I am not there yet, in fact I know I’m not getting anywhere near the variety I need, but with what I am eating right now is it good enough?
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Maybe the scale isn’t that important. But I think when it comes to emotional support it is. So I began to wonder if I was eating enough calories per day.

Calories needed per day

The amount of calories you need per day varies with your weight, height, and activity level. However, one thing I quickly learned was that 900 calories was way too low.

Everything I read in books, or came across on the web stated that anything below 1,200 is counterproductive. Such a low daily caloric intake can cause your body to go into starvation mode, therefore slowing down your metabolism, and eventually your weight loss.

How to calculate calories needed per day

You will need the following information (be honest):

• Age
• Height
• Weight
• Activity level

Then visit MyPyramid.Gov to create your own pyramid plan by inputting the information above.

The image to the right is “My Pyramid Plan.”  As a 41 year old male weighing 246 pounds, 5′6″, with a moderate activity level, 2400 calories is needed per day for “modest weight loss over time.” This creates a deficit causing your weight loss.

I personally started working on this about two weeks ago, I made sure to increase my daily caloric intake from around 900 calories per day, to a minimum of 1,200 calories per day, and since I created my weight loss milestone blog entry on the 7th. I have lost 5 more pounds in just 9 days.

My conclusion:

Cutting calories is important to lose weight. However cutting too many calories can be detrimental and not only slow down weight loss, but cause health problems associated with nutrient deficiency.

I hope this blog entry helped you. If you too had weight loss surgery or are considering weight loss surgery, I would love to hear from you.

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I really want to be successful in my weight loss using the lap band, and this is just one of the tools provided to help ensure that success.

I was somewhat surprised at the turnout. This clinic is a weight loss surgery factory, and by all accounts that group should be full of people each week, but then there is a reason we are all fat.

Sure we like to hide behind the defenses of, “I’m big boned,” or “its genetic.” When in reality, for the most part it’s because we make poor choices in life, and one of those poor choices is not informing ourselves, educating ourselves in how to beat this problem.

Now I say that being one of those, who in almost 5 months post surgery has never attended a group.

I’m assuming my first group was a bit different than normal. Instead of having open discussion, one of the lap band graduates who is four years out from her surgery and still maintaining her goal weight, is teaching us about nutrition. She has gone back to school to become a dietician and part of her graduating requirements is a community project, and she chose teaching the group.

The class is taught focusing on how we can apply some of this knowledge to our new way of eating, which due to the small amount we can consume at each meal makes it that much more difficult to eat a diet that includes variety.

I will continue to attend, what I learned last night is already helping me to make even better choices.

Just a quick link I wanted to share regarding the new food pyramid.

Really nice website, and very informative.  You can input the amount of calories you want to consume each day, and it will break it down into how many servings of each food group you need.

It also has a food intake, and exercise diary to help you calculate your daily caloric needs vs expenditures.

I will of course be posting again soon.

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I’ll be honest when I tell you that this has been on of my failures in goal setting.  I vowed that I would attend these meetings, and over eaters anonymous if necessary to overcome my bad eating habits.  But yet I have not been to one meeting yet.

So in keeping in line with what I stated in my first post, about making everything public my successes and failures to help keep the pressure on, I will from now on attend at least two meetings a month out of the three that are available to me.

I will report back later on in the day on how things went, and what I have learned.

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So, I’ve been trying to eat the recommended 113 grams of protein a day, while maintaining a daily caloric intake of about 1,200.  This has caused me to make choices, and of course those choices are good.

I had an off day Sunday and bought pizza for the family, of course we had the hot wings and crazy bread too.  Well I went shopping last night, and I was thinking about buying a frozen pizza for myself which of course would take 3 meals to finish off at my pace.

I was going to buy one of the personal pizzas from California Pizza Kitchen, and I looked at the nutritional facts on the back, and it was a whopping 290 calories per serving and there were 3 servings.

Now that doesn’t sound like much  if I only eat 1/3rd of the pie.  But really taking a hard look at these things is making me truly understand how I got myself into this predicament in the first place.

In the end I decided not to get the pizza, in fact I’m heading out later on this afternoon going to Sam’s and getting the baked chicken, and a big bag of romaine lettuce.  The cost is about $2.50 more than the pizza, but in the end I get about a week’s worth of meals, along with a clear conscience going the chicken caesar salad route.

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Each and every pound that drops is exciting, but when you start bypassing those big numbers like 300, 275, and 250, it’s really quite unbelievable. I’m afraid that when I break 200, I may party so hard, that I’ll gain back a pound or two.

I am still having hunger pangs all day long, I’m going to call tomorrow morning and see if I can get an appointment for a lap-band fill this Saturday. I am at that point now where each and every little drop of saline that goes into my port has drastic effects on my restriction, or so I hope.

I had my standard fare today:

Breakfast: Yogurt mixed with milk and Kashi cereal

Lunch: Tuna Salad

Snack: 1 oz string cheeze

Dinner: Chicken Caesar salad

As always, I hope tomorrow is a better day.

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Pre-op, I could eat a double quarter pounder, with large fries, x-large diet coke, and x-large vanilla shake, and 30 minutes later devour a pound of orange slices.  Now, I don’t mean the healthy orange slices, but the gel sugar coated candy orange slices.

Toady for breakfast I had a protein shake, and 1 oz of str