of my life gone. I did get to process some pictures while I was there, so it wasn’t a total loss, but I sure would’ve appreciated being at home.

The worst part was that although I tried, I was unable to get dinner done before we left. That meant that I had to just give the kids a snack at 6 PM, and we didn’t actually get home to eat until 10pm. My poor kids! I got them in bed by 10:30, but I didn’t get to bed until almost 11:30.

Monday morning, I had my alarm set for 4:45AM to do a 3-mile run, but that just wasn’t going to happen. I rolled right over and went back to bed for another hour. I was actually planning to let the kids sleep in and drive them in instead of taking the bus, but Jamie got up at his normal time, so I went ahead and put them on the bus so I wouldn’t be late for work.

Mondays are my weigh-in day, but considering that I had eaten dinner at 10 PM, and then skipped my run (I always run before I weigh in, because it makes me feel better, like I might lose an extra half a pound or something, ha ha!), I really debated whether or not to just postpone weighing in until Tuesday.  But then I figured it was silly to split hairs over it; if I didn’t lose weight because of eating late and not running, it wasn’t the end of the world. It will all shake out eventually.

So, I stepped on the scale, and saw this:

Um, wow. That’s a 2.4 pound loss!!  And this marks the first time I’ve been below 125 in four months!! I was full-on shocked. I mean, I even looked at the scale and said out loud, “No shit.” Yes, I have conversations with my scale. Doesn’t everyone? 😉

I don’t know if the loss was because I switched to calorie counting from Weight Watchers points, but I suspect that had a lot to do with it. I definitely know that my eating has changed in the last week compared to my last 4 years on Weight Watchers. To that end, here are some observations after one week:

1.  I’ve been using My Fitness Pal to log my calories (feel free to look for me, I’m under Thatloudredhead), and one of the things I like about it is that it doesn’t just show calories; it shows a variety of nutrients that you can pick and choose to display. I just went ahead and picked the standard choices, which include fat, fiber, protein, sugar, and sodium, and it gives me a recommended maximum for each of those per day. After a week of tracking all those nutrients, I was in for an eye-opener: turns out, I eat a ton of sodium!

I eat microwave meals every day for lunch during the week, and I know those are high in sodium content, but I was really surprised at just how much sodium I eat. After just one week, I’ve gotten a lot more mindful of the sodium content in of the foods I eat, and I will put something back or choose a low-sodium version if there’s an option now. Tracking the nutrients also showed me that I eat a lot more sugar than I’m supposed to. Honestly, that one wasn’t quite such a shocker. 😉 But still, I’ve tried to cut back and make smarter choices.

What I like about calorie (and nutrient) counting is that I’m not just strictly focused on choosing my food based on a single number that determines whether or not I lose or gain weight. I’m actually trying to eat better overall, and that’s not a bad thing!  Just for the heck of it, here are the rest of my charts for the week. Click to enlarge.

2. Another observation is that I was almost surely over counting my exercise under Weight Watchers. Weight Watchers allows you to choose all kinds of activities for earning points, from weightlifting to housework. As it turns out, My Fitness Pal doesn’t consider weightlifting to be calorie-burning, and housework just doesn’t even exist in their system. :p I used to enter pretty much every movement I made into my Weight Watchers activity tracker, because I was able to find it in their system. I’ve been less enthusiastic about it with My Fitness Pal, just because I’ve  discovered it doesn’t do me much good in their system.

3. Another observation about exercise is that my fitness pal doesn’t seem to let you carry over points from one day to the next. Which kind of sucks, because I got used to banking points, but at the same time, it’s probably not a bad thing.

4. One thing I like about calorie-counting is that it’s pretty precise. Nothing is going to be 100% accurate (except your body, which will always be 100% on target with what you’ve actually eaten, regardless of what the points tracker or calorie counter says), but I like that it knows exactly how many calories I burned with my Garmin. Since I use a heart rate monitor, I feel like it’s pretty accurate, and I like knowing that I’m not “fudging it.” Sometimes I would feel guilty with Weight Watchers, because there were a lot of opportunities for wiggle room, and I usually took them. If I ran for 32 minutes, I’d earn four exercise points, but if I ran for 35 minutes, I’d earn five. So I very often ran for 32 minutes and 31 seconds. 😉 In the same way, their calculations for points values of food was often up to interpretation. A half a cup of cereal might be the same points as two thirds of a cup of cereal, and well, who isn’t going to have more if it’s “allowed”?  My friend Katie mentioned in a recent post that she called that “cheating the system.” I never thought about it that way; I always thought of it is maximizing the system. 😉 But after she pointed that out, I realize that she was right, and I wasn’t doing myself any good eating more food regardless of whether or not I was “allowed.” With calorie counting, there’s no wiggle room; if I half a cup of cereal is 50 calories, two thirds a cup of cereal is 67 calories. End of story. I like knowing that I’m being more accurate in my counting.

5. Fruit. I know I covered it in a previous post, but it bears repeating: no matter what Weight Watcher says, that shit is not free!! To that end, I’ve definitely cut back on my fruit intake in the last week.

So, those were my observations after a week of calorie counting. Since I obviously did pretty well last week, it makes sense to continue with the calorie counting this week. However, it is also my birthday weekend, so I make no guarantees as to what the scale will read NEXT Monday. 😉 But I’ll let you know, regardless!

I was destined to have NO pretty pictures for this week at all, but then we had a beautiful sunset tonight.

Sorry these are just so-so…I had to use my phone camera. Boo!  But it was a beautiful sunset!

Thanks for reading!