Day 3, of Week 2, How To Space Your Calories

Weight today: loss 1/2 pound
total lost: 4 1/2 pounds in nine days

1/2 cup of oatmeal: 150
2 tsp of sugar: 30
1/3 cup of skim milk: 30
cinnamon:0
coffee with 1 tbl of creamer:30
sweet-n-low added:0
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running total: 240

vanilla protein shake:120
with 1/2 cup of cantaloupe: 40 (est.)
total: 160
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running total: 400

2 lefse:60
2 large eggs: 140
1/2 cup of fat free cottage cheese:90
1/4 cup of canned pineapple chunks: 35
1 cup of plain spinach: 10
1 large radish:4
1/2 of graham cracker sheet: 33
coffee with powder creamer: 30
sweet-n-low: 0
total: 403
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running total: 803

4 oz banana: 60
vanilla protein shake:130

4 1/2 oz chicken:215
piece of whole wheat bread:120
1 tsp of light butter:15
2tsp of Bacon Ranch dressing: 46
1 cup of spinach:10
coffee with 1 tbl of powder creamer: 30
and whipped cream: 15
1/2 cup of light Bunny tracks ice cream:150
Total: 1584

Fitness: 1 hour of leg weight lift work out
abdominals
1 1/2 mile run

Challenge: thinking about something other than it feels like it's going to take forever for this weight to come off.

Note about pict: cantaloupe...it tasted great last night! You forget how good this stuff tastes until you eat one that's ripened right. These are also low calorie and good for you.

How to Space Your Calories

After you've been counting calories for a week or two you may begin to notice a pattern in how your calories add up throughout the day.

One of the best ways to get through each day involves carefully spacing your calories so that you are never too hungry at any given point.

To avoid this you will want to evenly space your calories throughout the day.

Because you are restricting your calories, your body will have a tendency to slow down its metabolism to compensate for what it perceives as starvation.

This is something you want to avoid at all costs, because a slower metabolism means you do not burn as many calories. The quandary then, is how do you eat in such a way as to keep your metabolism up and your calorie intake down.

Several meals throughout the day is the key. Eating food ever few hours keeps your metabolism running smoothly and tells your body that it is not starving at all despite the overall caloric deficit.

And it makes you feel better too, because you are being fed at regular intervals. An easy way to to do this is to divide you day into your three regular meals and then three regular snacks.

So, for me, it's breakfast at 8:00, snack at 10 or 10:30, lunch at 12:00 or 12:30, snack at 3:00, supper between 5 and 6 and another late night snack.

As I go along in my diet I will refine exactly how many calories I devote to each "meal". The better that I get at optimizing each calorie I eat, the more calories I will have for snacks.

Here's a sample breakdown:
breakfast: 250
snack: 170
lunch:350
snack:170
supper:350
snack:11o
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total: 1400

Your caloric breakdown doesn't have to be exactly this way, but you should be having six meals a day.

Sometimes you may not feel like eating a snack because you are not hungry. I would tell you to eat your snack anyway, because it is important to keep your metabolism working high. Also, you want to avoid becoming hungry to the point that you give into cravings that will put your calorie count over its limit.

What if you want to "save" your calories for a high calorie item later in the day?
I have done it.
You could do it.
I just wouldn't do that all the time. I would look at your calorie options for the day and maybe replace the 150 calorie protein shake with some 50 calorie carrots, or take out the sugar and creamer that are adding up to calories that you could be using for your treat. Or you could just go over your calorie limit by a few hundred calories.

One of the nice things about calorie counting is that you do have options.