November 2, 2012

Half a pound down since last week and considering there were two dinner events and Halloween this week its pretty good results. One of the main tools this week has been the lose it app. It does involve calorie counting but actually seeing how many calories things are is motivating me to limit snacks. I have used the app in the past mostly as just a weight tracker but I hadn’t updated it. There are some new features which I like one is a scanner to scan bar codes to get the calories. The other is badges for doing tasks it would be more fun if there was a reward at the end. It is still motivational when you get an e-mail saying congratulations you did this. 

My Starbucks addiction

I used to drink starbucks daily. Lately mainly the price has been motivating me to start making my own coffee. I have a Tassimo and a really good travel mug now. I am slowly making my coffee more and more but am still not at the point where I can go an entire week without going to starbucks. The Christmas drinks are back ahhh those are so addictive. Today I thought its Friday I will have one, had a tall gingerbread latte with soymilk. I had to look up pumpkin spice as the gingerbread didn’t show. 230 calories in the app wow better not drink those everyday. When I looked it up on the starbucks Canada app its 160 calories. I wonder if this is the reason I always put on weight in the States such a big difference for a very similar drink. I didn’t enjoy the latte as much as I remember it, but I did note they now have skinny peppermint mocha’s only 100 calories. I will try that next time.

Carb Cycling

An episode of Dr. OZ came out this week with Chris Powell talking about carb cycling. Essentially you always eat 5 meals a day. You always eat carbs for breakfast then one day carbs one day no carbs. The high carb days still involve healthy carbs whole grain pasta, granola, oats. The low carb days involve things like lettuce wraps. There is also a binge day where you can eat 1000 more calories a day so save the eating out for these days. I liked his rules for this day you have to eat at a table and no leftovers kept in the house.

I have seen a diet like this before but the reason I won’t try it is my body doesn’t enjoy binging.  I also find it difficult to organize my schedule so you only need to go out on cheat days. I do like to only eat out once a week if I can help it.

I eat the same breakfast Monday to Friday which has been working for me. A tortilla with an apple and nut butter. What I am going to try from this is alternating between a carb lunch to a non-carb lunch. I like this idea.