How to count calories

There is a huge variety of calories in any food, based on size, store and how to prepare it.

Even searching for one cup cooked rice on MyFitnessPal had calories everywhere from 200 something to 600 a serving.

The phone app is good because it has user-generated content, which means it reflects real recipes, brands, and food available.

 I'll have to pay a bit more attention.

Chocolate cake

Reward for using the exercise bike:  chocolate cake.

Used cake mix, prepared according to directions but substituted three egg whites for the two eggs it called for.  One tenth of the mix is a piece of cake:  265 calories/10 g fat/0.8 g fiber a piece, except I ate three pieces.

Over two hundred calories for the day, net.  Had a good save at lunch but it was a long day.  I'm going to count it good.

Total count:  one full tummy, chocolate as a reward, 72 g fat, 37 g fiber (which is a lot) and a lot of work done at the computer.

Open-faced chicken and hummus sandwich: 8 g fiber to 2 g fat

Yesterday's lunch:  it was wonderful!

Hummus instead of mayonnaise, one tablespoon with canned chicken on top of an open-faced whole wheat slice.

The creaminess of the hummus is what I like in mayonnaise.  (I like the taste of mayonnaise also, but I didn't miss it.)

Total:  8 g fiber, 2 g fat

Way out of ratio

I'm inputting my foods today into the phone app, MyFitnessPal, and am surprised to find that I've consumed a lot more fat than I realized.  I've been up for a while and the main goal of today is to finish my work and be done for the weekend, I hope.

Tally at lunchtime:  4 g fat left to eat; 14 g fiber left to eat.  My goals are for 27 g fat a day and 25 g fiber.

Solution:  1 1/2 cups of black beans, without cheese, maybe with hot sauce.  Or garbanzo beans in hot sauce.  The black beans will add 1/5 g fat and 15 g fiber.  At least we'll be back in sync.

The goal is not to be hungry.  The goal is to meet the fiber goal each day without killing the fat (and too many calories at the same time.)

Good song on the radio.  Back to work (I work for myself.)

Steamed spinach

One serving:  one cup cooked, 0.5 g fat/4.3 g fiber.
Hmmm.

Bread and gravy

One of my favorite meals growing up was bread and gravy.  Gravy from a pot roast and torn bread in a bowl.

Today, toasted whole wheat bread, torn up (= 3 g fiber) with leftover lentil soup,  Progressive's 1/2 c is 80 cal/1 g fat and 5 g fiber.

Good on a cold day.  I've turned the heat up twice and added a sweater.

Total:  1 g fat and 8 g fiber
Cool!

Husband liked dinner

Easy to make, he had seconds.

1 c red cargo rice

I didn't know that rice had fat in it, but I am finding that some fat helps a lot with higher-fiber foods.  One serving is a 1/4 c (dry, uncooked,) so I had a total of 4 servings times 2 g fiber = 8 g fiber total for the rice for the meal, and 4 x 1.5 g fat = 6 g fat for the rice for the meal.

To one pound hamburger, browned, 1/2 chopped onions, and 1/2 fresh jalepeno, chopped, I added one can of something new, curry gravy, a tomato-based Vietnamese canned sauce (think enchilada sauce but Vietnamese.)  

Sauce 8 g fat/0 fiber.  Hamburger has 200 cal/11 g fat and 0 fiber per 4 oz, so 800 cal/44 g fat/0 fiber for one pound.  Fat could be less, I don't know.  A half cup of onion has 32 cal/0 g fat/1.5 g fiber.  A half a jalepeno has 2 cal/0 fat/.2 g fiber.  (Info from phone app:  MyFitnessPal.)

So totals for meal, which fed three persons:  fiber 9.75 (round up to 10,) fat 58.  Well....

Per person, fiber 3.5 g and fat 19.5.  So the good was the rice and maybe by preparing the hamburger differently, less fat.  Hamburger can be cooked then water added, brought again to a boil and drain the water to get rid of more of the fat.  Little less flavor, but in this meal, the sauce is the flavor.  My goal would be to double the onion, use 90% hamburger.

Actually, I just looked it up:  these are the numbers for 90% cooked hamburger.  And water-rinsed 70% brings the hamburger total up to 51.5 grams per pound.  So my real totals are 4 g fiber / 22 g fat.

Well.  Homemade, low-cost, easy to fix, quick preparation, ingredients on hand.  

I friend of mine substitutes cooked lentils for cooked hamburger.  I could try substituting some, not all.  If it was already cooked and in the freezer, it wouldn't add to my cooking time.  Adding quartered onions like the Chinese restaurants do to their sweet and sour chicken might be O.K.

Anyways, he liked the taste and there we go.  This is hard.

Lentil soup with sour cream 1 to 1 (10.5 g fiber to 9 g fat)

Lunch:  perhaps you've noticed a theme:  I don't spend much time on cooking.

At the computer, things that make me want to eat brownies is a file not loading, a file being in the wrong format for editing, etc, and being hungry.  Time to get lunch.

One full bowl of soup is 3/4s of a can, so 7.5 g fiber, 3 g fat for the soup and 2 Tablespoons of sour cream adds 6 g of fat (no fiber.)  My soup is too hot so I'm going to add a slice of whole wheat toast (3 g fiber) to sop it up.
Total:  10.5 grams fiber, 9 grams fat.  Score!

Dr. Oz says that if doing the Paleo diet, he would add lentils and quinoa.  They have so many healthy nutrients that they're like free food, I take it to mean.  Lentils and quinoa are part of the solution, not the problem.

I was on an I-like-chocolate diet I was on for about four months.  I just think that's real life sometimes.

Logging in from Russia

That's pretty cool:  the stats page says that someone read my post from Russia.  Wow and welcome!

Tricks:

• make less desserts (Made one package of brownies last night rather than the normal two.  We had fewer people home to eat them.)
• put brownies out of sight in the cupboard this morning
• Have ready-to-grab foods that are O.K. to eat a lot of:  yesterday I was hungry entering the house and later than I had thought I would be.  There were mukimame beans in the fridge and it filled me up before going out the door again.  It would help to have a larger list of quick, running-late food.
• Treated myself to an apple juice box (lunch box size) instead of hunting down the larger juice in the next room, because I was multitasking, there were several things going on and I was in a hurry to finish the meal.
• I could add hard boiled egg whites, and a nutrition bar (raisin and oatmeal,) apples, of course, cooked quinoa (frozen in single serving sizes, microwave to eat.)  This is sounding very dry.
• Enjoy the good taste of the food.  Look forward to eating and stop doing more work while eating, says I to myself.  :)

This morning I enjoyed a thick slice of whole wheat toast (3 g fiber each slice) with a little butter.  Bread is kept in the freezer so it will keep until I eat it all.

I tried to make pico de gallo last night but didn't have one of the ingredients.  So instead we had tostadas:  tostada (high in fiber), with fresh lime juice, salt, shredded cooked chicken, chopped onions, chopped tomatoes and chopped fresh jalapenos.  Very good.

The chicken was leg quarters baked/broiled for an earlier meal and frozen individually.  One leg quarter serves two persons if there are enough toppings for the tostadas (and people aren't too hungry.)  Microwaving it on timed heat/lower temperature, like 8:00 minutes on power 6, keeps the chicken tasting fresh.

It's really helpful to have been successful once on the phone app, MyFitnessPal.  By reaching the right number of calories, not being hungry, getting a high fiber count for the other day, it helps me to know that it's O.K. to eat butter with my toast.  I like butter.  I like sweets.  

Thanks for listening.

Snoopy dance! 46 grams of fiber!

Woo hoo!

Total count:  46 g fiber, 49 g fat, 1675 calories

Breakfast
coffee with half and half and sugar
whole wheat toast with 1/2 t butter
4 dates, deglet noor (they're very sweet and a little crunchy)
quinoa, cooked, 1/2 cup

Lunch
skinless chicken breast in citrus sauce (Olive Garden)
veggies, cooked, 1/2 cup
artichokes hearts, 2 pieces
mukimame shelled soybeans, cooked (steam-in-bag, Target,) 1 1/2 cup

Dinner
Bean burrito, 1 3/4
(whole wheat torillla, canned refried beans, 4 t Italian cheese, shredded)
raw carrots, 3/4 cup
hummus, 1/3 cup

Dessert
Flan, Goya powdered mix in 1% milk, 1 1/4 cup

Wow!  I'm excited that the fat grams matched the fiber and that the total count of calories is what the MyFitnessPal app says is the right limit.

Well, I was staring at vanilla wafers all day (my work space is near the pantry.)  I think it helped to keep eating the mukimame until I wasn't hungry.  I was only planning to have 1/2 cup but was still hungry so I ate more.  I first tried edamame as a part of the Asian salad at McDonalds.  Target had mukimame instead.  I think they taste good.

I am clearing the snacks away quicker than I used to.  Having donuts in the cupboard on top of the stack of dinner plates is better than me passing by it and seeing donuts twelve times a day on the edge of the counter.  A coffee table full of snacks reminds me that I like food, when I'm on my way to do another task and wasn't thinking about food.

And I'm really happy to have flan at the end of the day.  It's my favorite.

!!