Day One

Today is the first day I'm monitoring my food on Weight Watchers and I've already had a couple of eye-openers.

I've become rather lazy of late and started eating breakfast at work. I always get a breakfast sandwich from Tim Horton's, but before you condemn me, I get it on an English muffin and only egg and cheese - no meat. Combined with my standard (and very necessary) x-large coffee I always felt this was a decent breakfast. I've even looked at the nutrition info and at 280 calories it seemed pretty decent. Imagine my surprise when I logged it into Weight Watchers and it came up at 8 points. That's 1/4 of my daily points value right there, in one hockey-puck shaped meal of eggy goodness.

The next surprise came at lunch. I've fallen in love with this bbq chicken ranch salad here at work. It's big and filling and delicious and even has creamy dressing but comes in at 390 calories (dressing included). And it keeps me full until after my afternoon workout, which seemed even better. And then I entered it into Weight Watchers and the dressing alone came to 6 points. I should have guessed it would be high, seeing how it has 20g of fat (!!!) but at 190 calories for the packet, it still kept my lunch at around 400 calories which, again, didn't feel that bad.

I'm dreading dinner a bit tonight as I'm at work and I'll have to be very careful with serving sizes and then with finding the food in WW. But this week is going to be more about seeing where I'm at then about being super strict with my points. Still, though, I'm already a bit in shock over food I thought was better for me (and that I really enjoy). What will matter is how I do each day and where my points are at by the end of the week and if it's still worthwhile fitting these things into my diet.

Oh, and I weighed myself again this morning. All week I know I'll be a little obsessive about it because I was so disappointed with the number yesterday. Though this morning I weighed in at 201.8 lb, which is down 0.2 lb from yesterday. While it's not much, it does indicate that even getting back to my pre-Christmas eating habits will be good for me. I also threw out the last of the Christmas baking last night. There are a couple of boxes of chocolates at home but they'll be done soon; then the last of the temptations will be gone and I can focus on what's good for me. Tomorrow I plan to stock up on fruits and veggies too. It's doing the little things that will help make the bigger things happen - namely being less of a bigger thing!

How much exercise is that cookie worth?

I came across this interesting blog post on Chatelaine and looked at the article on Marie Claire that it referenced and the idea intrigues me: put exercise labels on junk food, as well as calorie labels. The idea is that telling people how much exercise they'll have to do to burn off the junk food they're about to consume will encourage them to make healthier choices and not eat that doughnut.

The Marie Claire article cited a study that showed sales in pop dropped after people knew how much exercise was required to burn it off. I find this fascinating and knowing how much exercise that cookie will cost me is much more helpful than knowing how many calories are in it. I think that people (me included) vastly overestimate the amount of calories they burn when exercising. I know that the calories burned counter on cardio machines is often wrong (in an overestimating sense) but seeing 453 calories burned after 45 minutes of exercise feels...paltry. And knowing it's likely less feels even worse.

Of course, arguments will be made against this idea because people can burn more or less calories depending on their fitness level. But I think that people who are fit already avoid junk food or at least indulge infrequently enough to not need to worry about burning off the bad food. With obesity rates rising in children and the sedentary lifestyle becoming the rule, I think it's a good idea, especially with food and beverages that people think are healthier. Would a parent be less likely to give a child a huge glass of Sunny D if it would take an hour of exercise to burn it off?

And that's what I'd like to see: how much exercise it would take to cancel out the "healthy" foods we're led to believe are better for us because the TV says they are high in calcium or made with whole grains or are fat-free. I know a Big Mac is bad; tell me how bad that fat-free popcorn is or the sugar-free yogurt.

The numbers game

I've only been keeping my food journal for a few days but I was shocked at how many calories I calculated I was consuming each day - about 2,000!  This feels like a lot, but I wanted to know if it really is so I turned to the trusty internets and looked up various values associated with weight and eating.

First, my BMI, which is 30.5.  This puts me in the obese category.  My healthy BMI range is 18.5-24.9 and to hit this range, I need to hit...

My happy weight, which is 118 lb - 159 lb.  That's 11 lb less that my current target goal.

So this made me feel rather crappy.  I was all proud of my target weight and then my BMI measurement tells me it's still not healthy.  I know I have to lose some weight, so I decided to calculate my caloric needs for various weights - and suddenly things didn't seem so bad.  I calculated my daily needs at both a moderately active level and a slightly active level; even though I work out about five times a week, I don't know what the calculator considers "moderate" or "slight" activity so I wanted to err on the side of caution and have even more numbers for comparison.

So...

Current weight: 195 lb
Daily calories needed to maintain weight with moderate activity level: 2,880
Daily calories needed to maintain weight with slight activity level: 2,437

Target weight: 170 lb
Daily calories needed to maintain weight with moderate activity level: 2,511
Daily calories needed to maintain weight with slight activity level: 2,125

"Happy" weight: 159 lb
Daily calories needed to maintain weight with moderate activity level: 2,348

Daily calories needed to maintain weight with slight activity level:1,987

Suddenly, the 2,000 calories/day I've been calculating don't seem so bad.  In fact, according to this, it's not enough!  Now I'm not about to start eating a donut or three every day, but I don't feel so bad about myself now.  It's also interesting to note that 2,125 - 2,348 calories a day might put somewhere between my target weight and "happy" weight.  (This might be a bit of a rash conclusion.)

Anyhoo...after getting the numbers from the various calculators, I don't feel quite so bad about my goals, my eating or even my current weight.  Of course, the scale might tell a different story next week but at least that will help me know if I'm on the right track or not!

And if you're interested, all the calculators I used can be found here, through Self.com.

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Plank challenge update: 4/5 (still only missed the one day!)