Year 3, Day 150

I got up wanting to do alot of things. I did get Mark off to work, drank coffee and got things ready for my coaching session with the Body Bugg Coach who was to call at 9:00. I ate breakfast and finished logging in all my food just in the nick of time that she called.

All I can say is WOW! My Coach's name is Tamala and she has been a personal trainer for 19 years and with Apex for 6 or 7 (I think). I started out telling her that I was a Weight Watcher and how I have been struggling. I was in the process of telling her how I haven't lost any weight since last October when she interrupted me and said "I know what the problem is". She goes on to tell me that our nutrition labels are wrong. She told me that she knows for a fact that I am consuming more calories than I think that I am. She explained to me that you can take the calories listed on a item and multiply it by 9 and take the grams of protein and multiply it by 4 and the Carbohydrates and multiply by 4 to get the true calories of what I'm eating. She took the example of Fiber One Cereal and told me that in Canada the same nutrition label shows that cereal to be 100 calories a serving. Ours states that it is 6. That was just the start. We looked at some other items such as the Kellogg Fiber Plus bars that state that they are 110 Calories but when calculated out they are more like 148. That difference could add up. I was in shock.

I can remember when I was seeing Dr. JoAnne Lichten and she talking about this same formula. I had forgotten it. Anyway Tamala had another appointment at 9:30 so she asked if she could call me back at 10:00 so that we could actually go over the Body Bugg System. She was a really nice lady. When she called me back she told me that she could tell that I knew alot and in fact alot more than most people that she talked too. She wanted to help me. She reset my calorie intake on the Body Bugg and kept my deficit level to be 750 calories which should net me a 1.5 lb weight loss per week. We also talked about working out and she told me that while she hated to tell me that my coach was full of shit that I was getting wrong information. She told me that it would not hurt me one bit to do cardio every single day. She said that I only needed strength training twice a week and no longer than 30 minutes. She said that right now I needed the cardio cause I need the burn and that we would have time to build back up my body mass. Interesting! I still would like to be doing it all. The right amount of cardio and the right amount of strength training. Anyway after she adjusted my program to where she felt like I needed to be she encouraged me to go back and edit all the foods that I had entered into my data base so far. She told me that I should build my own data base based on how to properly figure out the true calories of what I'm eating. She said that when she comes home from the store she logs any new foods into her own data base. So add straightening that out to my list of things to do!

Is there any wonder why we are the fattest nation. We have a FDA that must be totally screwed up. I am going to look closely at this because I'm interested based on this information how much my calories are actually off. She also talked to me about restaurants injecting their meat with fat to make feel more satisfied. She told me that once I really learn the calories and portion control the eating out would be easier. She told me that she never eats more than 1/3 of what a restaurant serves and she totally stays away from fast-food restaurants. She said the more that could be eaten at home the better.

Another tip that she gave me when I we were talking about the recipes that I had entered into the system. She said that even though the recipes to my Beefy Pasta Sauce says that it makes 10 servings to enter it as 9 to cover my butt. I can respect this information because I rarely get a recipe like a soup or sauce to come out to equal servings. I think that I will start doing that. I think for things that have let's say 4 chicken breast etc. you wouldn't have to do this but with sauces, soups, gravies and dips you should. Great Advice.

She walked me through alot of the website that I use for the Body Bugg and showed me how to do many things like I can look at as little as 30 minutes in a block of time to see how many calories I burned. She told me that the Body Bugg is the most accurate device on the market. She cracked up when I told her what the Wii said I burned. She told me that the Wii did not know my body. I will have to put this to the test and see and compare!

You can imagine that after I talked to her how overwhelmed I felt. I couldn't wait to talk to Mike and eventually we did catch up and we did talk about it. He was aware of using the fat, protein and carbs multiplication theory to get the calories. He says that he has talked about it in his meetings but more about the carbs and showing the fallacy of low carb diets. He told me that he knew that the FDA didn't require correct nutritional information. He said that there is a 20% leeway on the accuracy of our food labels. OMG! Why don't we all bitch about this????

He goes on and tells me that I can burn out trying to track too much. He talk to me about trusting the science of Weight Watchers. He told me that he personally knows the head of the Science Department at Weight Watchers and that this person (I can't remember what her name is) knows all there is to know about nutrition. He told me to trust the program. He went on to remind me how companies come up with a recipe and have millions of labels made and how easy it is to somewhere down the line a supplier change and even the recipe changes and the guidelines of the FDA states that there can be a 20% leeway. Mike worked for Campbell soup at one point in time so I feel confident that he knows what he is talking about. Needless to say after talking with him I was confused a bit. Wondering how I should approach all this information!

I ended up taking a nap and woke up in time to feed the boys. Mark and I needed to go out and get Mike his birthday present and a card so we ate at Chick-Fil-A. I didn't manage my points very well today! I got into the dang peanut butter and chocolate chips again! They are gone now. I will for sure have to excercise extra this week!

It's late and tomorrow comes pretty quick! Weigh in day! Oh boy! (extreme sarcasm)

Till tomorrow...say lots of prayers! I need another loss!