Starting the new year right!

 The New Day One:

I, like many other people, kinda sort of fell off the bandwagon.  I strayed a bit away from my diet during the holidays and it's time to get back on track.  I've got some big resolutions for myself this year.  I've got a total of 46.6 lbs to lose to reach my goal.  I'm trying to lose 2-2.5 lbs a week.  I'm not doing anything overly drastic.  Just breaking out a new notebook to use as a food journal.  I blogged about food journals before.  I stand by them.  They're a wonderful tool.  I've personally kept a journal while we lived in the UK and found myself in the frame of mind that if I don't want to have to write down that slice of cake...I avoided the cake all together.  You tend to stray away from the bad things if you know you have to write everything you consume in a record.  If you try to cheat...you feel guilty and that just stinks.  

To help keep my food journal and exercise journal I bought myself a pretty little Mead Five Star (3 pocket) 100 sheet notebook.  It's PINK!!  And the only reason it's pink is because the BX (Base Exchange) Didn't have purple.  Booooooo!  Here's an example of my notebook.

Same thing except mine is pink

I went onto a website to help me calculate how many calories per day I should be eating to maintain my current weight and how many I should eat to shed pounds.  I also factored in how many calories I should burn doing exercise.  So this is what I've come up with...

Maintenance of my current weight:  2100 calories

Daily calorie intake for weight loss: 1500 calories

Calories burned during daily exercise: 300+

That leaves me with a deficit of about 900 calories burned in a day.  If I follow this as close as possible I'll have a deficit of 6,300 calories per week.  1 lb is 3,500 calories.  So, 6,300 is 1.8 lbs.  

I've decided I'm going to share my journal with you:

Food

Breakfast: Oatmeal (apples and cinnamon), peach Greek yogurt, hot green tea  (310 calories)

Snack: veggie chips, small can of V8 (130 calories)

Lunch: Salad (everything but the kitchen sink kind), choc mint cookies (400 calories)

Snack: veggie chips (not even the full 100 cal bag...Kae stole part of it) (75 calories)

Dinner: baked tilapia, basmati rice, spinach, strawberry fruit bar for dessert  (330 calories)

Food Total: 1,240 calories

Exercise

Jog 1 mile (shhh don't tell my dr...) 13:20 mins  143 cals burned

Incline walk (7.5% / 3 mph) 20:00 mins  160 cals burned

bike (rolling hills level 5 & 7) 30:00 mins  130 cals burned

Exercise Total: 433 calories burned

Total deficit 1/3/2011 : 2,100-1,240+433=1,293 calories burned

I'm keeping track of everything in my notebook and weighing myself once weekly.  I'll note all progress!

Tip of the day:  Keep a food journal!