Monday, December 13, 2010

A bit of analysis

I can't help it; I am still trying to help Lee even if he wants to fight me.  So I took our food intake from yesterday, to the extent that I know it, and logged it in a calorie counter that can do macronutrient levels.  Granted, yesterday's eating sucked, so I also found the day's eating that I logged last week to see if I were inadvertently starving myself into the size 8.  I think that's more representative of my normal eating patterns these days.  Here's what I see:

Lee yesterday:
  • Calories: 2051
  • Fat: 109.5g, 51% of calories
  • Carbohydrates: 132.86g, 27.5% of calories
  • Protein: 103.9g, 21.5% of calories
Me yesterday:
  • Calories: 1876
  • Fat: 113.2g, 54.8% of calories
  • Carbohydrates: 126.1g, 27.1% of calories
  • Protein: 83.7g, 18% of calories
Me last week:
  • Calories: 1829
  • Fat: 137.5g, 68% of calories
  • Carbohydrates: 32.9g, 7% of calories
  • Protein: 111.9g, 25% of calories
The big difference yesterday in what Lee and I ate was that he had grits and eggs with breakfast, and a glass of milk, where I had 6 slices of turkey bacon and a dollop of cream in my tea.  Other than that, we pretty much ate the same things, as far as I could tell.  The big differences between what I ate yesterday and what I normally would eat are manifold:
  • Normally, breakfast is 2 eggs and 2 slices of turkey bacon, with the dollop of cream
  • Normally, I don't eat lunch
  • Normally, dinner is pretty protein- and fat-centric, without a lot of starchy vegetables, and I eat a lot of cheese or nuts and a bit of very dark chocolate
  • Yesterday, I had half a piece of commercially prepared cheesecake, albeit with a crust composed of flourless chocolate cake.  Still, it was a huge bolus of carbs. 
  • Yesterday, I had a hefty portion of chips and queso.
  • Yesterday, I had a hard cider with dinner
Lee's normal breakfast is very like mine, although he usually adds a glass of milk (currently 2% which is down from whole milk last month, and he wants to switch to skim).  He eats lunch, and I don't have a lot of insight into it, although I hear about "half a bun" a couple of times a week, so I would say that he's getting carbs there that could be avoided.  He also frequently takes a banana and a low-fat, artificially sweetened yogurt (ugh!) to work with him, presumably as a snack.  Our dinners are generally similar and he does try to keep the obvious carbs down, but, for example, last week we were at a "healthy" soup and salad (and pasta and bread) place and he opted for beets in his salad and had a cream (roux? probably) soup and a corn muffin.

Is it all enough to add up to a permanent stall?  I don't honestly know.  I wish I could convince him to log a week's worth of eating, so that I could pull it apart and see if I could find the issues.  Maybe I'll ask him to do that the next time he complains about not losing any more weight.  But I'm not holding my breath that he'll do it.

On an unrelated subject, my system seems to be reacting well to the fast - it's nearly 1 pm and I'm just now getting hungry (probably the result of contemplating yesterday's meals), and the mildly "off" feeling I woke with seems to be fading.

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