Calories, Schmalories

Image by admiller via Flickr

Ah, calorie counting. The great American female past-time. I don't enjoy it in the least. It's not so bad if you are eating something that has the calories right there on the side of the box. It's also pretty easy to look up how many calories are in an apple. But when you are talking about a home cooked meal with alot of ingredients and then trying to figure out how many calories are in each item and then how many servings in the finished product.....eesh. That's alot of effort involved just to figure out how many calories are in my dinner.

But hey, I know that in order to combat mindless calorie munching, I have to know what I'm taking in and how much more I left to work with at the end of the day. I need to know if I can have that fudgsicle, you know, the really important things. So, I jot it down and then try to figure it up. Gee, and I thought by becoming a therapist I could effectively avoid math for the rest of my life.

Here's the (fairly accurate) list of what I ate today.

granola bar...180 cal.
fresh broccoli, carrots, celery, 2 Tbsp jalapeno ranch dressing
1/2 c. spaghetti, 4 oz chicken breast, 1/4 c. mozzarella cheese
5 individual rolo candies and 2 mini milky ways (thank you, cube mate's candy jar)
apple, 2 slices pumpkin bread
5 oz grilled chicken, green beans, 3/4 c. herbed rice
Slice of left-over birthday cake--red velvet, and (gulp) two scoops of vanilla

Ok, so I really don't have the energy or patience to look up the calorie counts of anything besides the granola bar. Pathetic, right? Well baby steps is what I'm shooting for. I mostly stuck to my plan, I drank lots of water and ate something every couple of hours. Yeah, I had too much sugar. Will work on cutting that down. Tomorrow, 4 rolos!!!

Today was pretty good for a Monday. I have been working on a project at The Office for over a month and it was due today, so it feels really good to have that finished. One thing I have to do this week is read the book for book club. We are reading All About Lulu. I could tell you about it, but I don't know much about it yet. I have, however, heard it's great. Book club is Sunday, so I have 5 days. It's kind of funny, though that now we only promise to read the first half of the book. That's because historically, half of the group doesn't actually read the whole book. We figure half of the book is not so intimidating!


Today, I am thankful...

....that not only did my sweet hubby grill chicken for us for dinner, he is now currently doing the dishes while I write this. Wow, how did I get to be so blessed?!