Today I started the dreaded (for me) food diary. I HATE keeping a food diary. It is tedious, and annoying, and forces me to hold myself accountable. I am determined to take this whole health journey one teensy tiny baby step at a time, so for now I just need to get in the habit of writing it all down in one place. Once that becomes a habit, I will start working on dividing the foods into food groups and calorie counts. One day at a time, one bite at a time. My inner fat kid is SCREAMING in protest at this volatile and completely necessary step. After all, if I don't write it down, I can pretend I didn't eat it, right?
Part of the reason I knew there was no avoiding this step was that yesterday I commented on a post about how I hate counting calories and I am generally aware of the calories in most foods and I go by that. What I meant was that I know that oil has a LOT more calories than you would expect, for such a small amount, and to keep that in mind when I'm cooking. However, I also go based on my basal metabolic rate (BMR) to figure out what a good amount of calories to eat is per day.
That got me to thinking.... I haven't looked up my BMR in awhile, and I don't think I know my calories as well as I used to. So I looked it up, typed in all my information, and then went on to calculate based on my (very sedentary) lifestyle. It said to maintain my weight, I would need to eat about 2600 calories a day. When I am moderately active, over 3000 calories a day. Holy crap! I didn't think I would eat that much in a day! Portion-wise, and the literal amount of food I eat? It's not likely. But then I considered the fact that I do like some fried foods, and they are laden with calories, despite often being a small amount. For instance, this morning I had 3 spring rolls from a Thai place, the dipping sauce, and coffee with half and half and Splenda.
There are 200 CALORIES in one spring roll. ONE! I leave a lot of room for cream in my 16 oz coffee, and probably take about 3/4 a cup. That's another 242 calories! So I had almost 900 calories in my breakfast alone!!
Thus, the dreaded food diary was born.
And to think, I got a yogurt parfait to go with my spring rolls... I'm so glad I didn't eat it.