Food and Exercise Journal - Feedback please

As I said in a post to Nic, I decided to join the Discovery.com challenge this year. They give you a free 8 week membership to Bally's Fitness, but they also have a pretty good journal that you can print out to keep track of food and exercise. The food plans that they provide aren't going to give us as much protein as we need, but I thought the journal might be of interest to you guys. It helps track water and the time and reason for eating. http://health.discovery.com/national-body-challenge/tools/journal.pdf I use fitday.com for tracking my protein and calories, but I think I'm going to put it on paper too because I can keep track of the times that I'm eating and the reasons. Here's where I want the feedback... Today I had 1538 calories including, OK I confess, 1/2 an ice cream cone. I got in 97 grams of protein (all from food) so I think I did pretty well considering I didn't snack (hey the ice cream was dessert!) and didn't feel deprived. That included a couple of bowls of homemade vegetable beef soup and a bowl of Cioppino along with two salads. Remember the days when we freaked out over eating 900 calories in a day? I'm thinking that staying between 1300 and 1500 calories a day will be OK. I've never been a big fan of calorie counting, but I'm finding that I need something to keep me on track and accountable. I'm finding myself grazing like Joy talked about and need to get myself in check. Whaddaya think? Does anyone else track calories and how many are you getting in and are you maintaining, losing, gaining? Connie

i weight and measure the things i eat. i'm finding its not the weighing and measuring that i'm having a problem on its the grazing and eating in between. and now at night too! i'm getting hungry. i do the water load. i'm finding at night if i do not eat before i go to bed now i'm waking up in the middle of the night hungry. really hungry. during the daytime sometimes brain hungry. the brain is saying i'm hungry but i'm not and that i can take care of with water. i don't track the caloires every day anymore but only once in a while. i'm going to check out those tracking papers, it can never hurt. i remember that way back when we had the surgery the doctor had said something about a chemical in our stomachs (gerellen? not sure how to spell it. its something that makes us feel hunger, thats why we aren't hungry right after the surgery and for almost a year after)is missing. I don't remember where it goes or why it comes back. I"ve gained 10 pounds over the past year. i'm maintaining that but it comes and goes with 3 of those pounds. i'll lose then gain then lose then gain. it was only 3 pounds then it kept up to 5 then 8 now its 10. i'm terrified it will continue. I know what to do to diet. I feel that if you look at what i use to eat, over 2500 a day in calories and stayed at the heaviest i was why is it that now at 1500/1700 (estimate) a day and now i excersize daily why oh why is it i gain? The why might not ever get known I just want it gone. I want to be at the lowest I was. 2007 is the year that I am working hard on my finances. This is the year where I've planned on paying my bills the month they come in. 2007 is also the year that I will continue to work on health. Excerise, calories, carbs, protein. You know when I was heavy I worked hard to lose it. All of us did. We did the hardest thing there was by having this surgery. Its still hard. But we've had a taste of being normal which is the sweetest dessert I've ever had. I'm not giving this up without a fight.

OK--maybe 2007 will be the year of honesty for me. I usually don'****ch calories... So far today (just ate lunch) I have had: B12 shot + vitamins 1 cup of protein mix/coffee 20 g protein 50 calories 1 can chili beans 18 g protein 400 calories (ouch) 1 can vienna sausage 12 g protein 350 calories ... and I count it a successful day because so far I am not grazing and at the moment I'm not hungry! (Am I the only one that can comfortably eat a whole can of beans with a whole can of vienna sausages cut up into it??) Eeeek!! I plan a mid afternoon snack of several slices of cheese. Dinner is still TBD. Judging from this, I would guess that I am averaging 1500 calories on a good day. More on a carb binge day, but I'm giving those up! Joy

Eeewwww Joy! Vienna sausages? They look like baby boy pee pees. This coming from a woman who eats cow lips and pig eyelids compressed into something called a Slim Jim. Beans are mushy so you can fit a lot in. I had a bean and chicken burrito for dinner and feel like there's a burro, as in donkey, in my gut. I even tore off most of the tortilla. Some days I can eat a whole anything and some days I can't get in more than a few bites. Apparantly this was one of those few bites days and I thought it was a whole anything day. uggghhhh! Maybe 1500 calories a day is good for us. My pcp and other "experts" say that I should be eating 2000 calories a day. I gain weight on 2000 calories so there's no way. I'll hang out in the 1500 neighborhood for a while and see where that gets me. Connie