$2 a day: overall review

Sorry about the delay one day of this post, yesterday got pretty hectic. I’m in a little three piece acoustic group and we got asked to play a last minute show at a local pub in town so between class we were practicing and on top of that I had two basketball games last night.

I weighed in yesterday morning at 256 pounds, netting a total loss of 24 pounds for the 30 day experiment. I feel great for the most part, but am still excited to have a bit more freedom in what I can eat. I have around 20% of the peanut butter left, barely any butter left, apples, around 40% of the mayonnaise, around 1/3 of the ketchup, 1/3 of the pancake batter, and 2/3 of the syrup left. Everything else was eaten including all the eggs, tuna, bread, etc.

I have four receipts from Wal-Mart for the food I purchased which carries a running total of $52.44, plus the $4.50 I spent at Taco Johns totals $56.94. This is much less than I anticipated due to me just not being as hungry as I thought I would be at times, especially on weekends when I would sleep in really late and have a few beers at night time.

After updating my meal plan chart (which I will upload) here are my final average nutrition facts per day:

• Calories – 1738.73 (2000)
• Fat – 62.64 (65)
• Carbs – 234.48 (300)
• Sugar – 37.63 (0)
• Protein – 56.49 (50)
• Sodium – 4090.18 (2400)

Everything looks solid, and if you measure by unit prices I see I used $44.86 in food at an average of $1.50 per day.

I continue to have people notice how I look slimmer and they say I’ve lost chub in my face, all of which I’m very grateful to hear. I went back this past week and worked on some of my maxes in the weight room because I could tell I had lost a bit of mass in my biceps. I found out that if I lost any weight off my maxes it was no more than 10 pounds and in a few lifts I hadn’t lost any strength at all.

This is a meal plan/diet that I could suggest doing to handful of people but it really takes an amount of discipline to stick to eating these same things on such a regular basis. I love to cook and the amount of creativity I had in the kitchen throughout this experiment was far less than I wish I had. However, I stuck to it and I’m grateful because this has really got me focused and motivated to continue on with the journey. This experience combined with some forums I’ve been reading and advice of friends of mine who are knowledgeable about nutrition have helped me formulate a better idea as to how I can continue counting calories and what kinds of numbers I should be looking to hit if I want to continue shedding a few pounds. It’s nuts to think that if I were to continue on in this fashion (however I think ideally for my body weight and amount of activity I do that even my cutting calorie mark should be higher than 1800) I could lose 35-40 or even 50 pounds in the span of my second semester.

I’m excited to carry forth, and it was good yesterday to eat different meals such as chili and a homemade pizza. I got to marinate some chicken and for the first time I cheffed up a chicken and pineapple pizza which was one of the better homemade pizzas I’ve made. It’s good to be done but I’m not at all disappointed with the experience and certainly not with how it’s affected my mentality, motivation, and weight.

$2 a day: day twenty eight

With four days left there is still plenty to talk about in relation to my experiment. The food I have is still plenty to eat but I am around some decisions about whether or not to get more. Here’s what I have left:

• 3.5 cans of tuna – 7 sandwiches
• 0.5 jar of peanut butter – plenty to randomly take spoonfuls
• 0.5 box of pancakes – 6-8 pancakes depending, plenty of syrup left
• 3 eggs – 3 sandwiches
• 16 slices of bread – 8 sandwiches
• 1 meal of spaghetti left
• ~18 meals

I had planned on buying one more loaf of bread and another dozen eggs. Right now I’m 4 pieces of bread short of the bread I’d need to make the rest of my tuna/egg sandwiches, but I could always just eat half a can of tuna without the bread, I still have light mayonnaise left. I think I am going to try and finish out on this amount of food only because of my peanut butter I have left. I have plenty to fill me up randomly throughout the day for a few meals. I still have some crappy apples left as well (but I just hate how mushy they are) and not to mention plenty of oatmeal.

The amount of food hasn’t been a problem with this experiment simply because of how much my stomach has shrunk. I can’t imagine going to a buffet right now, I’d be worthless. This is quite the way to portion meals to train yourself to eat less.

As far as next month I think I’ve come up with some tentative goals as far as what I want to shoot for, which are as follows (2000 calorie RDI intake in parenthesis):

• Calories – 1650-2000 (2000)
• Fat – less than 75g (65g)
• Carbs – 250g (300g)
  
• Sugar – less than 40g (0g)
  
• Protein – greater than 65g (50g)
  
• Sodium – less than 4000mg (2400mg)

In comparison, 8 ounces of mountain dew has 31g of sugar. Also, a value meal at most restaurants is going to pack from 1500-2500mg of sodium in you (assuming you’re not adding extra salt as well). The more and more I think about the amount of sodium in American’s diets it seems pretty ridiculous.

I am excited to be done with this so I can make myself one of my homemade pizzas and have my own chipotle night (I make burritos with rice, black beans, corn, marinated chicken, and sour cream). I’ll be excited to add variety back in next month, which should be plenty interesting to see how it correlates with my goals of what and how much intake.