Day 3

On Day 3, the pressure really began to get to me.  Well, not really.  Day 3 was remarkably easy.

This makes me wonder if I’m not doing enough, or eating too much, or otherwise.  Yesterday, I ate well under my goal caloric intake, but I wasn’t hungry at all.  In fact, I was pretty full after dinner.  I almost had to make myself drink the protein shake.  I’m having a hard time wrapping my brain around the “quality vs. quantity” idea when it comes to eating.

Last night, I had 2 turkey burgers--one with the bun, one without.  I know I’m on the low carb phase, but remember I saved my carb allotment all day so I could have the bun.  The burgers had a half slice of cheese each and some mushrooms.  Surprisingly, I enjoyed them pretty well. They were very dense and very filling.  I’ve found that some of the imitation foods like turkey burgers and the soy sausage aren't too bad.  I actually preferred the soy sausage to other frozen sausage patties.  Sometimes you find those hard pieces in frozen sausage and it grosses me out.  I don’t have that problem with the soy and I couldn’t tell the difference.  Now, I’m not going vegetarian.  I still appreciate a good steak, but if I’m going to eat meat, I’m going to make sure it’s good stuff.

So, how am I tracking my calories each day?  I mentioned on Day 1 that technology is a good thing.  If not for YouTube, I wouldn’t be doing this program.  Technology makes many things easier and tracking calories is one of them.

My wife is a very smart person and a few months ago signed-on to a website that tracks calories called SparkPeople.  The cool thing about SparkPeople is it is not just a calorie calculator. They have a vast database of fresh and commercial foods.  The database is also user driven so whatever is not in the general database is usually in the user contributed section.  This allows you to just pick out the food you’ve eaten and it calculates the calories for you.

I have an iPhone (not showing off, just sayin’).  SparkPeople also has an Iphone app that is pretty good.  It allows you to enter all of your meals from the phone so you can keep track throughout the day.