I do not consider myself to be “dieting”. I have changed the way that I eat. Now that I have hit my target weight, I don’t intend to revert to my previous eating habits. I consider these behaviors to be a permanent change, though I still experiment and modify.

Most of the changes to my diet come about as a result of repeated experimentation and modification, and I don’t consider myself to be “done” making adjustments. Each dietary change has the following goals in mind:

• Change should be for the better, with each modification focused toward healthier eating. Not every change must be “healthy”, in and of itself. Some enable me to make healthy decisions at another time. But all change is made with the goal of an overall healthy diet.
• Changes should be sustainable because they are convenient. If a food is difficult or time consuming to prepare, then I am unlikely to consistently use that food in my diet.
• Changes should be sustainable because they are enjoyable. I consider each change that I make to be permanent. If I can’t see myself eating this way for the rest of my life, then I don’t make the change. If I change something but later realize that I don’t enjoy my new diet, I revert that change. If I have to “force” myself to eat healthily, then I know it won’t stick, and I’m not interested in temporary results.

Criteria for meals at work

During the week, I eat breakfast and lunch at work. My requirements for food to take to work with me are:

• Portable – I pack a cooler to bring to the office and I don’t want food that will spill all over.

• Easy to prepare – I am not willing to take much time in the mornings to prepare my meals. If I find that I’m spending too much time packing a food, even if I really like it, I will discard it and replace it with something easier.

• Relatively non-perishable – I don’t put my food in a refrigerator at work, so I need to be pretty confident that each item will last in a cooler until I’m ready to eat it.

• Mess free – I tend to eat both breakfast and lunch at my desk. I won’t eat something if it’s too much hassle, or if it’s likely to get my work area (or computers) messy.

• Healthy – I try to put some effort into hitting the major food groups with my meals at work.

• Low calorie density – As I mentioned in the calorie counting article, I have the most control over foods that I eat at breakfast and lunch on the weekdays. These meals are my opportunity to “do it right.” That means I need to work extra hard to find foods that will fill me up but not pack on the calories.

• Taste good – I know myself. I won’t stick with it if I don’t like what I’m eating. If the eating is a chore, then I will eventually give in to the temptation to eat the “wrong” foods. If, on the other hand, I really enjoy the foods that I’m eating, then the habit will likely stick.

I have worked pretty hard, and experimented quite a bit, to find foods that meet the above goals, and I’m still occasionally refining my menu. Here’s what it looks like today.

Breakfast at work

Breakfast is the easiest. My budget is 200-400 calories for this meal. I have settled on Dannon Light & Fit Greek Yogurt as my breakfast of choice. Cherry is my favorite flavor, but blueberry is a very close second. They are delicious, and only 80 calories per cup (0.5 cal/g). I tend to eat two every morning, although I occasionally eat only one, and sometimes will eat up to four cups for breakfast. I frequently supplement the yogurt with some fresh fruit, usually bananas, with the occasional apple, orange, or grapefruit.

I also like to drink an energy drink before work. Rockstar is my brand of choice. My favorite flavors are: lemonade (yellow can), orange drink (orange can), and their zero-carb soda (blue can). They are all low-calorie, and taste good.

Lunch at work

My lunch budget is 400-600 calories. I mix it up a bit for lunch, but I always try to have some fruit, vegetables, grain, and protein. Here are some of the options that I pick from:

• Grape tomatoes – Wegmans sells a 1 quart box of these, and each box has about 160 calories (0.2 cal/g).

• Celery sticks – These are pre-cut and washed. A 12 oz. package has only 35 calories in it (0.1 cal/g).

• Baby carrots – These are my least favorite vegetable, though I still enjoy them. A 16 oz. bag has about 190 calories in it (0.4 cal/g).

• Grapes – I tend to get red seedless and pack about 1 – 2 lbs each day. A 1 lb. bag has about 300 calories in it (0.7 cal/g).

• Cherries – I absolutely adore cherries. They are not always available, but when they are, I eat a lot of them! A 1 lb. bag has about 240 calories in it (0.5 cal/g).

• Apple – My favorites are Empire and Fuji apples. Two small apples have about 200 calories in them (0.8 cal/g).

• Wegmans whole wheat mini pitas – These things are awesome. I can’t tell you how happy I am to have found them. They have only about 50 calories each (2.3 cal/g).

• Packaged tuna fish – Another cool find. By far my favorite is the sweet and spicy flavored tuna. Each pouch is only 90 calories (1.2 cal/g).

• Boiled egg whites – The whites from 5 eggs have about 85 calories in them (0.5 cal/g).

• Water with lemon juice – I pack a quart of water in my cooler every day. I like to pour a bit of lemon juice (about 2 tablespoons) into it to give it a bit of flavor.

So, on a typical day, my lunch might look like:

1 qt tomatoes (160 cal), celery (35 cal), 2 apples (200 cal), 2 pitas (100 cal), 5 egg whites (85 cal), 1 quart water – grand total: 580 calories. That’s a huge amount of food (about 4 lbs, not including the water) with a very minimal overall calorie density of about 0.4 cal/g.

– danBhentschel

How much is too much?

Determining a limit

In volume 3 of this series, I talked about the cell phone app that I use, called Noom. Based on the information you give to Noom, it calculates a daily caloric intake goal for you. You don’t need to use an app to do this. It’s pretty easy to calculate the number of calories you should eat daily. Here is just one of many sites that will help you with this:

Calorie calculator

If I enter my information into this calculator, then it tells me that I need to take in about 2500 calories per day to maintain my current weight. If I want to lose 1 lb a week, then I need to eat about 2000 calories worth of food per day. To lose 2 lbs a week, I should step it down to about 1500 calories per day. This information matches up pretty closely with what Noom tells me.

NOTE: Keep in mind that 3600 calories is roughly equivalent to one pound of weight loss / gain.

What about exercise?

Let’s just lay it out there. If your goal is to lose weight, focus on your diet. Exercise is a secondary consideration. See:

Article from Real Simple magazine

This is a fairly well documented fact, yet many people don’t seem to know it. When people ask me what I did to lose so much weight, one of the most prevalent theories that they will postulate is that I have increased my exercise. I have not done so, and in fact I have somewhat reduced my exercise in the past year. That being said, exercise is still an important part of weight loss planning.

Noom increases your calorie goal dynamically as you record exercise. You tell Noom the type of exercise done, the duration of the exercise, and the intensity. It has a pretty big selection of exercises ranging from standards like “walking” and “running” to more practical things like “house cleaning” and “yard work”, and even includes some pretty eclectic selections like “hula hoop” and “snowshoeing”. Noom calculates how many calories you burned during your activity and increases your caloric intake goal for the day by half of the calories that you burned doing the exercise. Why half? Two reasons:

• To make sure that you see a noticeable benefit from your exercise. If you were to increase your caloric intake enough to exactly balance the energy expended by exercise, then exercise would not be noticeably beneficial, and you run the risk of becoming disheartened.

• Number of calories burned by a given exercise is not at all an exact science. When calculating your benefit from a given exercise, Noom plays it safe and errs on the low side.

So how much can I eat?

Noom can also help with determining what to eat in order to meet your caloric goal. You tell Noom, meal-by-meal, exactly what you ate today and it gives you a running tally of how many calories you have consumed throughout the day. It also categorizes the foods you eat as red, yellow, or green, as mentioned in my post on volumetrics.

Logging what I eat is a pain!

Yes, but Noom makes it relatively painless. Their food database remembers things that you eat frequently, and presents you with a list of your favorite foods for each meal. Do you commonly have yogurt for breakfast? When you are logging your breakfast food, Noom will probably have your yogurt at the top of the list. Noom also has a barcode scanner, so you can scan your food and Noom will (sometimes) just pop up the selection on the screen.

If these two fail you, then you can search for your food. This used to be a bit dodgy, but as their food database is maturing, the process gets easier. Last resort is to enter custom information. You can tell Noom the color (red, yellow, green) of the food you ate, the portion size, and the number of calories.

As the application learns your foods and your eating habits, and as you learn your way around the interface, it actually becomes quite easy. I found this to be my most valuable learning experience from the application. When I first started logging what I ate, I was quite surprised. I knew that I didn’t eat very well, but I didn’t realize how poor my eating habits were. Careful logging of your food combined with weight tracking can give you a valuable tool to evaluate the impact of your diet on your weight and adjust accordingly.

Budget your meals

Let’s say you determine that you should eat about 1800 calories per day, and you have been logging your meals for a little while, so you have an approximate idea of what you are eating. It’s time to make a budget. Consider the following questions:

• At which meal(s) do you ingest the most calories?
• At which meal(s) do you have the most control over what you eat?
• At which meal(s) are you most likely to overeat?
• For which meal(s) are you willing to experiment with lower calorie foods?

I have the most control over my weekday breakfasts. I’m usually at the mercy of whatever Marlene decides to prepare for dinner, and I frequently go out to eat with a friend or coworker for lunch, but breakfast is entirely my own affair. I tend to eat the most during dinner, not because I eat large portions but just because I don’t tend to plan those meals myself. So here is the approximate budget I have come up with for myself:

• Weekdays
  • Breakfast: 200 – 400 calories
  • Lunch: 400 – 600 calories
  • Dinner: 800 – 1200 calories

• Weekends
  • Breakfast: 500 – 700 calories
  • Lunch: 500 – 700 calories
  • Dinner: 800 – 1200 calories

Notice that on the weekends I am likely to go over my 1800 calorie limit. I have conceded that I am likely to overeat on the weekends, and consequently my weight will likely go up slightly. Since I tend to usually be closer to the lower end of my budget on weekdays, it all works out just fine in the end. If it didn’t, then I would need to adjust something.

Throughout the day, I try to be conscious of approximately where I am compared to my budget. Did I have a slightly large breakfast? Then I’m on the high side of my budget and try to compensate a bit at lunch. Still high at dinner? Then I try again to eat a bit less to bring my overall daily total within my 1800 budget. If I fail, then I don’t try to compensate the next day. The meter is reset each morning. Each day is a new opportunity for me to do my best.

 – danBhentschel