On My Own

I’ve got to say, after being on Freshology for four weeks it has been WEIRD being on my own for making food choices – it’s nice knowing that I get to go back to their meals soon. It’s been a great learning opportunity for me, though, which is what I was really hoping for with this.

Yesterday (Thursday) I skipped breakfast. Bad, right? I was so hungry all morning! I drank a lot of water (with a wedge of lime in it, my new favorite) and that helped me last until lunch time. I met my friends at Jason’s Deli, and here’s what I had:

Lunch:

   

• Build-your-own-sandwich (1/2) with french bread, turkey, mustard and lettuce – 173 calories
• Cup of southwestern chicken chili – 116 calories
• Organic tortilla chips with salsa – 220 calories (totally a splurge but soooo good)
• Cranberry walnut mix – 107 calories (my treat to myself since I did skip out on free ice cream)

Total Calories: 616

That’d be too much if I had eaten breakfast too, but since I didn’t it actually worked out okay. Plus, I walked 1.5 miles yesterday morning, burning about 150 calories, so that makes a difference too.

Dinner:

Brian made a chicken stir fry for dinner using no butter or olive oil, and making it a really healthy option. He used this recipe, if you’d like to try it for yourself. The recipe says there are 1,224 calories in the entire dish, and I had about 1/8 of it, for about 153 calories. I also had a cup of white rice for 205 calories, making dinner a total of 358 calories.

Dessert:

Lemon Cake. Brian had gone to the store, and I asked him to make sure and choose a dessert with nutritional value so I could figure out how much I could have. I cut it into 8 pieces and then cut one of those in half, making it worth 136 calories. I also ate 3 Hershey’s Aerated Kisses, for 60 calories.

Total Calories for Thursday: 1,170 (minus 150 calories burned with exercise)

I meant to keep my total number around 1,200, including factoring in calories burned, so I was a little under my target.

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So, today I still hadn’t had the time to figure out a truly good breakfast option. I grabbed two cheese sticks and a cup of natural (no sugar added) applesauce, for a total of 230 calories. Not the best breakfast ever, but it was filling enough.

Lunch time rolled around, and I ate with my boss. At Red Robin. Yeah, the burger place. I was a little nervous about this one, because it would be easy to go crazy with calories here! I wasn’t perfect… we did split my favorite burger, the Bleu Ribbon Burger. 1/2 of the burger alone was 500 calories. I ate a few french fries too, leaving most behind, but that still added about 150 calories to my lunch total, meaning I had now used up 880 calories for the day, leaving me with about 320-420 calories left for the day… and really meaning I needed to get in some exercise! I have to add, Red Robin has the best mobile app I’ve seen in a long time. You’re able to find out nutritional information and even sub out different ingredients to see how it affects calories, fat, etc. It’s dynamic and easy to use, and really helpful.

Dinner:

  

We needed to go out and run a few errands, so we went to Rosa’s, a semi-fast food Mexican restaurant. I looked up their nutritional values before we left the house to figure out what I could eat. I had a bean & cheese tostada for 220 calories, and part of an order of kids’ nachos for 225 calories. This brought my total for dinner to 445 calories.

Total calories for Friday: 1,320

I’ve learned even in just these two days how much I appreciate the convenience of Freshology planning out my meals for the day. It’s very cut and dry when I’m on Freshology – I eat the food they give me. When I’m planning my own meals, there are a couple of problems:

• It could be easy to be off in counting up calories for the day.
• If I want variety, that means buying a LOT of groceries in order to be able to achieve that.
• Eating out is a challenge. I have to plan beforehand because it’d be awkward to sit out in a restaurant Googling calorie values and adding things up.
• It is really easy to let meal planning fall to the bottom of my priority list when I have so many other things to take care of too.

I can tell a big difference in my attempts to eat less, though. Before Freshology it was a huge challenge. I would crave snacks and sweets all the time. I wanted soda or sweet tea at meals or even just to get me throughout the day. I don’t have the cravings I used to have, and that alone is freeing!

I’ll post again Sunday with my update for Saturday and Sunday meals, and I’ll share my video update with you then, right before I start the Silver plan on Monday. I decided to go ahead and fall into a routine for this next month, and I’ll start doing my videos on Sundays. With the Silver plan, I get a week’s worth of meals at a time, so I can also share with you what I’ll be eating all week.

Hope you all have a great (long!) weekend!