Crap, crap, crap and more crap. I had no idea how badly I've been eating over the past 13 years. People told me I was eating like shit, but I didn't believe it until I actually started calculating it. I found another site instead of fitday, which seems a LOT more flexible. Calorie-count.com actually has listings for almost all fast food (which is what I've been living off of), although it doesn't seem like it's as flexible for saving custom items. I think fitday would work better if you were making most of your own food, where calorie-count works better for someone who eats out a lot like me. It loses the cool pie charts, but it seems to have better calculators for setting goals.

The problem with trying to calculate what I was eating before is I can't remember how each day would work. It's very easy to come up with scenerios where I would have had 3500 calories: 33% fat, 10% protein, 57% carbs. It's also easy to go higher, but I'm sure some days weren't quite so bad. There HAD to be days that weren't so bad.

It would then make sense how I got to this point. If I averaged a bit over 3000 a day, that would do it. So it seems like the goal should be to drop 500 calories a day and maybe burn another 300 with physical activity. So maybe a half hour of some relatively intense cardio a day? Might not be too hard, although I don't really see myself making it to the gym every day. Maybe if I dropped down to 2000 calories a day for most days, then eating an extra 300 on days where I'm doing some cardio. That could actually work. Today I did just under 2000 (unfortunately it was only from two meals though).

So after spending the day number crunching it I think I've got a plan. I don't think it's feasable for me to do five small meals. That's a little rediculous for me, but four is definitely doable. I'm already halfway there with the two meal thing. The magic number is 500 calories. I'm not going to concentrate too much on the proper ratios of fat to carb to protein yet, aside from reducing fat as much as possible.

It's actually not hard to achieve at all, once I speak in fast food terms! 500 calories is a Wendy's spicy chicken sandwich. 500 calories is a Pita Pit sandwich. 500 calories is a Teriyaki chicken with rice. 500 calories is a Wendy's biggie fries. 500 calories is a 6" sub (or half a 12"). As long as I've got those benchmarks it shouldn't be so hard. It seems that Phil has been doing the same thing, since those are what he usually chooses when he's picking fast food. I'll be bugging him more about this.

The biggest adjustment will be switching to water, which is what I'm going to have to do if I'm going to have a spicy chicken, a 12" sub, and an order of teriyaki chicken every day and not even have to work out! I think it's a fair trade. Or I could cut out one of those and replace it with an english muffin for breakfast and maybe some mandarin oranges or peppers or something else fun during the day. Then if I'm going to do any cardio I can grab a quick 300 calories of carbs on my way down and use that! Brilliant!

This is starting to get damn interesting.