Chips and Salsa Extravaganza

Weigh-In: 216.8 lbs

I kinda screwed up yesterday. I've been really hungry lately, ever since I started lifting. I'm still eating around 2200 calories a day. Usually when I'm hungry I simply just eat something, but I keep it healthy and I try to keep the portions small.

For lunch yesterday I had my normal salad. It was good, but about an hour or two later I was running errands and I found myself still hungry. I happened across a Baja Fresh which is a Mexican fast food-ish place. They have some healthy stuff, I probably eat there once every two weeks or so, usually getting a salad. I was really craving some chips and salsa.

When you order any meal they usually give you a small side of a few chips. That's what I wanted, but apparently when you order the Chips and Salsa by itself it's considered a full meal and they give you enough to feed 4 sumo wrestlers.

I told myself I'd been working so hard and that these chips and salsa weren't really that bad for me anyway. I didn't think about how that night I'd be going to my sister's house to celebrate my twin nieces' 4Th birthdays. There would be cake and we'd be ordering takeout. I wanted to save some calories for that.

Anyway, I ATE ALL OF THE DAMN CHIPS AND SALSA! I knew I had gone overboard. Not only was I not hungry anymore, but I was rather stuffed.

After finishing my chips and my errands and went back to work to look up the calorie numbers for the chips and salsa. I don't normally do this as I don't count calories but I knew today was going to be close and I may have just ruined my dinner.

So Chips and Salsa: 810 Calories!

Wow, that's a lot.

I did some quick math and added up all the calories I'd had for the day, subtracted the calories I'd burned on the treadmill, and I found myself sitting at 1600 or so before dinner.

I ended up having a "Mexican wrap" and a tiny slice of birthday cake for dinner... and about a dozen fries.The Mexican wrap had cheese and fried pieces of chicken in it.

So in short, I don't think I stayed under 2200 calories yesterday. Hopefully I stayed under my maintenance number of 2800-3000, but who knows.

What bothers me more than the calories was the saturated fat content of the chips and probably the dinner. I looked up those steak fajitas I'd been eating maybe once a week and even though I don't put cheese or sour cream on them, they're much higher than I thought in the saturated fat content as well.

So all that said, I know it sounds like I'm being overly anal. I know some people will read this and say that I've lost 80 pounds, why should I be worried about going a little overboard one day.

The answer is that I'm still learning to eat. I've been slowly trying to introduce some less than perfect foods back into my diet, but always at a controlled pace. I always want to at least have an idea of what I'm putting in my body so I can monitor it. If I don't do that, I could find that in 5 years, or 6 months I'll have undone all of the hard work that got me here.

It doesn't mean that I can never eat bad things, it just means I have to control them and for a while yesterday, I didn't. My mind just went blank and I started shoving a boatload of chips and salsa into my face.

I wasn't even going to write this entry because I'm embarrassed by what I did. However I realized I needed to, not only to be accountable but so I can look back on it and remember what happened, and what needs to be done differently next time.

In the end I didn't ruin my weight loss plans and gain a bunch of weigh back, but I hopefully did take a small step in learning how to eat right, or at least how to control it a little better. Actually I don't know if I did or not, but time will tell.


p.s. I ran 3.5 miles this morning and burned 400 calories. I feel a little better now and a little more in control. I like that feeling much better.