| almk42 | member since December 2008 |
 female, 26 years old Boston, MA | November 6, 2009, 8:47 am Christmas already? I see RED and GREEN -- sorry for the lengthy rant ;)So, yesterday I thought was going to be a complete failure of a food day. Today looks better, so lets not be ironic and spoil it.Yesterday morning I had to run to two elementary schools and help teachers with a LEGO science unit for my research job. I got up late and didn't bring breakfast with me, partially because we were pretty much out of food in the house, and partially because there are a gazillion (no seriously, I've counted them) Dunkin' Donuts between my house and these schools, so I figured somewhere along my journey I'd just pick up a coffee, caramel flavor with just milk (no sugar, yes, I really did just ask you to make coffee with no sugar, that's why I said "just milk") and splurge with one last pumpkin donut before the season is over. The first teacher I visited appeared computer literate this summer when we trained her on the LEGO computers, but had a complete freak out. She realized she needed to use the LEGO computers in class that day but hadn't charged their batteries, updated their firmware, or downloaded the program the students would need to run. After spending much longer there than I meant to, I had to drive to another school 30 minutes away to collect data and introduce a class to their new classroom helper. All the while I was without breakfast and smelling a greek salad from Panera sitting in my back seat that I had cleverly bought the night before so I wouldn't have to make lunch the next day. It was 11am before I left the second elementary school, and faced with another 30 minute drive to get back to my office I decided to finally make that Dunkin' pit stop. My hunger and blood sugar (or lack thereof) got the best of me, and I ordered the #8: a sausage egg and cheese biscuit with a coffee. And sure, I'll have sugar, but just skim milk in the coffee. Well, it turns out changing from regular to skim doesn't make much of a difference. But I almost lost it when I got back to the office to log my breakfast and saw that the breakfast sandwich I had just consumed was 600 calories. I'm pretty sure they're not that much at McDonald's, and I KNOW I could have eaten a BIG MAC for less calories. Well, at least I have a salad for lunch. I go to Panera's web site to look up the nutrition info for the salad in their nifty nutrition calculator which, as I have mentioned before, breaks down all the constituent parts of their meals and even tells you vitamins A, C, calcium and iron. I love it. I don't love it when I go to use said calculator and they have it offline so they can add holiday food. Their PDF nutrition information is hard to read, has discrepancies with the calculator, and doesn't list vitamins. Also, it says my 450 calorie salad has 40 grams of fat. Is that even possible? I mean, it had kalamata olvies, grilled chicken and feta cheese, but those guys are pretty tame comparatively. I mean, the fried buffalo chicken finger salad with fried tortilla strips and blue cheese dressing at Chili's has almost the same amount of fat as they're saying this salad has (don't ask me how I know this). I debated online with my girlfriend as to whether a 450 calorie SALAD could have 360 calories of fat, but dutifully entered the info I had. I swear I'm going back later to change it if the updated Panera calculator say it's wrong, though. So, my food log at this point is beyond red. The fat bar wouldn't even fit in the little box because I was over 200% for the day. And all of my vitamins were red because none of the nutrition info included them. I had about 300 calories left for the day for dinner, and have been going over by around 100 a day and still losing so I wasn't to worried; I could always have a bowl of cereal. Then, in my last class of the day, my professor brings in appetizers for our special guest speakers. From Trader Joe's. In the meeting with my lap top I dutifully logged every bite I ate, from the ounce of cashews to the almond biscotti, mini whole-grain chocolate chip cookies, ounce of shepherd's cheese and 5 water crackers, and 15 grapes. It was all arguably "good" food, but not what I had in mind for "dinner", and enough to put me 70 calories over for the day. My husband was good when I picked him up from work on the way home. I told him I had no calories for dinner, and he said "well, let's go home and I'll have soup or some cereal for dinner." What a good boy. I ended up caving in, because it's really hard for me not to eat anything from 6pm to bedtime. I had a 100 calorie, fat-free chocolate pudding cup, skillfully chosen because it could only help my food logs (calcium and no fat) and it was sufficiently chocolate-y to soothe my horrible food day. If it hadn't been for my multivitamin, EVERYTHING WOULD HAVE BEEN RED. Miraculously enough, I didn't get near my maintenance calories, and it didn't affect my front page stats as badly as I had feared. I went to the grocery store this morning. I bought some good things (pomegranates, yum!) and some bad things (100 calorie Little Debbie nutty bars, which I'll just keep telling myself are actually for my husband). I finally got some more bananas, which are usually the food that keeps me from eating small villages before lunch time. And even after a decadent lunch which includes a serving of Stouffer's mac and cheese I have 800 calories left for the day and I'm green on everything except calcium. I'm going to the mall with my husband to shop for accessories for my smokin'-hot, size 12 Christmas party dress, but more on that (and pictures) later. I think I'll plan dinner from Au Bon Pain in the food court and call it a (green) day.
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