Day One

Today was the first day of my new healthy eating lifestyle change. Doesn't that sound awful? I can almost hear an entire auditorium of middle schoolers groaning for me. As much as I'm trying to be behind this and be positive and poop sunshine and rainbows over it, I'm feeling a little down about it. I've already decided that this isn't going to be a fad diet, an obsessed spiral into losing weight fast or a quick fix. I'm going to honestly try to lose weight the smart way, by limiting my junk food intake, eating more fruit and veg and drinking more water. (I know, this paragraph is ridiculously comma heavy, sorry,,,)

Today was a good day and a meh day. A good day because I ate really well, a meh day because I had no coffee at all and waited until dinner time to have a soda. I decided that I wasn't going to completely cut out coffee and soda because I feel deprived when I do and it makes me angry and I want to drink a case of soda and 12 pots of coffee out of spite. I'm not even going the diet soda route because it doesn't taste as good and I've read recent articles that link artificial sweeteners to helping the weight stick. Anyway, I was so tired today from lack of caffeine that I took a three hour nap, pretty much guaranteeing that I won't sleep well tonight.

So, food:

For breakfast I had a banana, a piece of toast and a slice of cheddar cheese. I'd contemplated not eating breakfast at all, but decided that if I was going to do this right, I'd better eat breakfast. It was a little odd for breakfast fare with the cheese thrown in, but it kept me going until lunch.

For lunch I had a bento consisting of homemade hummus with cucumber slices, onigiri with star shaped nori on top, stir fried carrots and broccoli left over from the night before and watermelon jello and strawberries.

For dinner I had a grilled pork chop, half a baked potato and a big cucumber salad with a wild cherry Pepsi.

Todays meals were way better than I normally eat. Most of the time I skip breakfast in lieu of copious amounts of sugar and creamer laden coffee. By lunch time I'm ravenous but push myself to wait until around 2pm, where I grab whatever is quick (although that's changed a bit since I started making bento for lunch) and by 6 or 7 at night I'm ready to eat the wood paneling off the walls and I stuff myself. Today I wasn't hungry between meals at all except for when I woke up late from my ridiculously long nap.

I found this great site called The Daily Plate that is really similar to FitDay, but a lot more community based. It's got a calorie calculator that helps well...calculate how many calories you should be eating based on your weight and activity level. I'm not ready to share my weight yet...it's too embarrassing and I don't even like admitting it to myself. But, I will say that at my weight and activity level, to lose three pounds a week it suggests I eat around 1,918 calories a day. That's totally do-able and I won't complain if I don't lose a full three pounds every week.

Today I only had 1,584 calories, but I may or may not hit up some fresh pineapple or a single cup of coffee a little later. I plan on starting some sort of exercise in the next week or so, depending on how motivated (or unmotivated) I feel after my caffeine restriction.