Gala Apples

I have heard over and over again how good writing your food down can be. This visual exercise shows you how much you actually eat and what it all adds up to. I've been meaning to do it for awhile now, but I keep forgetting or putting it off. Whatever my excuse, it hasn't gotten done.

So this morning, I decided it was time to stop putting it off. It didn't matter that I didn't have a fancy notebook or excel spreadsheet to write it down in. I got a lined yellow notepad from the office supply closet at work (shhh....don't tell!) and started calculating breakfast.

I know breakfast is important blah blah blah, but I just can't make myself a huge plate of food in the morning. I usually eat an apple with a bottle of water. Sometimes, I have an atkins bar or an activia shake to go with it. I wanted to write down the calories and carbs of everything I eat. Since apples don't come with nutritional information on the side, I had to look it up online. I started at About.com's Calorie Count

In case you have trouble seeing that, it says 1 large gala apple has 22 carbs!!! I was shocked. I knew there would be some natural sugar in the apple. It's sweet. But I wasn't expecting 22 carbs. That's almost my daily allotment of carbs.

I love apples. I eat them daily. But now, I need to seriously rethink that. 22 carbs is a lot. I knew I needed to avoid grapes, raisins and bananas, but I thought apples were okay. I decided to get a second opinion. Sparkpeople.com says that apples have 9.5 carbs, but I couldn't find anything on gala apples specifically.

And here I've been avoiding strawberries, and Sparkpeople.com says they only have 5.8 carbs. Calorie Count says 11.7. I love fruit. I know a person is supposed to have several servings of fruit a day (I've seen 2 cups or 5 pieces), but how do you do that and avoid the carbs? Most, if not all, fruit have natural sugars.

I seriously have a lot to learn.

Month #1 Jan 2010 In Review

It's been a month of living a low carb lifestyle. I've had some ups and downs, some good days and bad days. Which is not all that surprising. Overall, I'm happy with myself. I made a lot of changes in just one month's time.

We didn't follow any one diet. Nor did we completely eliminate all sugars or carbs. On average, I would say that we stuck to around 25-30 carbs per day. I didn't count calories. And I didn't exercise at all. (Is this even a weight loss blog?!?!)

What I did do is drastically change my eating habits. I started eating mostly low carb foods and no sugar snacks. I stopped drinking pepsi and started drinking lots of water. I tried to eat 3 balanced meals most of the time. And I only let myself splurge a few times this month. Once, I've already mentioned in a previous post and another time when my husband went out of town, I had pizza one night for supper.

So where do the numbers stand?

Jan. 1:  318.5
Feb. 1: 306.5
Difference: -12

I'm happy to have lost 12 pounds. But I'm also disappointed because if you remember, I lost 7 of those pounds the first week. So....if that trend had continued, I would have lost 28 pounds this month. As time went by, the diet got more difficult and I let myself have larger portions.

In February, I need to work on adding some exercise, because I won't continue to lose weight every week, simply by changing my diet. I need to have some kind of routine. Also, I would like to count calories. I've read several blogs that have had great success, not by following a diet, but by just counting calories. Keeping a food log would be a great help to meeting this goal.

So there you have it. One month gone and 12 pounds gone. Hopefully, forever!