New Year, New Diet

I always hate using the word diet, because it makes me sound like one of these freaks who thinks eating a bean sprout a day will get them the kind of physique they want.

I am however now sticking to myfoodidary.com and weighing out my food portions.  I might sound like a bit of a pain in the bum, but it really isn’t.  Most packs of food tell you exactly how much a serving is and exactly what is has in it.  Sure, it takes a little bit of time and effort to put things in my food diary.  However the compositional analysis of your diet is extremely helpful and insightful.  It also encourages you to think about what you are putting in your body. 

Eating enough protein has always been a challenge for me, being largely vegetarian.  I do eat diary products, and eggs, and even some fish.  Using myfoodidary.com I can know the split of fats, carbs, and protein.   It even warns of eating too much salt and a saturated fats which is extremely important from a health perspective.

The best thing about this new way of eating is that nothing is forbidden.  All that myfooddiary.com tells you is what you’ve eaten and how much of it.  It even tells you how many calories in a day you have left in order to stay on target for your weight loss goal. 

MFD, also has another great feature and that is the reports section.  It shows you calories burned through exercise, and shows you the net total.  After all I don’t want to drain myself of energy, I want to increase my energy. 

The challenge with this is that eating healthy foods, you need to consume more of them to get the same amount of calories.  So I am finding eating is getting a bit of a chore.  Especially as I eat 6 times per day now.  I have some strategies for this, including protein bars in my desk drawer, and a few “just add water” type snack foods. 

One final watchword is that I am discovering pre-packaged foods have quite high levels of sodium, so I am using them sparingly, and eating as much fresh or frozen veggies etc as possible.

So far this plan is working quite well, because I am in control of what I am eating.  If you haven’t seen myfooddiary.com then just visit the web site.  I find it extremely helpful.