You have to start somewhere.

Well after months of many of my friends and family telling me that I should start a blog to share my cooking and my new healthy living lifestyle, a friend of mine said the heck with it and took it upon herself to make this site for me. For all her hard work I want to thank her for making this a possibility.

So for my inaugural post I'm going to start by sharing a few of the things that have made my journey successful.  I can attribute much of my success in watching my caloric intake and losing weight to three major things: Myfitnesspal.com, not depriving myself of carvings, and eating out much less.

As for the first thing I have used other "calorie counting" site in the past but for my purposes I find that Myfitnesspal.com gives me the best tools to accomplish my needs.  Like most other sites Myfitnesspal.com has a large library of foods that you can look up and choose which selection best fits your meal as well as a bar code scanner on the mobile version to pull up the nutritional information.

The unfortunate part is just like all the other sites like it, often times there are multiple choices that may fit what you are eating but have varying nutritional information.  It important in choosing which option you're going to use to remember two things: pick the best option that actually describes your food or ingredient and do not cheat yourself by choosing the lowest option.  Usually if there are multiple options that describe my food or ingredients that have discrepancies in calorie information I choose the option that either has several in the same general area or the middle of the road option.  

The feature that Myfitnesspal.com provides that I feel sets them apart for my needs is the recipe builder option.  In this option I can go in and build my own recipe by putting in the ingredients that go into my dish and the number of servings that it will make and it will give you the nutritional information per serving. For those of you that have done this by hand you know how much of a pain that can be and this site takes all the work out of it.

Whether you use Myfitnesspal.com or another similar site to your liking its important that you have a way to have an accurate way to track caloric intake.  By using a site like this, it forces you to have accountability for the food your consuming.

The next thing that has attributed to my success is not depriving myself of my cravings.  I am a huge fan of food in general but two of my major weakness are hot wings, sushi, and beer.  The sushi craving is one that I can work around somewhat without busting my calories but wings and beer on the other hand is a whole different story.  I know there are thousands of recipes on "The Google" for healthy alternatives for crunching that wing craving but there is something about that crispy deep fried wing covered in hot sauce and dipped in bleu cheese that just can not be replicated and beer is well....beer and there is no alternative to replacing it.

My way of dealing with my wing craving is that every Tuesday, minutes after my weakly weigh in, I travel to Buffalo Wild Wings and tackle my love for wings head on!  I order the 8 piece lunch option and dig in and enjoy one of my joys in life.  Most people would tell you to not do exactly what I do in giving into such a high calorie and high fat craving for many reasons, I obviously feel much different.  Now this doesn't mean I just go and blow the whole day from there.  I allow myself the wings because I build them into my caloric intake for the day.  I allow myself up to 1800 calories a day and I know that the 8 wings with a side salad and lite balsamic vinaigrette dressing is right at 1000 calories per the Buffalo Wild Wing website.  So on Tuesdays I eat a lighter that usual breakfast and know that whatever I prepare for that nights dinner has to be lower in calories to fit into my 1800 for the day.  Same thing goes for when I'm craving a great IPA or Stout.  This is the same concept that Weight Watchers once used (maybe still does) in that you are allowed to eat whatever you want as long as you stay within your points or in my case calories.  So whatever your craving is that you just can't shake I say have it, enjoy it, relish in it, but just don't go nuts and stay within your calories.

Now that I have told you about my weekly trip to BW's let me tell you about the third contribution that has made me successful thus far: not eating out as often.  Can you say contradiction!  In all fairness Tuesday is USUALLY my only day of eating out for lunch during the week. I choose to usually bring my lunch due to the fact that one: its cost effective to bring my lunch, and two: I can control what I'm eating a little better.  Personally I find it harder for me to make good choices when I go to a restaurant because there is so much other stuff that is available that is not healthy.  So in general I choose to not go nearly as often as I use to.  Now in saying this that's not to say that you can't go out to eat, just be smart about it.

There are some restaurants that are famous for aiding in the healthy living lifestyle such as Subway but believe me if you limit yourself solely to one or two options that will get old really fast. The trick is to educate yourself on where your going.  Myfitnesspal.com  has a great variety of restaurant options built into their library but not all of them.  For this reason I usually rely on the company website for nutritional information.  If you do this you will find that you can have a lot more than you thought you could as well as some of the options you thought were healthy maybe aren't so much.  The unfortunate part is that usually the only restaurants that have nutritional information on their websites are the chain restaurants and for those who know me know that I usually loath chains!  I am a support local kind of guy whenever possible but unfortunately to eat at the local sports proves to be such a challenge that often times I have to avoid.   When I do however say the heck with it and go to one of my go to spots I try to talk to the staff about what all is in the dish and enter the information into Myfitnesspal.com as accurately as possible while usually airing on the side of caution and building in a few extra calories.

So there you have it!  Some of the major contributing factors in my success on this lifestyle change.  I hope that this can help someone else in their journey and if you have any questions please leave a comment.  I promise that future post will not be this long.

Thank you for reading and welcome to my journey.