diet report

I enter everything I consume onto the Calorieking website.  There's a $39 yearly fee for using the site, which was the cheapest I could find at the time.  When my year is up in December, I'll switch to sparkpeople.com.  That'll be somewhat of a drag, since I have my own recipes and custom foods entered at calorieking; I'll have to enter them all over again on the new site. 

This is my average over the past two weeks.  I can see by the chart that I'm getting careless.  For three or four months, I had kept my fat intake well below 30% of my calories, and protein well above 15%.  Obviously, I'm getting sloppy about what I eat.

Daily Averages
food calories: 2,328 cals
exercise minutes: 53 mins
exercise calories: 245 cals
net calories: 2,083 cals
fat: 68 g
  saturated fat: 20 g
carbohydrate: 259 g
  sugar: 97 g
protein: 72 g
fiber: 22 g
sodium: 1,930 mg
potassium: 2,375 mg
calcium: 1,542 mg
iron: 11.8 mg
zinc: 3.9 mg
cholesterol: 166.8 mg
effective carbohyrate: 203 g

I'm also getting more sodium and cholesterol lately; at least the sodium is still under 2000 mgs.

I'm going to have to get serious here, or I'll creep right back up to eating junk any time the urge hits me... and the pounds will creep slowly upward, too.

Our weights:  mine, 148.  Cliff, 220.5.  He's very excited about his weigh-in this morning, since he's fluctuated between 221 and 224 for the past month, and he finally broke that trend!

Maybe it's because he's been spending his lunch break in the workout room where he works.  They have all manner of fancy equipment, and he's working on upper-body strength.

Cliff and I have taken a daily 325 mg aspirin for years.  After a discussion sparked by comments in my main journal and some online research, we've switched to 81 mg.  I looked back over the prescriptions given to Cliff when he left the hospital, and 81 mg was what they called for.

Thanks, Mrs Linklater, for the heads-up.

Oat bran muffins

This recipe is in a recent version of Better Homes and Gardens cookbook; I actually didn't have any oat bran on hands yesterday, so I substituted wheat bran.  Not only was Cliff happy with these low-cal gems, but both granddaughters love them.  I had to stop them, or there'd have been none left for Cliff this morning.

1 1/2 cups oat bran
1 cup all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1 beaten egg (or 2 beaten egg whites)
3/4 cup applesauce
1/2 cup fat-free milk
1/4 cup honey
1 tablespoon cooking oil
1/2 cup raisins or snipped dried fruit

1.  Lightly coat bottoms of muffin pan with cooking spray.  Set aside

2.  In a medium bowl combine oat bran, flour, baking powder, soda and salt.  Make a well in center of flour mixture; set aside.

3.  In a small bowl combine egg, applesauce, milk, honey, and oil.  Add applesauce mixture all at once to flour mixture.  Stir just until moistened.  Fold in raisins.

4.  Divide batter evenly among muffin cups to make 12 muffins.  Bake at 400 degrees for 16 to 18 minutes.  Cool in muffin cups on a wire rack for 5 minutes.  Serve warm.

Nutrition facts:  133 calories; 2 g total fat; 0 sat fat; 18 mg chol (less if you don't use egg yolks); 154 g sodium (that's the bad news); 29 g carb., 2 g fiber; 4 g pro.

Exchanges:  1/2 fruit, 1 1/2 starch.

I love how Better Homes and Gardens recent versions of their cookbooks list all this nutrition info!

Wednesday weigh-in

My weight today is 146.  I'm maintaining! 

Cliff weighs 222, and his blood pressure is 113/65.  Yes, he's on meds, but that's still great.  He has both a brother and a cousin who are on BP meds and their blood pressure is stays in the 170+ range in spite of meds.  I'm thankful that his stays so low, and that the meds work. 

Folks, I've figured out that one of the main reasons people get too much cholesterol and too much salt is simply that they eat too much.  Yes, I realize any dummy should be able to figure that out, but it just hit me the other day.

Take pizza, for instance.  A medium slice of pizza has 720 mg of sodium.  You could work that into a day's allowance and not do bad at all (my goal is to keep the sodium under 2,500 mg a day).

But Cliff and I used to buy a LARGE pizza at Pizza Hut and each of us would eat half.  Good grief!

Yeah, so if you are watching cholesterol and sodium, the best way to cut back on them is  to stop overeating.

Duh.  Why did this just now sink in?  And would it have made any difference?  I doubt it.

I've learned how many calories I can use

Thanks to my signing up at Calorieking.com last winter, I have kept meticulous track of all my calories, fats, and vitamins.  I checked out my average calorie intake for the previous two weeks before I recently gained a couple of pounds, and the daily average was 2,400.  I was walking a half-hour daily, which burned off 160 or so of those.  So, it appears that if I maintain my present activity level and stay at 2,300 calories or under, I'll maintain or lose weight.

I paid a small fee to join up with Calorieking because I hadn't yet heard about sparkpeople.com, which is pretty much the same program for free.  When my time runs out with Calorieking, I'll switch.

Oh, Cliff has already lost two of the three pounds he gained.  I had a feeling it was mostly water weight from too much sodium.  As hard as he tries, he just doesn't eat as well when I'm gone, and I was at the fair for three days.  Then the next day after my return, we went to a family reunion, where of course, we loaded up on salt.

 

poor Cliff

Cliff has gained three pounds in the past two weeks.  I knew I shouldn't have left him to his own devices while I went to the fair (actually I had plenty of healthy things here for him). 

Thank the good Lord, I'm back down to 147.  I was a bit worried, after all the fair food I ate last week.  But of course, I spent many hours at the fair walking.

My weight seemed to be creeping up lately, so I started taking two half-hour walks daily instead of just the one with Cliff.  Evidently that has turned things around.  I notice, though, that I'm getting into the habit of constantly wanting to snack, and that's what usually starts me gaining rather than losing.  It's something else I'll have to watch.

Quaker has a new instant oatmeal called Take Heart that Cliff absolutely loves.  It has all kinds of soluble fiber and added antioxidant vitamins E and C.  Sounds great, right?  But for SOME unknown reason, Quaker decided to also add some sodium.  Now, 105 mgs of sodium isn't a lot for a single serving of anything, but it shouldn't be there.  Oatmeal in its natural state has virtually no sodium (4 mg per serving).

I've tried taking regular old-fashioned oats and making them taste like the "Take Heart" oatmeal, but so far, no luck.  Cliff says it just isn't the same.  I'll keep working on it, though.

It's so frustrating to me, seeing sodium put in foods where it wouldn't even be missed if it were left out.

 

Wednesday weigh-in

I chose that mood because I am frustrated at myself:  I gained weight this week.  I'm up to 148.5, which is two pounds heavier than last week.  And I do know why this happened.

I was keeping my calorie intake at around 2,200, on average, up until the last couple of weeks.  I notice my average for the past two weeks, though, is over 2,400 calories.  The other part of the problem is that, on these 100-plus degree days, I don't move around much.  Yesterday I went into our bedroom, the only room in our house with air conditioning, at 4 PM, and stayed there watching TV the rest of the day.  You don't burn a lot of calories lying propped up on a bed.

Cliff, on the other hand, is still losing.  He's 221 1/2 pounds.  He takes in more calories than I do, but he's also moving around... heat or no heat.  Not only at work, but here at home too; he always finds himself some project or other to keep him busy for four hours, until time to come inside and eat lunch and get ready for work.

His blood pressure numbers are great, too.  Go, Cliff!