Weighty Wednesday: What 1300 Calories Looks Like

I am officially a nutrition nerd. I have been using the MyFitnessPal app for the last few weeks and I am fascinated by it! (Disclaimer: I don't usually love the idea of counting calories. But I see it as a useful tool for me to lose this baby weight. I don't plan on doing it long-term.)

Since I last posted 2 weeks ago, I have lost 3 pounds. Finally some weight loss!

Lbs Lost So Far: 17
Lbs Left To Lose: 10

I thought it'd be fun to show you all not only what a day of eating looked like this week, but what MyFitnessPal looks like. I took screenshots of the calorie breakdown for each meal and my nutritional stats for the total day. According to the app, I am allotted 1250 calories per day. That seems a bit low to me, especially because I am nursing. So I typically "allow" myself to go over a little bit. I don't want to starve myself, whether I am breastfeeding or not! I've been eating somewhere around 1300-1500 calories per day for the last couple weeks and I have been feeling great. I'm surprised, because this doesn't sound like a lot of food to me, but I have been satisfied every single day. Never overly hungry. In fact, I feel like I've had more energy since I've reduced my portion sizes.

Ok here we go.

Breakfast: Boiled Egg, Coffee with half and half, vanilla yogurt

This breakfast was a bit smaller than usual, but I was in a rush. Even though I only consumed around 200 calories, I didn't get hungry until 4 hours later.

Lunch: Tuna salad with cucumber and lettuce on whole wheat wrap, Pineapple and Strawberries

I made a quick tuna salad with tuna, mayo, and pickles. I stuffed the wrap full of lettuce and cucumber, and at the last minute I added some garlic spread I got at the Farmer's Market. It added great flavor. (Reminds me of the garlic sauce at Mr. Pickles!) The fresh fruit on the side tasted amazing. A tasty 350 calorie lunch.

Snack: Multigrain Cereal with Milk

I was fixing Lucas an after-school snack a few hours later and got hungry, so I had a small bowl of his cereal. This is his favorite cereal.

Dinner: Bacon and Tomato Pasta, Green Beans

Oh my goodness, this dinner was SO good. Recipe is here: http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/guy-fieri/bacon-and-tomato-pasta-recipe-1948382  If you like bacon and spaghetti you must make this! The ingredient list was simple....bacon, pasta, tomatoes, onions, garlic, parmesan....but the end result was restaurant-worthy. I used chicken broth instead of wine, and I added parsley on top instead of basil. Adam said it was the best thing I've made all year. I added in an extra entry of spaghetti noodles in the MyFitnessPal app, because I kept going back for more bites of pasta out of the bowl. I couldn't stop eating it! My dinner ended up being higher in calories than usual, but it was worth it.

And in full transparency, I had a small bowl of vanilla ice cream after dinner. I have noticed I have a hard time hitting my daily calcium goal, so obviously the ice cream was necessary.

Here is my macro breakdown for the day, minus the ice cream.

My day was a bit high in fat (probably the bacon!) and low in carbs, but I'm fine with that.

Here is the nutritional breakdown for my entire day, again minus the ice cream:

After using this app for a few weeks I have noticed a few things. I am consistently low in fiber, calcium, and iron. The fiber was the biggest surprise for me, since I usually eat a lot of produce and whole grains. And even on the day that I ate steak for dinner, my iron intake was still below goal. It kind of makes me question how they come up with these goal numbers. Maybe it's just difficult to hit my quotas on only 1300 calories.

So clearly I am fascinated by these nutritional stats. Do they interest you or bore you or confuse you? Have you ever used MyFitnessPal or something similar?