Calorie Counting – Week 3

Yep, I’m on week three of my calorie counting experiment, and let’s just get this out of the way right up front…

I stayed the same this week. :/  Not ideal, but it’s only the third week and I figure my body is probably still adjusting to the different way I’ve been eating.  And it definitely has been different!  Here’s a list of the changes in my eating habits that I’ve experienced since I stopped counting Weight Watchers points and started counting calories:

• “Earning” less exercise points (I’m not counting any “exercise” except running, whereas I counted all kinds of things as “exercise” on WW)
• Not carrying over unused exercise calories beyond the day they’re earned (I still kinda miss this :p )
• Tracking “bites” more regularly and not assuming that “just one or two bites” of something has 0 points (EVERYTHING has calories—except water!)
• I’ve consciously been choosing foods with less sodium (never cared about it until I realized how much I was consuming!)
• Counting the calories for fruit and vegetables (they were “free” on Weight Watchers), which leads to…
• Drastically reducing my fruit intake
• Measuring my food much more

In reference to that last bullet point, I bought myself a gift with a gift card my sister gave me for my birthday last week:

That’s a fancy new food scale.  It was long overdue, since my old one wasn’t digital and would give me multiple readings for the same amount of food, lol. 😉 It’s very easy to use and it makes me much more inclined to measure.

So while I may not be overly thrilled with my weight staying the same, I definitely think I’m making better choices now than I was before.   I actually took the time this week to enter all my food from last week into my Weight Watcher’s points calculator, and I was kind of surprised to find that I didn’t have quite as many points leftover as I thought:

I logged last week’s food as I normally would have done on WW (sometimes I would “guess” on weights and measurements with WW, which I figured was okay, since 1/2 and 1/3 of a cup of something is often the same amount of points!).  I also entered in all the activity points I figured I would have counted.  Like housework and weight lifting. :p Since I have been much more strict with calorie-counting, I thought I would discover I was way over-counting my food intake.  Maybe not quite so much?  Either way, I still find that I like calorie counting, and I honestly just feel better. Last week, I mentioned that I have gone down a notch in my belt, and it’s not a fluke…I’m still comfortably down a notch.  I still have one more notch to go before I get to where I used to be, but I’m certainly happy with the movement in the right direction!  I think, though, that if I don’t lose weight next week, I might lower my daily calorie goal by 150 and see what happens.

I have a lot of hockey going on right now, so this will be a short post.  (Shock!)  But I did want to leave you with some pictures from my run last Saturday.  It was my first long run in a while where I didn’t have something specific to train for, so I just took it easy and really enjoyed myself.  It was really cold Saturday morning (mid-40s…brrr!), so I had to break out some of the cold-weather gear, but it wasn’t too bad.  I got to the Metropark just as the sun was rising, and I got some fantastic pictures—even with just my phone camera!

As I ran by the water, I saw a lot of duck hunters.   Can you see the duck blind on the right in the picture below?  Probably not, but you can see the ducks on the water, right?  Yeah, kudos to you if you figured out right away that they were fake, unlike me. 😉 It took me a few minutes to figure out why they weren’t shooting them. :p

The hunters were out in full force on Saturday for sure!  I did not enjoy the gunfire, but I survived. :p

The fall colors are really starting to turn right now, so I stopped often on the run to take pictures.  For those not from my neck of the woods, I thought you’d like to see what a lovely fall trail run looks like here in southeast Michigan.

I did have one downside to the run: I was stunned to find when I got to the top of the path, where it leads out onto the main road, that they had closed the gate!

WTF?  Who authorized that??  Not me!!  It was challenging to find a way to add the extra half mile to my run.  :/

It was still a good run, though, and when I was done, I got a “first cold weather run of the season” selfie. 😉

Long sleeves and an ear warmer–tis the season. 😉  Aft that, it was off to hockey…and more hockey, lol!

Thanks for reading!  Have a great weekend!