12/9/11 - Last day of classes

I finished my last day of the first semester of my graduate school career. Felt mostly like just another day, but now that it's over, it feels very completed. Just need study and take my exams.

Breakfast consisted of a single builder bar.
Total calories: 270

For lunch I decided to treat myself. I got a large double cheesburger meal from McDonald's, and had an extra McDouble with it. Lots of carbs in the meal, and in hindsight it might've been a bad idea since there was the all-nighter tonight, but I'm trying not to regret decisions I make about food I eat, and instead just make better decisions in the future.
Total calories: 1330

Midway through the day I was feeling a little sluggish, probably because of the poor quality of my lunch food choices, and decided to have a little pick-me-up in the form of some Oreos and a soda.
Total calories: 270

As part of the end-of-semester events, SPS holds a Study All-Nighter, where we order some pizza and sodas and hang out in the building studying or working on finals. I used the time to finish the take-home component of my particle physics final, which also served as a great review of things for the final that I have on Tuesday.< br />
As part of having free pizza around, I had 5 slices of pepperoni pizza and three slices of cheese pizza, all large and from Papa Johns. Because the people who ordered the food didn't get any diet sodas, I ended up drinking several glasses of real Coca-Cola, which have a bunch of extra calories too.
Total calories: 3080

OVERALL: 4950. This was a pretty bad day. I need to avoid lots of free pizza, or at least figure out a way to be around it without thinking like I need to eat all of it to avoid missing out on the "free value". There's more value in being thin and healthy than in getting cheap calories, and I have enough money to buy quality calories.

12/8/11 - Still no cookie colloquium

Quick day.

Breakfast consisted of a bowl of Marshmallow Mateys and a Builder Bar. I think my milk was spoiled, which sort of ruined the cereal, but it's hard to tell with almond milk.
Total calories: 630

For lunch I had the last of this package of jerky, and a can of chicken corn chowder. Wasn't the best, I wouldn't recommend it. I was invited to go grab lunch at Jimmy John's with a friend after I'd finished eating, so I went and decided to get a loaf of bread to munch on. Apparently, bread has a ton of calories in it; certainly not worth the cost to have eaten it.
Total calories: 1130

I resisted the urge to have any cookies at the colloquium, even though I was planning on running when I got home. Fortunately, I didn't have any, and instead just did weights with a friend that came over. If I had, I'd've certainly run over budget for the day as I tried to find something for dinner.

Since I was running low on calories and did some weightlifting before dinner, I had another builder bar to recoup some protein.
Total calories: 270

OVERALL: 1760 calories

12/7/11 - Blahhh

Blah. I'm feeling really tired today. I woke up late and scarfed down a builder bar amid some stretching before heading off to my first class for the day.
Total calories: 270

I had a rushed lunch in the middle of the day, because I needed to meet with someone for some education research that chewed up about an hour there. I was starving by the time I got back to the lounge and had a chance to eat. So, I had a bowl of potato ham chowder which I really liked, plus some jerky. The chowder was very thick for most of it, until I got to the end and ran out of potatoes to eat, then it felt much thinner.
Total calories: 620

My snack in the middle of the day consisted of a peanut butter builder bar; am I eating too many of these? Hm...
Total calories: 270

Dinner came after I finished doing my E&M homework and a quick run to the gym for a weightlifting session. I had a bowl of New England clam chowder (which I liked less than the potato ham style), some preztels, and a Nutty Bar that Jill was nice enough to gift me a couple weeks ago when she was in town that I've been looking for an opportunity to slip into my meals.
Total calories: 890

OVERALL: 2050

12/6/11 - Drinks with the Grads

Feeling a little blah today, so these entries will be a bit short. I definitely want to make them though.

Today I woke up early enough to prepare a breakfast, so I mde some eggs, bacon, and bread.
Total calories: 295

I had a change of pace for lunch; rather than heading across the street for McDonald's I brought a salad and soup, as well as a bit of jerky and a builder bar. The bar was a snack for later, but the rest was eaten during my lunch break as we worked on Quantum.
Total calories: 488 + 270

After my pedagogy class, the grads went to a local bar, Chumley's to take advantage of free appetizer night. I had some buffalo chicken wings, cheese, celery sticks, and some breaded popcorn chicken bits.
Total calories: 1359

OVERALL: 2412

Progress Report 1

My first week is through, and I managed to stay under my net calories for the week, even if some of the days were over budget. That's a pretty good feeling, and one I want to keep going into the future, even if this first day of the next week is fairly calorie-heavy.

Weight: 177.8, which is approximately 5 pounds down from my starting weight. Some of this is probably water fluctuation, since losing five pounds in a week is not very normal, but oh well. I hope the high weight at the start was a fluctuation up, rather than this being a fluctuation down from dehydration.

12/5/11 - Start of the second week

I woke up 50 minutes after my alarm today, which meant the wonderful breakfast I had planned wasn't going to be. Tomorrow, for sure. Instead, I grabbed a Builder bar and dashed into class, eating it while I listened to lecture.

Total calories: 270

For lunch I went across the street for a couple McDoubles, again because of my rushed morning. I was going to do something better and break this pattern but I didn't have the time to prepare anything else.

Total calories: 780

My friend Scott was good enough to pick me up another box of Builder bars when he was at Sam's Club this weekend restocking the SPS lounge, so I paid him for those and gained another 18, this time a mix of Chocolate and Chocolate Peanut Butter, rather than some Mint Chocolate ones. I had another bar as a midafternoon snack after working on quantum homework for several hours.

Total calories: 270

After several more hours of working on quantum, we took a break and headed to Five Guys for a dinner; a burger and fries from there sounded fantastic.

Between all of us we split two large fries, and each had our own burger. I ended up eating more of one of the bags than the person I was splitting with, and so I ended up with about 3/4s of the serving. In hindsight, it would have been better to just snack on the peanuts that come free than buy a bunch of fries. The burger was fantastic though. As usual, I get it with "Everything" on it.

Total calories: 2159

OVERALL: 3479 net calories. The fries were a definite mistake. I could have gotten through dinner with a Little Cheeseburger and some peanuts, I didn't need the 1100 extra calories from the fries.

12/4/11 - Happy Birthday, Mom

I didn't actually do anything with my mother today, but it's her birthday so I figured I should mention it. No cake for me.

I woke up late and so had a breaklunch, which consisted of two chicken burgers mixed with spinach and asiago, from Sam's Club, topped with a quarter-serving of Fiesta Black Beans in between slices of healthy life Five Grain bread. Unfortunately my next loaf of bread has already spoiled. With the burgers I had a bowl of lettuce with a bit of honey dijon dressing.
Total calories: 607

Midway through the day I had a cup of blueberry Greek yogurt. I'm almost out.
Total calories: 160

For dinner I didn't really feel like making anything, so I measured out four ounces of pistachio nuts and three ounces of teriyaki jerky and ate those while watching archived streams of Starcraft 2 tournaments. The pistachios took a very long time to get through, since I had to shell each one before I ate it.
Total calories: 883

OVERALL: 1650 net calories

12/3/11 - Basketball and Panera, the first weekend

My eating on weekends is usually dramatically different than that on the weekdays. A notable change is that I don't have that typical McDonald's meal, but the fact that I wake up late, sometimes in the afternoon, means I sometimes only have a pair of meals in the day.

For breakfast I had a Mint Builder Bar and some strawberry Greek yogurt. The strawberry flavor is much better than the key lime and blueberry I've been having recently, and it's also a fruit-on-the-bottom kind, which is nice. Sometimes the fruit chunks are a little big though, and have an odd texture because of the skin or seeds, so it's not always a plus.
Total calories: 430

After breakfast I got a text from a friend inviting me to go play basketball at the CoRec, where we found a couple other guys to make a team. Our first game went very well, mostly because of the two strangers we got to join our team of physicists, and then we lost the second game to a group of people who clearly knew how to play. I haven't played basketball in years, and never in any organized way, so unfortunately I wasn't much of a help to the team; I think the other side noticed and just stopped guarding me eventually when they realized I never tried to get the ball or shoot, and just defended against them. 30 minutes of shooting as warm-up and 30 minutes of playing the two games gave me 516 extra calories to use.

For lunch, I biked over to Panera to enjoy some of the wonderful weather we've been experiencing, and got a wonderful lunch of Steak Chili in a sourdough bread bowl, a bowl of BBQ chicken salad, and a baguette. It's a very carb heavy meal, and my stomach is definitely full. After realizing how far over-budget I went last night, I'm sort of regretting eating so much now, but the past is done so I can just move forward.
Total calories: 1360

Stopping here for the day, I'm left with 2140 calories for tomorrow to finish off the week without going over budget, which is just shy of my normal daily allowance. Despite the enormous hit last night, I'm feeling a little better about things now that I see that the week isn't ruined.

OVERALL: 1274 net calories.

EDIT: Ended up being really hungry in the late night, so I had another Builder Bar to tide me over to the next day. 270 calories, leaving me with 1870 for tomorrow.

OVERALL 1544 net calories

12/2/11 - All-Nighter

Missing some pictures today because I forgot to snap them before eating, mostly because I was busy with other things as I ate. I've heard this is a really easy way to overeat, so perhaps I should make an extra effort to take time away from everything else for when I eat.
Breakfast: Mint builder bar and blueberry greek yogurt, and a diet coke, while curled on the couch reading some chapters of my book. The action has really picked up, and I ended up showing up to class late because of it.
Total calories: 430
Lunch: McDonald's again. Two burgers eaten in the lounge, and a large cup of diet coke. The more I type out this meal the more unhappy I am that this is a recurring item in my diet.
Total calories: 780
Afternoon snack: Key lime greek yogurt. I was feeling completely drained as I taught lab in the afternoon, and there were tentative plans to play basketball in between lab and the all-nighter, but lab ran late and they were finishing by the time I was free.
Total calories: 160
Dinner: Things went a little downhill here. We had pizza brought in by the president, and I had five slives of pepperoni pizza and two slices of cheese pizza. I'm pretty sure the last two were just because I wanted something in my mouth; the pizza was getting cold by then so it wasn't even that appetizing to eat. Most of the food was eaten while watching a movie with everyone and joking about it, while the last two slices were eaten while we played a game together.
Total calories: 2230
OVERALL: 3600 net calories. Several mistakes here, which I didn't quite realize until now as I type it up. First, there was no exercise today, which limited how many calories I had to work with. Second, I forgot to add my lunch to my food diary until just now, so when I was looking at how many calories I had to play with for dinner, I thought I had way more. Even without the calories for lunch, I was still 700 over, so this just makes it an even bigger surplus. I'm typing this up after I just finished a large lunch and now I'm starting to regret not being stingier.

12/1/11 - No Cookie Colloquium

Easy morning breakfast. Mint chocolate Clif bar, peach greek yogurt, and some caffeine to wake me up. The dishes were still dirty from my egg breakfast so I couldn't make something in them.
Total calories: 430

Standard lunch. Ate it while watching people in the lounge play bughouse, a chess variant. I'm amazed at how not-polite people are when ordering at McDonald's. Not necessarily rude, but no one else bothers to say "Thank you" when they get their food.
Total calories: 780

Quick midday pick-me-up before heading into the High Energy Nuclear colloquium. I knew that if I didn't have something my mind would have a very hard time focusing on anything. As it was, I paid very good attention for the first half, where he was discussing the theory of what they were trying to do, then started spacing out once he started mentioning different accelerator experiments. That seems to be how it always goes.

As a side note, this was one of the first colloquiums where I didn't feel the need to go down the hall to the room with all of the refreshments and snag one or several cookies. That's a definite Non-Scale Victory (NSV).
Total calories: 240

Dinner was a pair of breaded chicken Bocca patties, each with their own slice of provolone cheese and spicy southwest mustard. I'm not a huge fan of the mustard, but I have a whole bottle of it and figured it might not be bad with these. It has much less of a mustard flavor and is more just piquant. In the microwave is a steamer bag of cheesy broccoli, which I had after the chicken sandwiches to round out the meal and add some more carbs (though most of it came from the bread, for sure). My stomach is super full from all of that broccoli though. Fortunately it's low calorie, and the cheese sauce really adds to the flavor.
Total calories: 775

I went to the gym today even though I really didn't feel like exercising because I want to get in the habit of going. Hopefully if I go enough it'll stop feeling like a chore on some days, and just feel great like it does on the days when I'm highly motivated. I walked for a while on the treadmill to give my legs a relative rest, then did a bit of weights. Earned an extra 236 calories from the walking.

OVERALL: 2225 net calories