Day 23: Daily Plan of Attack

Update: 241.0 lbs, 17.2 lbs so far, 20.8 left to reach goal.

Bummer. Tiny upward fluctuation today, which is of course the downside of weighing every day, especially after an on-target caloric weekend, with one good day of exercise and plenty of water each day. The good news is, that usually is only a day, and I'm back down the next day...this has happened 3 times during the 3 weeks I've been going, so I can see the trend a little bit now. No worries.

I was chatting with my wife (who has joined me in an effort to lose a few...and believe me, she's tiny and doesn't need to lose anything...I think it's mostly for moral support) who pointed out how many calories she tried to save for dinner every day, and it was almost the same way I have been thinking. Here's how I map out my day in my head to use my calories each day.

Since my Hackers Diet chart pointed out that a man my age, my height with a lower daily activity level should burn about 2000 calories a day, I have set a 1500 calorie limit for each day, which I have kept every day since starting. Lately, I've been trying to keep 700 calories available for dinner or dinner and some sort of snack later on, which means I have to be thrifty earlier in the day. Roughly, I map it out like this:

Breakfast - 250 calories
Mid morning snack - 100 calories
Lunch - 350 calories
Mid afternoon snack - 100 calories
Dinner or dinner and snack - 700 calories

What kinds of things can you fit into these caloric boundaries...here's a recent menu

Breakfast - 1 1/2 cup Corn Flakes and 1 cup of skim milk - 240 calories
Mid Morning snack - Yoplait non fat yogurt single serving - 100 calories
Lunch - Subway 6" Turkey breast - 280 calories
Mid afternoon snack - Small chewy granola bar - 100 calories
Dinner - tons of options at 700 calories

Yesterday we had mexican food from Muchas Gracias for lunch, so we had the Flying Saucer, which is a monster tostada with a meat, lettuce, beans, cheese, guacamole and sour cream. We ordered them without the sour cream and without the fried shell, and essentially had a chicken taco salad, and figured it between 400-500 calories. Since we had a heavier lunch, we swapped the calories for lunch and dinner and had a light dinner, to fit within our goals.

I'm going to mix up the lunch and dinner calories more often, as I obviously will burn more calories during the day compared to night, but since we're such night owls, it's nice to not be hungry from a small dinner as we're watching our shows once the kids are in bed.

There you go...simple plan of attack.

Hasta Luego.

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