Today was a very busy day for me and my family. We left early this morning and didnt walk back in the door until after 5:30pm. I was starving and so were the kids, I really didnt know what to make so I opened the fridge and grabbed the cooked chicken breasts along with the pineapple I had grilled with it the other day. I also had a container of sliced fresh mushrooms and grabbed an onion. I decided to cut everything up and just throw it in my wok and see what happened. I started cooking the chicken and veggies and figured I needed something else so I grabbed my already cooked brown rice, microwaved it till thawed and threw it in a pan that I had cooked a few eggwhites, added some soy sauce, unfortunatly I didnt have any peas (doh) to make fried rice. But all in all the meal was really good, and even better it took 10 minutes and dirtied only two pans.
Ive been watching my calories pretty closely but not really being strict so I decided I really need to find out my basal metabolic rate which is how many calories my body expends in a day. Then I need to stay below that number to lose weight. Im losing slowly, I was down to 157.4lbs the other day but Id like to lose faster.
So how do I calculate that? Well I found this handy formula:
Women:
655 + (4.3 x weight in lbs) + (4.7 x height in inches) - (4.7 x age in years)
here is mine:
655 + (4.3×157.4)+(4.7×56)-(4.7×25)
655+676.82+263.2-117.5
1477.52
Men:
66 + (6.3 x weight in pounds) + (12.9 x height in inches) - (6.8 x age in years)
Activity-step two
sedentary : BMR x 20 percent
lightly active: BMR x 30 percent
Id say I am lightly active. I dont exercise on MOST days to be moderately active.
BMR (1477)X30%~=443 Now adding those together I come up with 1920. That seems way too high. I dont think I would classift myself as sedentary, running 3-4 days a week.
moderately active (exercise on most days): BMR x 40 percent
active (Intense exercise on a daily basis or for prolonged periods.): BMR x 50 percent
Now seriously whats intense? whats prolonged? I havent been able to find that out. Is intense running? prolonged- more than 30 minutes? more than an hour? 2 hours? That sort of thing drives me crazy! I need examples!
The resulting number is the calories your body uses in a day, you will need to stay below that to lose.
According to this calculation if I am eating 1600 calories a day, which is generally pretty comfortable for me to do so I should have a 320 calorie a day deficit, which means I should be losing one pound about every eleven days. (one pound equals 3500 calories) Thats about the rate I need to lose to get below 140lbs before my marathon in December. Unfortunatly I dont think Im actually losing at that rate. I will have to consult my trusty wieght loss calender and report back.
Ive been working on getting a freezer stash of already cooked staples for meals for my family. Im not the type of person who plans meals ahead well. Its usually 4 or 5pm before I think about what to make for dinner. So Ive been trying to make extra whenever I make up a staple. Some of the things Ive been doing is making large batches of brown rice, it takes almost an hour from start to finish to make so I make an entire bag at a time rather than just enough for a single meal. Once our meal is over I put the left overs in freezer bags and pop the bags in the freezer. They come in very handy, I just microwave the rice in the bag and no one has noticed the difference. Ive also started browning ground beef and turkey and freezing them in servings so my husband can have meat with his spagetti or whatever we may be having that I have made meatless. My most recent freezer batch was a large box of orzo, orzo is a small rice shaped pasta. It freezes surprisingly well for a pasta, and my kids love it.
I have also started cooking frozen vegitables in batches. I just put the left overs in the fridge and that is the vegitable I serve at dinner until its gone, usually just two meals total. Except for brussel sprouts, I cant seem to find a bag big enough to cover more than one meal. Who knew they were so yummy?!
I also grill 5lbs of chicken breasts at once, I marinate them and grill them all at once and freeze the left overs. So basically all I need to do on busy days is pull some chicken from the freezer, already cooked, grab some frozen cooked rice and throw them both in the microwave along with whatever already cooked vegitable from the fridge. These grilled chicken breasts make awesome sandwhiches for a nice change of pace!
I throw in a low fat pizza and pasta and low fat sauce now and again and thats pretty much our dinners. I dont spend nearly as much time cooking these days as I used to. Which is a HUGE plus since I really dislike cooking!
The other day for lunch I had Healthy choices Country Herb Chicken meal. It has 240 calories and 5 grams of fat and took 6 minutes in the microwave. I was having a major potatocraving and this one had small cubes of potato in gravy along with some broccoli/cauliflower/carrot mix, a chicken ‘breast’ and a cherry ‘cobbler. There weren’t many potatoes unfortunatley and they were really good along with the gravy. The chicken was kind of gross, I don’t like ‘formed’ chicken but the taste was fine. The veggies were bland, I added some butter spray and they were much better. The cherry ‘cobbler’ was tasty but not a cobbler. It was basically a tart cherry pie filling with a small amount of rolled oats mixed in. I’m undecided on whether Id buy this again. If the chicken was actually pieces of chicken (even small pieces!) I would definitely get it again!
My oldest son asked for grilled cheese sandwhiches for lunch. I hadnt made them in ages, someone at preschool must have said something about them. So I made each of the boys one and thought wow…those sure do look good! The I rememberd I had picked up some parkay spray ‘butter’ and I had fat free cheese slices in the fridge. Well heck ya! I gave it a shot.
I used two slices of SaraLee Delightful Wheat bread- two slices are 90 calories and 1g of fat, the butter spray has 0g of fat and 0 calories per serving (5 sprays?) and one slice of Lucerne fat free american cheese which has 30 calories and 0 g of fat. My pan was hot and I sprayed three sprays on each side of the bread before I put it in the pan. It browned up nicely and was really light and very yummy! 120 calories and 1g of fat. I had a few pieces of dried pineapple along with a cup of skim milk. So good!!