Science is the systematic classification of experience.
– George Henry Lewes (1817-78) English writer and critic.
The first day is always the most important and the most difficult one. Its importance stems from the fact that the rest of the week will use this day’s food list as a template, so the records and measurements have to be precise to avoid a domino error effect. But to get the most accurate measurements, foods ordered from restaurants have to be brought back home and their caloric value computed using a kitchen scale. If you look at the food and exercise log below, you will notice that I consumed a Steak and Tendon Pho (from a local Vietnamese Pho restaurant) as well as a Chicken Burrito (from Qdoba). Calculating calories and nutrition content in the Qdoba Chicken Burrito was easy because they provide a great nutrition value calculator on their website. Getting the calories and nutrition content in the Steak and Tendon Pho, on the other hand, required a lot more manual weighing and adding at home.
Before I show you what I ate and how I spent the calories, here are my body measurements from this morning:
| Body Measurements | |
|---|---|
| Body Weight | 189 lbs |
| Body Fat (Impedance Scale) | 15.1% |
| Body Fat (Skinfold Calipers) | 11.6% |
| Body Fat (Average) | 13.35% |
| Lean Body Mass (From Average Body Fat %) | 163.77 lbs |
| Fat Mass (From Average Body Fat %) | 25.23 lbs |
And here is the food/exercise log:
| Breakfast (506 Cal) | ||
|---|---|---|
| Cottage cheese, no salt added | 1 Cup | 160 |
| Greek Yogurt, Fage, No Fat | 0.5 Cup | 60 |
| Oats, rolled, old fashioned, dry | 0.5 Cup | 150 |
| Psyllium Husks Powder | 9 Grams | 31 |
| Protein Powder, MuscleFeast, Strawberry Isolate | 28 Grams | 105 |
| Lunch (804 Cal) | ||
| Protein Powder, Muscle Feast, Isolate | 28 Grams | 105 |
| CarboLean | 26 Grams | 102 |
| Steak and Tendon Pho | 1 Serving | 597 |
| Dinner (1,221 Cal) | ||
| Chicken Burrito (Whole Wheat, Blk Beans, Guac, Xtra Meat) | 1 Serving | 1,030 |
| Cottage cheese, no salt added | 1 Cup | 160 |
| Psyllium Husks Powder | 9 Grams | 31 |
| Exercise (319 Cal) | ||
| Weight Lifting | 30 minutes | 223 |
| Running | 5 minutes | 96 |
| Calorie Log Summary | ||
| Nutrient Breakdown (Fat/Carbs/Protein) | 20%/41%/39% | |
| Grams of Fat | 59 | |
| Saturated | 17.3 | |
| Grams of Carbs | 272.6 | |
| Fiber | 42.8 | |
| Sugar | 42.1 | |
| Grams of Protein | 258.7 | |
| Calories Eaten | 2,531 | |
| Calories Spent | 2,232 | |
| Exercise | 319 | |
| Basal Metabolic Rate | 1,913 | |
| Caloric Deficit(-) / Excess(+) | 299 | |
Not a bad conclusion to such an eventful day with 299 excess calories! We’ll see if this will have any effect on my body composition during tomorrow morning’s body measurement.
Great idea. Can’t wait to see the results. Although I wonder how much you can trust restaurant calorie calculators. How about bringing a Qdoba wrap hope and calculating the calories for a comparison?
I was trying to avoid doing that due to the messy nature of burritos, where all the ingridients are hard to separate out. I may do this later. I think the percent error in their calorie calculator will be tiny compared to the error due to the server putting different amount of each ingredient every time they make a burrito.
Yeah, that’s exactly what I mean. I’m guessing that the restaurants err on the side of lower calories so the amount of calories in a burrito made by the server might be typically higher and you actually ate even more…but who knows? It’s worth a check.
Do you think they’d mind if you ask them to make you a burrito with all the toppings layed out separately? 😉