Dining in the Dining Hall

First off, I got a 104 on my second nutrition test!!! GO ME! I only missed one of the bonus questions and got all the “real” questions right. I would love to end this class with a perfect 100. The strange thing is that there are people in the class who are failing the tests – or just barely passing. They must not have ears, because if you sit through the class then there’s no way to fail these tests. I am very surprised, actually, at the number of people in the class who have NO CLUE when it comes to nutrition. I guess I shouldn’t be that surprised given that 2/3 of our country is overweight, but I thought that was just from eating a little too much and not being clueless.

You know what I think one of the biggest problems with America’s obesity epidemic is? No one understands WHY it is important to eat healthy. Everyone knows apples are better than French fries, but does anyone realize why? Maybe they can answer> that French fries have more fat, but do they know WHY it’s bad to have that fat? Most likely not. I’m a huge believer that education is the path to freedom – it gives people the option of making their own EDUCATED decisions. I think our country needs to embark on a huge nutrition education effort. Not just teaching people to “eat 9 servings of fruits and veggies” but to teach them WHY these things are important and what will happen if the obesity trend continues.

**Steps down off the soapbox**

Dinner

Here’s what I had for dinner last night. It was a lot of food, but (almost) all good for me. The lentil soup was burned, so I had some trouble decision how else to get protein. I ended up eating 650 calories, but it meant I didn’t need a snack during class, so all was good.

Burned lentil soup with raw veggies mixed in:

Side salad with 1/2 tsp blue cheese dressing

My “splurge” – roasted potatoes:

1/4 cup of brown rice:

Round I spread:

Seconds on the rice, which hit the spot, and some chop suey veggies (they had Chinese noodles in them, which I only had a small amount of, and a tiny bit of the brown sauce)

Leftover Soup and Potatoes:

And “dessert” – frosted mini wheats in 1/3 c skim milk. I went back for a few more and estimated I had about 12 “biscuits” worth of them for around 100 calories. You can see how i went a little overboard with dinner. All healthy things, but just too much!

Total dinner calories: ~660

Snack

And in the afternoon I mixed oatmeal with half a carnation instant breakfast and some soy milk. YUM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Total Thursday calories: 1813

-587 thru workout and walks

= net of 1226 exactly!