Do Whatever it takes to remember what you've eaten.

So I’m in the middle of a short weight loss run (looking to lose about 10lbs) by mid sept…I’ll put pictures up when I’m at my goal size/weight.

I’m shooting for around 1200-1500 calories per day. As I eat throughout the day I keep a running total in my head (rough numbers) of how many calories I’ve consumed and when the number gets into the 1200-1500 range I just stop eating.

This is a pretty simple system and it’s working well (I actually have no idea how you could possibly lose weight any other way without knowing how much you’re eating, but I digress)

The crazy thing is how easy it is to forget an entire meal you’ve eaten. The other day I was thinking of having a snack or something to eat before going to the gym and as I was thinking of all the things I ate that I day I concluded that I was only at 1000 calories so far…so I thought to myself I’m good to go for a pre gym snack.

Then on my way to get my snack I remembered an entire meal that I had forgotten to count into my total daily calories! And I had only eaten that meal a few hours ago.

I was shocked how easy it was for me to forget what I had eaten so easily and so soon after eating it.

Well thanks to my memory kicking in (albeit a bit late) I realized it wasn’t the best idea to have the preworkout snack.

So I just headed to the gym without and that kept me right on track for my weight loss calorie total for the day.

The point is that calorie counting does work IF you can remember all the food you’ve eaten! That is the biggest trick of all.

If you don’t believe me try it right now. Try to think of all the food you’ve eaten in the past 24-48 hours, it’s not that easy, and I’ll bet you that you can’t think of it all right now and at some point later today another thing you’ve eaten will pop into your head.

Doing this exercise will show you just how much and how often you eat and how easy it is to forget.

John

Guess How Many Calories Are In This Pizza

This is a personal sized ‘Chicken Pizza’ that my friend Becky Osterhout (Venus Index model and fitness competitor) made for me.

Tomorrow I’ll have a video up showing you exactly how she made it, but for today I just want you to guess at how many calories you think are in this pizza?

The pizza is about 5 inches in diameter (just in case you can’t tell from the pic)

I’ll be revealing the actual calorie count in tomorrows video.

John

Who should be eating more and who should be eating less?

I went out for a steak dinner this weekend and like I normally do, I split an entree with my date. We ordered a 10 oz striploin steak with vegetables and a baked potato on the side and started with a soup and some of that awesome house bread that any good steak house always serves.

This one entree split between two people is more than enough food. So we always just order one entree and share it.

The interesting part is when the food actually gets served to us.

The waitress told the kitchen to split the entree in half on two plates…think about that for a second.

They served a 180lbs man the same amount of food as a 120lbs woman. Doesn’t really make sense does it?

This is one of the fundamental problems women face when eating with men…they typically get served the exact same amount of food as the man and may feel some pressure to eat more than they want (or perhaps are tempted to overeat)

This is just another example of the assumption that all people can/should eat the same amount of food as each other (which of course is false)

No matter where you are or who serves you, it’s up to you to decide how much food you will or won’t eat. If you’re the type who will eat all that is served to you, then the easiest thing to do is ask to have less food served. That way you can eat till your plate is clean and still be satisfied that you kept your calories under control.

John

Starbucks is catching on to portion control

Getting caught up in the good food bad food argument is a futile pursuit and will get you nowhere. Every food that gets labeled ‘good’ can also have an unhealthy or ‘bad’ dose, likely every food that is labeled ‘bad’ can have a perfectly acceptable dose that will do no harm to either your health or your body weight (if your goal is to maintain or lose weight)

The devil is always in the dose.

I was recently at starbucks and noticed they have a new offering in their baked good section: mini scones and mini donuts.This is a great idea.

The regular scones are close to 500 calories each whereas the mini scones are around 100 or less, the mini donut is about 150 calories (about half of a regular donut)

These mini offerings are perfect because they provide a few bites of something sweet that compliments the coffee but they don’t put you behind the 8-ball for your daily calorie consumption.

Anyone who is struggling with weight loss likely struggles with portion control and will typically eat whatever is served to them. It’s much easier to allow someone to serve you less, than order a larger item and try to save or throw away half of it (it’s also cheaper to order the smaller item)

Good for starbucks for creating these mini offerings.

John

Are these the right foods or the wrong foods?

For a growing number of people who are looking to lose weight or ‘get in shape’ food seems to be divisive topic. The path to a healthy body or to weight loss becomes something that gets wrapped up into an identity which food plays a major role.

Common incarnations of these food related identities include:

Raw Foodies

Vegetarianism and all of it’s incarnations

Low Carb

Paleo style

Locavorism

Macrobiotic

In most cases there is little scientific basis for any of these diet styles but rather there is an ideological basis, a belief system and most of all an identity. In these cases people become part of a group they can identify with based on a list of foods they will and won’t eat.

I’m fully aware that this just offended someone who has never considered their eating pattern as an identity and actually believes there is a scientific rationale for it…I’m sorry to break it to you, but there isn’t…if there were, then all of the other styles would be wrong and yours would be the only right one…sounds a lot like a religion doesn’t it!

Upon closer inspection and when put to the test many of these people are only fair weather followers of their chosen food identity. In other words they sorta follow it but not 100% (at which point I wonder what the point was of having the identity in the first place at all)

But that’s fine. In fact to me that is encouraged, the less radical you get with one of these beliefs the better chance you have of not becoming completely obsessive compulsive about it.

Most normal people don’t think twice about food or where it comes from, they just eat what tastes good to them, and what is wrong with that? These same people could easily lose weight and improve their health by just eating less of those same foods and going to the gym or for a walk. Any food can be part of a healthy lifestyle as long as it doesn’t become the only food you eat. This seems like the healthiest way to eat to me, both from a physiological, psychological and social standpoint.

John

What Would You Eat?

Simple mental exercise for you today.

What would you eat if you knew the food choices you made wouldn’t adversely affect your weight or your health?

I’ll start: I would eat just about everything I am currently eating.

John

A weird thing keeps happening to me and my friend (who also happens to pay attention to calories in vs out) at some of the local coffee shops that we frequent. I routinely get served MORE food than I order.

Love these things, about 60-80 calories each! Effin' awesome

As many of you know my only rule for weight loss is calories in vs calories out, and the way I lost all of my weight was to stick to this one rule (37 pounds lost so far).

Half of this rule requires me to have at least an educated guess at my calories in. So when I order a coffee with a milk and sugar I have a pretty good idea how many calories are in that coffee. And I like to have something sweet with coffee so I order 3-4 timbits to go with it (which are about 60-80 calories each). And this is where it gets weird.

Even though I’ll only order 3-4 timbits, the person at the counter will give me 4-5 and sometimes even 6. This doesn’t sound like a big deal and they probably think they’re doing me a favor, but in reality their effing up my weight loss progress (because I can’t resist eating them all…which is why I only order 3-4 in the first place)

Each one of these little balls of heaven are between 60-80 calories so I pay close attention to how many I have with a morning coffee so I know how many more calories I can consume at lunch/dinner or whenever I eat again.

Every time the server gives me an extra 2-3 timbits I end up eating an extra 100-150 calories I wasn’t planning on.

This brings up an interesting thought experiment about what is socially acceptable when it comes to eating and food.

So far you and I and most people would agree that it’s perfectly fine to serve someone MORE food than they’ve ordered or paid for (getting stuff for free is almost never a bad thing)…But imagine if someone did the reverse.

Picture this:

You walk up to the counter and place the following order: “I’ll have a large coffee with 2 creams and 2 sugars, and 5 timbits”

and the server looks at you and says: “how bout I give you a small coffee with no cream and a sweetener and 1 timbit”

This obviously would be completely unacceptable (even tho it might actually help you lose weight)

Ironically we live in a society where it is perfectly acceptable to help overfeed people who are overweight or trying to lose weight (and thus make their weight gain worse and crippling their chance to ever lose weight), but it would be completely unacceptable to deny serving food to people who clearly could afford to drop a few pounds.

Messed up.

John

Today is one of the biggest eating days in north america. It’s the super bowl celebration Eat-a-Thon.

I’m going to one our favorite local sports bars with some buddies where we will indulge on all you can eat chicken wings, pizza, nacho’s, beer, and all other forms of sports bar/pub food.

Tomorrow and Tuesday will be a lower calorie days to keep me right where I need to be.

Nothing special, just accounting for today’s overage with a couple days of lower calorie eating.

The key thing is to pay attention to the degree which we can all overeat in one day vs undereat.

Obviously the lowest amount of calories I can eat in one day is zero. Since my 24hr BMR is about 1900 calories, that means it will take me a full day of fasting to compensate for overeating by 1900 calories.

I’m guessing I’ll eat about 3500 calories today, so that’ll put me about 1600 above what I needed for the day. So tomorrow and Tuesday I’ll shoot for an 800 calorie deficit both days and by Wednesday I’ll be back to even.

John

Food is one thing all people have in common…let me re-phrase that…EATING food is one thing we all have in common…and the similarities seem to end right there.

What Are You Eating Over There?

It’s very hard to find two people who eat exactly the same diet. These are all the factors that make up your diet:

1. # of Meal per day (meals, snacks…feedings whatever)

2. Beverages

3. Alcohol or not

4. Cooking style and habits

5. Food selection (limitless combinations of food)

6. Time of each feeding

7. Location (country, city, region)

8. Social events

9. The company you choose to eat with

10. How Much Food You Eat

As you can see there are many factors that go into your daily eating pattern and it’s impossible for a nutrition ‘expert’ to tell you how to structure all of this.

One of the major shortcomings in most popular diets is a set of unrealistic rules that usually ask you to control all of these variables (and probably more that I haven’t listed)

It is simply impossible for most people to change all of these things, and you shouldn’t have to. It is entirely possible for you to lose weight and reach your body shaping goals without radically changing this entire list, except for item #10.

In fact, #10 is the only one you’ll ever have to pay attention to for weight loss. And for muscle building you don’t have to pay attention to any of them.

This is why I find it odd that people are so curious as to what other people are eating. I’ve had many people ask me what I eat. And the answer is pretty boring. There just isn’t any magic to food…it’s just food. It tastes great, it’s great to share with friends and family at social events…but after that, there isn’t much it can ‘do’ for you.

Just remember it’s not what everyone else is eating that matters, it only matters what you are eating and if you’re happy with it.

In the spirit of the title of this post I will throw it out there….”What are you eating?” Please answer in the comment section, and be honest.

I’ll start:

Last night I had 12 chicken wings with half bbq/half suicide sauce, after that a friend of mine brought over some home made pizza (awesome) and I had a few slices of that (mini slices)…I had a hot chocolate and italian wedding soup as well (for lunch)…this morning I’ve had a coffee with milk and sugar and 4 sprinkled timebits (so effin’ good)

John

A friend of mine (Ali) just got back from the grocery store and told me a great story that illustrates how our external environment influences our food choices. It also shines a bit of a light on how guilty and ashamed many of us are with our food choices.

So at the check out counter Ali has a mix of fresh vegetables, some fruit and a package of chicken breasts.

Two girls waiting behind her inline noticed her food selection on the counter and mentioned to each other (trying to do it under their breath but ended up being totally heard by Ali) that her order was “so healthy” and they also mentioned that “she doesn’t have anything in a box”.

The two girls behind Ali actually took one of the food items they had in their hands (a bag of chips) back to the isle where it came from and said “I don’t need them”.

This is a great example of how much other people can influence what we eat. After all, Ali doesn’t know these girls, and they don’t know her, why in the world would Ali’s order have anything to do with those girls?

What if Ali had 3 bags of chips on the counter, would those girls have gone back and picked up two more bags of chips instead?

The reality is that Ali is in great shape and these girls may have looked at her, then looked at her food choices and put two and two together and got a bit of inspiration from her and aspire to look like her. This is an example of the positive effect of hanging around, or even standing next to a person who knows how to take care of their body and eating habits.

John

And I’m sure I don’t even need to point out at this point that Ali is also an Eat Stop Eater!