In my last post I wrote:

So how did I do in terms of Diet? Well let’s just say that weight management and all inclusive resorts with all you can eat buffets don’t mix too well and I think I’ll need to write another blog post about that one…

And “Jim” posted a comment on my blog saying:

Tweets are boring. Let us know how all this training is impacting on your weight now that you have fallen off the chuck wagon —- so to speak! It is always my major problem and I am interested to see whether you are coping better than I do. I am sure others are too!

So I think I owe an update on how my training is impacting my weight. Last time I blogged about my weight I was down to 164.8 lbs (74.7 kg) after a month of not counting calories and eating healthy. That was 2.5 months ago. Since then I have been training for a marathon, running a lot of miles, some weeks over 50, I traveled to Europe and ate a lot of garbage while I was there. I not only quit counting calories I also quit weighing myself while I was in Europe.

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, so here is a picture (chart) of what happened to my weight in the past two and a half months:

Holy smokes Batman! Despite burning calories at an alarming rate my weight has not been doing as well as I would have hoped. The gap in the chart shows my European vacation and you can see the sudden climb in the average weight as soon as I returned and stepped on the scale. I gained about 3 lbs (1.3 kg) in two weeks while I was on vacation. That means a 750 calorie daily surplus! If you consider that I needed to eat about 2,600 calories a day just to maintain my weight it means I was eating over 3,300 calories a day while on vacation. Knowing what I did I find it not at all surprising that I have gained all that weight and ate all that much food while I was there. All inclusive, all you can eat and drink, resorts are bad for the waistline.

Once I came back from my trip I have been trying to maintain my weight with more or less success. I’m currently sitting on a 168.7 lbs (76.5 kg) rolling average which is still 4 lbs higher than my all time low of 164.6 that I reached at the end of July. I don’t think I’m on a runaway train by any means but I know that I will have to make a more diligent effort at keeping my food intake in check and keeping my calorie intake in line with my caloric expenditure.

In August I ran a total of 202.5 miles which is the most I have ran in a single month so far. This is my biggest milestone and achievement for the month, just the sheer amount of miles I ran. It took me a total of 26 hours and 59 seconds to cover the distance in 27 running sessions for an average pace of 7 minutes 42 seconds per mile. I have burned 20,055 calories, which means if I didn’t run at all in August I’d be almost 6 lbs heavier than I am.

Another big milestone I have achieved in August was that I ran over 50 miles in a single week. From August 16th through August 22nd I ran a total of 50.1 miles which is the most I have done in a single week so far. It was week 11 in my 18 week long marathon training plan.

The biggest contributor to my 50 mile running week was my longest run so far which was a 20 mile run that was quickly followed by a 10 mile run the next day. Since then I ran another 20 mile run and I have one more planned before I can say I’m ready for my marathon on 10/10/10.

August was also the month when I finally left Texas and ran abroad. We traveled to Hungary and Mallorca, Spain where I logged a total of 111 miles including a 17 and a 19 mile long run. I also carried my Android phone on these runs and recorded some video footage that I should be posting on the blog eventually as time permits.

All in all August was an awesome month in terms of running. I ran a lot and I ran strong. So how did I do in terms of Diet? Well let’s just say that weight management and all inclusive resorts with all you can eat buffets don’t mix too well and I think I’ll need to write another blog post about that one…

Eating healthy and making good choices became second nature to me by now. Just because I quit counting the calories it did not mean I quit watching what I’ve been putting in my mouth. I’m still eating the same foods in the same amounts as I have been in the past I just do it without the help of my kitchen scale and without jotting down everything into my food diary. I still keep a mental diary of my daily intake and I’m still counting calories in my head. But it’s a lot more manageable than running to the computer after each meal to make sure the calories are still in order.

I’m also allowing myself small indulgences and I no longer feel utter remorse if I eat a cookie or devour a piece of cake every now and again. They fit into my lifestyle and they fit into my caloric budget as you can tell from my weight chart for the past month.

As you can see my weight has been fluctuating a bit over the past month with two notable spikes. The first one happened on the weekend of my half marathon and I think it had to do with hydration more than anything. I lost a lot of water during the race and I probably drank more than my fair share of water after the race to replenish. I also carb loaded for the race which meant more pasta than I would usually eat. The second surge in weigh was on 4th of July weekend. That weekend involved some festive eating with salty snacks at a friend’s place which also lends itself to excess water intake. But that very same weekend I also ran a total of 20 miles in two runs burning over 2,000 calories so everything went back to normal after that.

If you look at the overall trend of the red line it’s still downward. I’m happy about that even though my wife is not. She thinks I’m about 10 lbs too light at the moment and I should not only quit “dieting” I should start eating more to gain 10 lbs back. Needless to say I have no intentions of quitting my “diet” and I will not gain any weight back. My averaged weight on 6/17/10 was 166.6 lbs (75.6 kg) and today it’s 164.8 lbs (74.7 kg). I have lost 1.8 lbs (0.8 kg) in a month without even trying and without counting calories or measuring food with a scale. I’m officially under my initial target weight that I set when I started my transformation which was 165 lbs (74.8 kg). Having reached this goal now I’m onto the next one which is single digit body fat. I have checked my fat percentage with a 3 point caliper measurement and I’m at 11.8% at the moment. I know I’ll get there and I’m in no real hurry to achieve it.

Eat Less Move More

There is no secret! It really comes down to one very simple thing: to lose weight you have to generate a caloric deficit. There are two ways of generating that caloric deficit.

1. Eat Less
   By reducing your caloric intake yet maintaining caloric demand your body will be in a caloric deficit and it will have to come up with the energy from some other source besides food. And most of us have plenty of storage to rely on. Our fat cells are excellent energy stores, they store about 3,500 calories of energy per lbs of body fat. So by eating less your body will start to burn off all the excess fat and slowly but surely your waistline will start to dwindle.
2. Move More
   The other way of generating a caloric deficit is by increasing the caloric demand of your body. Caloric demand of your body depends on age, sex, weight and activity level. The older you get the lower the caloric demand so the sooner you start the better off you are. It is pretty tough to change your sex, I’m not really sure it’s worth it, and the lower your weight the less energy you use so that really leaves us with one option to increase caloric demand which is increasing your activity level. Unless you quit your desk job and start loading trains or stocking warehouse shelves you really have no other option but start an exercise regime. It can be as little as 30 minutes of walking in the evenings after dinner or as much as a full fledged marathon training running 35+ miles a week. As long as you increase your activity level slowly but surely your waistline will start to dwindle.

And that’s all there is to it! As long as you do either one, or for optimal results both, you will lose weight. And the person who just asked the question while gets a bit disappointed that there was no secret involved, no pixie dust, no gastric bypass surgery, no magic drugs, no quick fix deep down inside they already knew that the only way to shed the fat and keep it off is by eating less and moving more.

I see a lot of people are fighting to lose that “last 5-10 lbs” and quite honestly most people could probably stand to lose that last 5-10lbs whether they admit to it or not. Even at my half marathon race most guys I have talked to said “If I could only lose that 10 lbs my time would improve so much!”. Yet, for some reason, they’re stuck at their weight. They run a lot of miles I presume, it’s tough to run a half marathon without running a lot of miles and they still can’t shake that last 10 lbs. I think I know why it is so difficult to drop that final 10 lbs and to be able to tighten the belt one more notch.

1. Weight loss fatigue.
   I’ve been losing weight for over 7 months. It is a very tiring process even in light of all the progress I have made. Counting calories for days on, writing down every single item I consume, worry every time the family goes out for dinner what I would eat and wondering just how many days having a slice of birthday cake and a beer with the friends would set me back can be a full time job. And after a while you reach a point in your weight loss where you get tired of it and you say “screw it, I deserve that piece of cake” or “I’m not going to count calories today”. I know that I’m pretty tired of it all myself, I even quit calorie counting completely a week ago. But with getting more and more relaxed with the diet comes the other problem.
2. Diet Complacency
   When you do something long enough you begin to master it. When you’ve been dieting for so long you start to learn how many calories are in a large egg (70) how much calorie is in a cup of rice (about 200-220) and how big is a 4oz portion of chicken (about the size of a deck of cards). These things start to become second nature. You feel like you’re in the groove and you’re in full control. But then you start to justify some not so perfect choices and you start to eat some things you know you shouldn’t. You would know that eating that third tortilla (140 calories) is probably not a good idea and it does not really fit into your caloric budget but you do it anyway because “I’ve already ran 4 miles this morning and that burned 400 calories”. You will look at the loaf of bread at the Italian restaurant on a Saturday night and you will think “I’m going to run my 10 mile long run burning 1,000 calories, what’s the harm in eating 300 extra calories tonight? I’m just carb loading for tomorrow”. You start justifying diet choices and rationalizing excess calories that you wouldn’t eat had you still been calorie counting. Combined with the weight loss fatigue you feel downright entitled to that piece of brownie “I’ve been dieting this long, I deserve that brownie!”. So you end up eating a 100 calories here another 100 calories there and before you know it you just ate an extra 200-300 calories on top of your daily budget. And that is a big issue when you combine it with the third issue.
3. Change in Basal Metabolic Rate
   It is no secret that the bigger is someone the more calories it takes to support that body. There are equations that can estimate your basal metabolic rate (BMR) or resting metabolic rate (RMR). In the different calculators weight is one of the determining factors for BMR/RMR and it takes around 5 calories per lbs of body weight to maintain such weight. There are other factors involved, such as sex, age, height and how active a person is but weight is has an effect of about 5 calories per lbs of body weight. So if someone loses 10 lbs their basal metabolic rate would drop by 50 calories. Now 50 calories a day is not much. But I lost 70+ lbs which means my basal metabolic rate has dropped by over 350 calories. So if I started with a basal metabolic rate of 2,400 calories at 237 lbs now, at 165 lbs, my basal metabolic rate is down to almost 2,000 calories. So if I keep staying on my 1,800 calorie diet instead of generating a 600 calorie daily deficit, which would produce a nice 1.5 lbs weekly weight loss, I’m only generating a 200 calorie daily deficit even though I’m not doing anything different than I did at the beginning of my diet. If I would want to maintain the same rate of weight loss that I had at the beginning I would have to reduce my calories to about 1,400 calories a day. That is a huge difference!

So if you combine the fact that you’re only generating a 200 calorie deficit with an 1,800 calorie diet and that you’re complacency eating an excess 200 calories daily you can see how you can end up just maintaining your current weight and not losing any more even though, with the exception of the small indulgences, you are eating the same thing that you have been eating for the past 7 months. This can be a very depressing situation where you feel like you will never reach your goal and as if someone just keeps moving the finish line further and further. So what am I doing to make sure I don’t hit this plateau?

Nothing. I’m actually so close to my goal that I don’t care that I’m not getting there within the next two weeks. I’m taking a conscious break from my weight loss and I’m concentrating on other things. I’m focusing on my running goals and training while still eating healthy foods and making healthy choices. I’m paying attention to what I eat and I’m trying to maintain my weight without the daily drag of calorie counting. I’m hoping to be able to maintain my current weight and current physique without worrying about food. I’m trying to enjoy myself without getting fat again. And once I succeed in that I might concentrate on losing that last 10 lbs.

Since he told me about his lunch plan in the morning I had plenty of time to look up their nutrition information and calorie counts on the Chick-fil-A website. Since their menu is rather simple it was very easy to make my choices. I knew that i would not eat anything that was fried so that left me with their grilled chicken options which were two sandwiches, one with cheese and bacon and one without and two salads, one with fruits and one without.

I carefully weighed the calorie count and decided that I would have a salad for good filler and good volume and I would also eat a chicken sandwich for taste and some more carbs. The two salad options were Chargrilled & Fruit Salad or the Chargrilled Chicken Garden Salad. If you look on the nutrition page the fruit salad is 230 calories and boasts 17 grams of sugar while the plain chicken salad is a mere 180 calories and only 6 grams of sugar. So you would naturally say that the fruit salad is the worse choice and you would opt for the regular salad. But those extra 9 grams of sugar all come from healthy fruits such as strawberries, apple, grapes and mandarin oranges. So it’s a bunch of healthy stuff. And the story doesn’t end here.

What Chick-fil-A doesn’t make apparent at this point is that this calorie count does not include the dressing, croutons, sunflower seeds, granola or whatever else you might end up putting on the salad. The fruit salad comes with Harvest Nut Granola (60 calories per serving, 2 grams of fiber) while the garden salad comes with Butter Garlic Croutons (60 calories, no fiber) and Honey Roasted Sunflower Seeds (90 calories). So once you put all the add-ons onto the salads the fruit salad is sitting at 270 calories while the garden salad is up to 330 calories. So at this point the Fruit salad certainly looks like a better choice in terms of calories. but the story doesn’t end here.

We still have to add salad dressing to the equation. If you go with Ranch or Caesar dressing you just added another 160 calories to either of these two salads. If you opt for the Light Italian dressing you’re only adding 15 calories to your salad. The fruit salad comes with the Reduced Fat Berry Balsamic Vinaigrette which clocks in at 70 calories per serving, but you can certainly opt for something else. So if you get the Fruit salad as listed, with the balsamic viegarette,  it would be a total of 340 calories for the salad. If you ordered the garden salad with ranch it would be 490 calories while if you opt for the light Italian you’d be at 345 calories. At this point I have decided to go with the fruit salad and the balsamic vinaigrette for a total of 340 calories. But the story doesn’t end here.

For the sandwich I chose the Chargrilled Chicken Club, with bacon and cheese for 410 calories. But it’s only 410 calories if you skip the Honey Roasted BBQ Sauce packet that comes with it whether you want it or not. That small packet of BBQ sauce adds 60 calories to the sandwich if you choose to squeeze it on there. I decided ahead of time that I would not use the packet and only eat the sandwich. So I was ready to go in and eat 750 calories for my lunch which is not a terrible amount of calories if you’re eating 2,300 calories a day. It’s actually quite a healthy amount of calorie with decent macronutrient breakdown. But the story doesn’t end here.

Once I ordered my salad and sandwich, to my surprise, they not only gave me the salad, the sandwich, the BBQ packet, the salad dressing and the granola packet but they also threw in the sunflower seeds, which were clearly not listed as an ingredient on their website. They have clearly just “supersized” my lunch by adding another 90 calories to it with a mere 0.5 oz of sunflower seeds that most people would not even notice whether they ate it or not. But that wasn’t even the biggest surprise. The biggest surprise was the salad dressing. The size of the packet was something that could serve a family of four and the label clearly mentioned it. Serving size: 2 tbsp (37g), Servings Per Container: about 2.0. So Chick-fil-A just gave me an extra 70 calories worth of salad dressing which would be invisible to the casual observer. Had I opted for the 160 calories per serving (a serving of Ranch is only 30 grams vs. the 37 grams of the vinaigrette) Ranch Dressing I’d be in the hole for another 160 calories. So that 180 calorie garden salad can end up being a 650 calorie meal once you factor in the croutons, sunflower seeds and the two servings of Ranch dressing that you’ll receive whether you want it or not.

Don’t misunderstand me, I really like the fact that every addition is clearly labeled with calorie content and that Chick-fil-A lists all this on their website and the separate packets give you the option to have a 180 calorie salad or a 650 calorie salad but it’s a minefield and a danger zone for the casual observer. I’d also mention that they list no sandwich on their menu that would beat the 650 calorie salad monstrosity in calories, not even their most calorie dense Spicy Chicken Deluxe Sandwich can top that with its measly 580 calories. And let’s not forget that while the Spicy Chicken Deluxe Sandwich contains an impressive 27 grams of fat, 8 of which are saturated and 9 grams of sugar that dream garden salad with double ranch (who could stop at half a packet I mean one packet is one serving, right?) dwarfs those numbers with a whopping 49 grams of fat, 9.5 of which are saturated, and 10 grams of sugar. And if you’d think that at least you’re getting some fiber if you go with the salad, think again as it’s only 1 gram more fiber vs. the Spicy Deluxe Sandwich with 5 grams vs. 4 grams.

I have enjoyed my lunch at Chick-fil-A today despite all the horrors that I have witnessed, but it just shows that if you’re serious about controlling your weight you have to be on the absolute lookout for yourself as everywhere you go things will try to sabotage your every move towards healthier eating.

Just for the record, I actually ended up eating the Fruit Salad with only 14 grams (less than half a serving) of the Berry Balsamic Vinaigrette dressing, I didn’t eat the granola nor the sunflower seeds and I had the Chargrilled Chicken Club Sandwich sans BBQ sauce for a total of 664 calories. As for my son? He was very happy with his two strips of fried chicken, waffle potato fries and Milk for a total of 650 calories. It’s kind of shocking to see that he ate as much as I did and this is the very reason why he’s only been there 3-4 times in his lifetime which is not much fewer than the times I happened to end up there.

Yesterday was a long run day for me and I ran 8.1 miles (13 km) in an hour and 9 minutes. This was the longest run I have done to date and it was a pretty good one. I have enjoyed it greatly. I find that running gives me time to be with my thoughts alone and think about various things I wouldn’t have time to think about. I think about my family, my kids, office stuff, what I will write on this blog once I get back, stupid stuff or whatever else comes to my mind.

Long runs are meant to be easy and ran at a conversational pace. Even though I have tried it to be easy it turned out to be pretty tough due to the weather. I had to run in 45 degrees (7 C) which is actually a pretty good temperature to run in, not too hot and not too cold. What made the weather tough was the wind. We had 30+ mph (50 km/h) sustained winds with gusts up to 40+ mph (65 km/h). Running in this kind of wind can be anything but fun. Luckily the wind was blowing in my face for the most part heading out and it was behind me pushing me home on the way back. Had it been the other way around it would have sucked even more. It was like getting a second wind (no pun) for the return 4 miles. My pace certainly reflected the shift in direction; I have averaged 8:51 min/mile (5:30 min/km) on the way out and averaged 8:24 min/mile (5:13 min/km) on the way back for a total average of 8:37 min/mile (5:21 min/km) which is right smack the same as my usual easy running pace. So the wind didn’t affect my overall pace as much as I would have thought it would and it helped me produce a really nice reverse split. Reverse split is when you run the second half of a run faster than the first half.

What made the run also tough was the elevation. This particular route has 414 ft of elevation climb in it. Most of it, 250 ft, comes in the front half and the rest in the return. This, combined with the wind caused my pace to be all over the map instead of being a steady slow run. But I have concentrated on heart rate, ie. effort, instead of pace and my heart rate was pretty level throughout the run. I think I handled the run rather well and it was pretty good for my first 8 miler. I’ll be running a lot more than this later so it better feel good. I also managed to break the calorie consumption barrier with this one, I have burned 1,000 calories in the 70 minutes I was out running. That is a whole lot of fat off my tush!

So Sunday was a pretty good run and today called for an easy 3 mile (5K) recovery run. I did it in the evening as morning temperatures were freezing but by tonight the weather was really nice in the upper 60s (20 C). Today’s diet was very clean and low cal, I had brown rice, steamed veggies and canned salmon for lunch and grilled chicken for dinner. It has left me with about 400 more calories to eat after my long run. I have a good friend who I used to fight fires with while I was on the fire department. We would meet up at Whataburger and get some shakes and chat. Lately he has been very busy with work and a newborn son so we hadn’t been seeing much of each other lately. I figured with the extra 400 calories to burn I could afford to get a shake tonight. A 16 oz Kid’s Vanilla Shake is 440 calories, mostly sugar and no real nutritional value. I thought I could afford it once in a blue moon so I called him up before my run but he didn’t answer. I left him a message and went for my 3 miles.

Once I got home there was still no message from him so I thought the evening was a bust and I ate a granola bar, 190 calories and I was just about contemplating eating some bananas to bring my daily calories up to their required 1,800. That is when I got the text message from him that we’re good to go and he’d see me at Whataburger in 10. Darn! I so wished I hadn’t had that granola bar at this point! But I already ate it! What should I do?

I went to Whataburger and ordered the Kid’s shake but I also asked for an extra 16 oz cup and split the shake in half. I drank half of it and my buddy drank the other half. This made me stay within my calorie budget yet still enjoy his company and talk for 45 minutes before he had to head back home to tend to his family. I am really glad I got to see him and we got to chat just like in the good old days over some vanilla shake. The only difference was that I had half of a kid’s cup instead of a regular or large. And quite honestly I can’t tell the difference, all I remember is having great conversation and shake tonight.

200 Miles. That is the number of miles I had run since the first time I have started running again. Well it’s actually 215 miles and it’s from the time I started tracking my running which wasn’t until three days after my first run. It has been a great experience so far with the running and I am extremely happy that my runner self has finally broken out of the fat guy prison and runs free. Running empowers and invigorates me and makes me feel great! I can’t really describe the feeling I get on a run and how I feel the urge to go and run more the next day. There is no denying it, I’m hooked! It just feels totally fantastic.

200,000 calories. This one’s explaining requires some basic math. As we all know from the nutritional information label that is posted on every single food item we buy 1 gram of fat contains 9 calories. One pound equals 453 grams so 1 lbs of fat contains 453 x 9 = 4077 calories. But to lose 1 lbs of body fat you only have to burn 3,500 calories because there are other factors that come into play such as ATP reactions turning body fat into actual energy, but I’m sure someone with an organic chemistry degree could answer this question better. Bottom line is that to lose 1 lbs of body fat you have to burn an excess or consume a deficit of 3,500 calories or a combination of the two. Based on the 3,500 calories into a pound of body fat math 200,000 calories equals 57.14 lbs. And this is the exact amount of weight I have lost so far from my starting weight of 237 lbs down to today’s 179.7 lbs. I have generated a 200,000 calorie deficit in the past 145 days. Let’s put that 200,000 calorie number into some digestible numbers. 200,000 calories equal:

• 370 Big Mac sandwiches
• Or 3,636 Oreo Cookies
• Or 1,700 large apples weighin 847 lbs (384 kg)
• Or 576 8 oz Filet Mignon Steaks

Bottom line, it’s a TON of food and a TON of calories. And I no longer carry it on my body. I’m just so glad I have made it this far. I know I can make it all the way to the end now and maintain it with my new found running and lifestyle.

The last number is just a more realistic representation of the 200,000 calories. I am officially under 180 lbs (81.6 kg). The metric celebration of 80 kg will have to wait another week and a half.

Saturday’s overeating was mild, and the main culprit was the impulse banana I had at the finish of my 10K race. I just couldn’t say no to this delicious sugar and potassium filled snack after running for 10 kilometers (6.2 miles). Considering that I had just burned 887 calories with the running the banana was justified. I had a mild lunch with eggs, whole wheat toast and some mixed vegetables that clocked in at 585 calories so I thought I was in the clear and I managed to offset the banana. And had we not gone out to Carino’s Italian Grill for dinner I would have been just fine. But dinner ended up being 846 calories in itself which is a light fare when you consider that I just went to an Italian restaurant where my favorite dish, Chicken Milano, clocks in at a respectable 1,418 calories, 824 of which comes from fat. Considering my entire meal consisted as much calories as there is fat calories in my once loved meal I think I did awesome. Oh, and I didn’t count the 2 loaves of bread that I used to devour before salad or soup would even hit the table. This time I had no bread.

Sunday’s eating was a completely different story. I didn’t have a banana at a race, we didn’t go to Carino’s for dinner. But we did go to the zoo with the kids and when we go to the zoo it also means we’ll have lunch at Panera Bread. Panera Bread is conveniently located right across from the zoo so we stop in every time on our way home. My wife loves sandwich café places like Panera Bread, Corner Bakery or La Madeline. I went for my usual order which ends up at 540 calories usually. Unfortunately this time I couldn’t stop myself and ate the baguette piece that came with my meal as well and added another 180 calories to my meal. So now instead of my usual 540 I ended up at 720 calories for lunch.

After the 180 excess calorie lunch I still felt I was under control and had I stuck with the plan of eating light for dinner with some lean meat or fish and some steamed veggies I would have been perfectly fine. But this is where the crêpes come in the picture. My family loves crêpes. But we’re not the “let’s go to the mall and stuf our faces full of crêpes” kind of people. We’re more the “Daddy, I’d like crêpes, can you make some please?” kind of people. So my son was pretty persistent with the crêpe request and who can blame him? It’s not like I make crêpes every weekend or even every month. It’s more like a twice a year deal where I succumb to making crêpes.

Making crêpes is not really that big of a deal. But for some reason it always seems too time consuming and we abandon the idea before we’d even make the batter. But once you get down to it it’s really not much worse than making any other meal. The toughest part is the part where you have to flip the crêpe from one side to the other and this is where you can really screw it up and you can end up with a lump of flour paste instead of a nice flat crêpe. My wife, as great and awesome of a cook she is, simply will not make crêpes because of this very fear of screwing up the flip and producing rejects. So crêpe making in my family is a man’s job.

In my home country we actually have a signature dish that is made with crêpes and it’s not a dessert. It’s actually a meat filled crêpe. My son obviously prefers the Nutella filled variety over the meat filled one but I actually love crêpes both sweet and savory. Since they take the same crêpe I made a large batch of crêpes while my wife made the meat filling, 85/15 turkey instead of veal, and we also made a sweet filling from farmer’s cheese mixed with granulated sugar and lemon zest for sweet crêpes.

I would usually eat 4 or 5 of the meat filled crêpes and I’d probably have another 2 of the sweet ones as dessert but this time I had two of the meat filled ones (610 calories) and one of the cheese filled dessert ones (264 calories). I also ate a good amount of steamed veggies to go with it and fill me up. So the crêpes did me in when you combined it with some heavy lunch from Panera Bread. I just couldn’t resist the thin crust over the minced meat and the creamy sweet filling for dessert.

But to prove that all this can be done in a moderated fashion I had leftovers of the crêpes today. Two meat filled ones with steamed broccoli and cauliflower as sides for lunch and one with the cheese filling for dessert after my shrimp with rice and veggies dinner. And today I only had 1,803 calories even though I had the same three crêpes as yesterday. The difference was the low cal dinner of shrimp with moderate portion of rice and the lighter breakfast of yogurt and nuts instead of the eggs and toast. So I think I got the crêpe craving out of my system for at least another 4 months. As for my son, he had one of the meat filled ones yesterday for dinner and one of the cheese filled ones today and yesterday for dessert. I’m just glad he liked the meat filled one too.

A proper diet is the most important aspect of the healthy lifestyle trinity; diet, strength training and cardio exercise. And this is the part where a lot of people fall short or sabotage themselves, their goals and progress. I have seen a lot of people going to the gym then eat a juicy burger with fries afterward and wash it down with a large soft drink. I have seen people crossing the finish line at the 5K race and head straight for the cookies and Gatorade at the recovery table instead of the carrots and water. I have seen people stepping off the elliptical machine to gulp down 400 calories worth of “recovery drink”. And I have heard of numerous people doing a P90X training program but ignoring the nutritional booklet that comes with it.

I can safely say that I am trying to stay on top of my diet. I have no cheat meals, no cheat days, no cheat weeks. I just have healthy eating day in day out. But there are times when you get a curve ball thrown at you and you just have to roll with it. Eating out with family and friends can definitely be a huge curve ball.

Every time we have a birthday lunch at work I get very concerned. I’m hoping that the birthday person will pick something healthy and I would feel comfortable picking a food item off the menu but usually people are quite inconsiderate of my food choices when they pick their birthday lunch. It’s their birthday after all. So how can you cope with this kind of problem?

I could simply say “no thank you” and not go. But somehow I feel that is not the right thing to do. I want to be part of the team and partake in the company lunch. So I am obligated to go. I could always just go but not eat. I have a co-worker who does just that. He will go out with the rest of the lunch crowd and have an ice tea with no sugar and just partake in the social aspect of the lunch. But he definitely gets a lot of crap for it every time. I on the other hand love to go out. But I always fear the menu and I feel like restaurants are like a box of chocolate: you just don’t know what you’re gonna get.

I’m getting better and better at navigating the menus at restaurants and I can put together a mental image of what every item probably contains calorie and nutrient wise. I always try to look up the restaurant’s menu and hopefully nutritional guide on-line before we arrive to the place. If nutritional guide is not available I will try to find nutritional information for a similar restaurant and go with their estimates. I mean a fajita is a fajita and probably contains similar amounts of meat regardless which restaurant prepared it.

Like my favorite Mexican restaurant Uncle Julio’s does not provide nutritional information. But On The Border does. So I am pretty sure I need to stay away from the chips and salsa regardless of which one I end up at. I also know that eating 4 flour tortillas is probably not the best thing to eat and maybe two should be a wiser decision.

Then you also have the situation when you check out their menu and nutritional guide at home, go to the place and they don’t serve what you picked out. Panera Bread claims to be healthy eating. They are, as long as you stick with their vegetarian black bean soup, which is very tasty, and half a Frontega Chicken Pannini. But if you go on a Sunday instead of a Saturday they don’t serve vegetarian black bean soup. Instead they have sugar infested tomato soup or saturated fat horror baked potato soup. So what do you do? You suck it up and roll with it. It is not the end of the world and you just make the best decision you can.

Sometimes I go to a restaurant that I used to visit often but have not been back in a long time, especially since my lifestyle change. These places can be a total crap shoot. You can walk in all confident believing that you know the menu and end up sorely disappointed with the once loved food. This actually happened to me at Razzoo’s just a couple of weeks ago. You can also find a pleasant surprise and find a completely different section of the menu with food selections you would have never considered in a million years before.

Sometimes I end up at restaurants that I have never visited before. And they also tend to be hole in the wall time establishments that don’t even have a website let alone nutritional guides. So you go and fly blind. You hope for the best and you make the best of it. The office group recently visited a restaurant called Yucatan Taco Stand. They make decent burrito bowls and fish tacos but they don’t provide nutritional information. I was going to order something extravagant off their menu had I known the nutritional value but since I was clueless I stuck with a burrito bowl instead and used Chipotle’s nutrition guide to estimate the calories. I have also tried to contact the restaurant via e-mail but they chose not to respond to my query.

So as much as I love eating out nowadays it’s a mixed feeling every time the office party decides to go out. I feel like I’m out of my comfort zone and it puts me into a new challenge every time. I love challenges but I feel the rewards are not always worth it. So how do you feel about eating out when on a diet? What do you do? Do you have any advice for me how to tackle situations like this?