Wednesday, October 21, 2009

Calorie Counting

Last week and this week I have been using the Daily Plate @ Livestrong.com to track my calories again.  I want to lose the extra weight that I've gained since my mom died in early 2007.  My healthful eating got totally derailed during our three-month kitchen remodel.  Eating out every day packed on the calories and weight for me.  At the end of the remodel in July, I weighed 129 lbs.  Surprisingly, I ran the Rock N Roll Seattle Half Marathon (13.1 miles) at the end of June with no problems.

Since July, I've lost about 4 lbs.  I am at 125 lbs now.  It's not fast weight-loss by any means, but I've only been seriously counting calories for 10 days.  This week I'm doing really well with exercising everyday and eating less.  Tonight Todd went to Socrates Cafe philosophy club, so I made myself a shrimp avocado quesadilla.

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I think one of the huge benefits of cooking at home is that you know exactly what goes into your food.

Mission Tortilla (medium - 2 qty): 300 calories (Yes, I'm surprised at how caloric tortillas are. It's not even like it's dense bread!)
Medium shrimp (4 oz): 70 calories
Extra Virgin Olive Oil (1.5 tbsp): 180 calories (I probably should have used a cooking spray instead to save the calories. Oil sure is caloric!)
Mild Cheddar Cheese (1/4 cup shredded): 120 calories
Medium avocado (2/5 of one): 100 calories
Thomas Kemper Low Cal Root Beer: 20 calories

A 790 calorie dinner. Not too good, but I only ate 500 calories the rest of the day, so still okay. And I ran two miles and burned about 200 calories.

I hope to fit into my older, skinnier jeans in a couple of months. I love that most of the Cooking Light recipes (that's all we cook nowadays) are in Daily Plate. So I just do a search for the name of the recipe and then tell it how much of it I ate, and it just knows how many calories. Anyone else use The Daily Plate? What has been your experience with it?

10 comments:

  1. Mmm, that quesadilla looks delicious! I'm a big fan of avocado, but it is very hard to find good ones here. Mostly they are not ripe yet, and even when they are ready to eat they don't taste as much. Those we got in Mexico during our trip this spring was so tasty, I'd like to have such here too.

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  2. You know I discovered a magazine called Clean Eating at the beginning of the year and it is great. It comes out every two months and each issue has 50 recipes and calorie couts are included. Not like Martha Strewart. I had to dump her. You should check it out the food is yummy and good for you.

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  3. Congrats on your success so far and good luck!!! You can do it!

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  4. I just signed up after reading your post. My first impression is that the interface is a little cluttered with ads. I don't like it when ads are the same color as the content - where they're trying to trick me into clicking. However, it was very easy to find and enter the foods I ate yesterday.

    After 10 minutes - I'm neutral.

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  5. Thanks for the tip Lori, I'll have to check it out.

    Thanks Ang for the encouragement!

    @Jennifer - glad you got a chance to try out Daily Plate. I used it for about a month last summer. It was useful to remind me about how many calories are in things I eat. I'm trying to do it for two months now, until the end of the year...

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  6. I'll have to try that out. I am needing a reminder of what all I'm putting in my mouth. It is so easy to just eat and not keep up with it...

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  7. I've been using the "Tortilla Factory" brand for long time,{these are pretty good tortillas} instead of the regular ones. The big size is 100 calories and I know the fiber content is 13g, which is pretty good. The fat is not high, depending on the flavours. It says in the bag "Soft Wraps". My favourite is the yellow corn one.
    Hope you like it, Christine;)

    Cler.

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  8. The tortilla flour brand's name is "La Tortilla Factory". Sorry I forgot to add the "La" in the other post.

    Cler.

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  9. Thanks Cler for the tortilla recommendation! I'll try to look for it in my local grocery store.

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  10. the quesadilla looks delicious but I don´t like avocados

    good luck on your way losing weight!

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