the calorie counter

so im trying to lose a few pounds. i joined a mens' small group at church about 6 weeks ago and we're supposed to  be doing the first place diet.  my mom is leading the women's group and stacie signed up.  i dont know why she thinks she needed to sign up for that particular small group, i can only suspect it was more of a "lead by example" kind of thing.  she makes losing weight look way too easy.  anyway, i'm 32 and have been overweight almost half my life.  with two kids who i can barely keep up with, i figure now's the best time to make a lifestyle change. 

i haven't followed the diet like i should.  i have, however, cut out the soft drinks and i'm now trying to eliminate the fried foods from my diet. im also trying to reduce my portion size and have started walking around the lake.  after six weeks, i have lost 8 pounds.  i still find it discouraging trying to keep up with calories and fat grams and all that stuff we should be doing with the first place diet. 

that is until recently when stacie showed me the "calorie counter" app for our htc hero cell phones. whoever came up with this idea is a genius.  you can enter the foods you eat throughout the day and it will keep up with the calories and other nutritional infomration in order to give you a picture of how you did for that particular day.  if you register on the website, you can sync your daily diet calendar and track your progress.  here's the coolest part...instead of plugging in the serving sizes and calories, you scan the UPC label and it will tell you the nutritional information for that food.  the app also has all the major restaraunt chains and their nutritional values. 

today i ate lunch with stacie at her school. i'm convinced her third graders thought i was a complete idiot or at least extremely OCD when i took out my phone to take pictures of the food labels for the baked doritos and cholcolate milk.  i was pleased to find that after breakfast (5 ritz cracker for 80 cal.) and lunch (five dollar footlong=570 calories, baked doritos=90 cal. and two cups of chocolate milk =320 calories), i had only had 54% of my "RDI" ( based on a 2000 cal/day diet).  in the past, i have been known to take down 2000 calories at breakfast.

so we will see how it goes.