Below is what I ate during Week 4 up to the weigh in day (I weighed in Sunday morning as soon as I got back from Cub Scout camp).

Feel free to review and comment.

Sunday

• Breakfast – 540 Calories – Homemade Waffles w/ Spray Butter & Low Cal Syrup (Low Cal recipe that Gretchen found)
• Lunch - 468 Calories – Smoked Pork Ribs, Raw Carrots, Fig Newton Minis
• Dinner - 577 Calories – Tossed Salad w/ Blue Cheese Dressing and Grilled Turkey Sausage
• Snacks - 140 Calories – 1 slice Banana Nut Bread

Monday

• Breakfast – 540 Calories – Homemade Waffles (leftovers) w/ Spray Butter & Low Cal Syrup, Coffee w/ Crm & Sugar
• Lunch - 460 Calories (Subway) – 6″ Subway Club; Baked Potato Chips
• Dinner - 351 Calories – 4oz Grilled Chicken Breast, Rice, Grapes

Tuesday

• Breakfast - 580 Calories – Egg Sandwich (1 Egg, 1oz Shredded Low Fat Sharp Cheese on Big Marty Bun); 6oz Greek Yogurt; Coffee w/ Crm & Sugar
• Lunch – 900 Calories (Subway) – 12″ Chicken Teriyaki Sub; Baked Potato Chips (should have had a 6″, as I felt yuck all afternoon)
• Dinner - 627 Calories - Veggie Pasta w/ Homemade Tomoato Sauce and Grilled Turkey Sausage; Asparagus; Breadsticks w/ Butter; Rhubarb Sponge-Cake

Wednesday

• Breakfast – 610 Calories – Egg Sandwich (1 Egg, 1oz Shredded Low Fat Sharp Cheese on Big Marty Bun); Grilled Turkey Sausage; Coffee w/ Crm & Sugar
• Lunch – 747 Calories (Subway) - 6″ Veggie Delight; Sun-Chips; Pepper Jack Cheese
• Dinner – 627 Calories – Veggie Pasta w/ Homemade Tomoato Sauce and 10 oz Grilled Chicken Breast; Breadsticks w/ Butter; 5oz White Wine; Fun-Size Butterfinger

Thursday

• Breakfast - 552 Calories – 1 Egg; Small Bagel w/ Shredded Low Fat Cheese; Banana; Coffee w/ Crm & Sugar
• Lunch - 491 Calories – 4oz Grilled Chicken Breast, Rice, Grapes; Tostitos Bite-Size Corn Chips
• Dinner - 612 Calories (Wegman’s) – Sushi (6 California Roll, 6 Spicy Shrimp Roll); Side Salad
• Snack – 370 Calories – Chocolate Protein Bar; Lance Crackers

Friday

• Breakfast - 340 Calories – Greek Yogurt; Quaker Cinnamon Roll Bar; Coffee w/ Crm & Sugar
• Lunch - 400 Calories - Veggie Pasta w/ Homemade Tomoato Sauce and 5 oz Grilled Chicken Breast
• Dinner – 700 Calories – 2 slices pizza (1 cheese, 1 pepperoni)

Saturday (was at Scout Camp and Burned over 5,000 calories this day)

• Breakfast - 303 Calories – 2 mini powdered donut; 1 large Orange; 1 Banana
• Lunch - 854 Calories – 2 x Grilled Cheese Sandwiches; 1 cup Grapes; 1 cup Baby Carrots; 1 oz Doritos
• Dinner – 565 Calories – 2 x Cheeseburgers w/ Lettuce, Tomato, and Ketchup; 1 oz Doritos

Starting weight: 342.0
Previous Weight: 330.5
Current Weight: 324.0

I think I had a lot of focus on my calorie burn rate vs calories consumed this week. Also, using my new CORE Armband from Body Media, I’ve been able to get accurate information on my burn rate and activity monitoring, so that I can then make smart decisions on my consumption. I’ve been wearing it for a little over two weeks now, and I must say that it provides some great information to review and it helps feed the competitive side of me (trying to out-do yesterday’s step count, burn rate, etc).
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Life had a bit of catching up to me this week, and I’ve wanted to be sure I keep active where possible and not allow other things (like “I have to do a blog entry tonight!”) as an excuse to reprioritize the now and sabotage the future.

Some examples of things that I got caught up in this week:

• Cub Scout Camp (Fri through Sunday) – Provided a huge opportunity to integrate activity with some awesome fun with my son.  I target a 4,000 calorie burn target each day, while also averaging about 6-7,000 steps daily.  On Saturday alone, I burned little over 5,200 calories and took 17,930 steps throughout the day.  This was primarily due to walking to everything on campus, and consistently volunteering to be the “go-to” guy for things
• Baseball Coaching – Got an opportunity this week to coach a game and spent about 2 hours at a high-energy level, running on and off the field, etc and helped burn enough calories that equated to a half-hour on the treadmill (and it was much more fun, to boot).
• Mowing the lawn – Sure, I sat on my duff (tractor) for most of it, but I opted to put off a whole lot more to do with the push mower and even more to the trimmer than I normally do.

As I a venture through this journey, I am getting confirmation from a principle I have heard many times before. Information is a vital component and is likely directly relational (I can’t prove this…yet) to the success of one’s journey.

Easier ability to make decisions. By tracking the amount of calories that you put into your body, you can better decide what your consumption for the day will look like. If you’ve eaten 800 calories for breakfast, you should then know the you do not have a lot of leeway to just consume anything throughout the rest of the day. On the flip side, if you are heading into dinner and still have 900 calories left in your daily target, that provides room to indulge in most any type of food.

Easier ability to evaluate success. By tracking the calories consumed and calories burned, you can decide if you have had a successful day. If you are looking at a deficit of 1,000 calories (more calories burned than consumed), then you know you are on track to lose 2 pounds that week. If you are looking at a 100 calorie deficit, maybe you should pass on that cookie until tomorrow (or go for a walk and increase that deficit).

Keep in mind that, I believe calorie counting doesn’t have to be exact (at least to start out anyway).  It should be enough to provide information to evaluate where you are at and react to it.

Don’t get me wrong. Information and calorie tracking is not the end-all, be-all solution, but if you are going to have any chance of success, you will need to have a defined plan of how you will get and evaluate the information available to you. Sometimes it is other factors that will drive your success (perseverance), but understanding and reacting to information will get you farthest on your journey.