I went into this Thursday expecting to have a little trouble because I planned a breakfast with 300 calories. I figured that front-loading the day would make it harder to get through the evening, but it was okay thanks to a well-timed snack of squash and having eggs for lunch. The eggs were more filling because of the protein and fat and the squash was just filling. The bottom line is that I just couldn't face yogurt again this Thursday morning (which keeps the total down to 200 or less).
Everything went okay though. My final tally for the day was 1232, and I'm pretty sure I overestimated a few things because of the inexactness of my kitchen scale.
One thing I realized while I was packing and prepping some food for lunch was how easy it is to just "sample" while you cook or prepare meals. That is, if you're slicing some cheese for a sandwich or laying on some ham, it's easy to just idly put some of that tasty food in your mouth for a taste. This is something which doesn't seem like such a big deal when you're not counting calories, but just a couple of bites and you could be in for an extra hundred calories (or more).
I've read that people often don't realize how many calories they are eating and that's one of the reasons they overeat. People who don't have weight problems almost certainly never think about it, but they don't need to. The truth is that most food, even fairly innocuous and unassuming food, has more calories than you might imagine. When you start researching the caloric values of things like meat, cheese, bread, and pasta, you can be in for a shock. If you're not eating what appear to be child-size portions, you're certainly not eating little enough to lose weight. It just goes to show how out of touch we are with how much we need to eat. Even when we avoid the "bad" foods, it's really easy to overdo it on the not so bad ones, but I think that my Thursday counting is helping me figure these things out bit by bit.
