One of my favorite things to eat. Obviously the calorie content depends on the pizza, but that shouldn't stop us from estimating. According to Fitday.com a slice of a large cheese pizza (14'' diameter) contains about 325 calories.

There are only 300 calories in an Egg McMuffin from McDonald’s. Even if you had this with a hash-brown (150 calories) you would still only be consuming 450 calories, which isn’t bad at all.

California Pizza Kitchen’s frozen pizzas are pretty good, and their calorie content is very low. Their Marguerita pizza has 960 calories. If you are looking to have a low calorie-day, eating half of the pizza would give you only 480 calories!

My favorite burger is Chili’s Oldtimer and I’ve been craving it for a while. It has 930 calories and the side of fries has 380 calories. That’s a total of 1,310 calories. I might have this tomorrow night without consuming more than 2,000 calories for the entire day.

This is what I mean when I say you don’t have to give up the foods you like to eat. If I want to make sure I don’t consume more calories than I will burn tomorrow, I can have a small breakfast and a small lunch. I could have a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for lunch, which is around 350 calories. For breakfast I could have some cereal, oatmeal or something like that. So, I wouldn’t be burning an extra calories tomorrow if I do this, but I would get to eat what I want and take a break from those low calorie days.

Before going to P.F. Chang’s yesterday, I went to their site and was very happy to find out that they provide nutritional information for all their entrees now. It makes such a huge difference as far as what you decide to eat, when you know exactly how many calories you are consuming. P.F. Chang’s Mongolian Beef (my favorite dish there) has 1,011 calories. If you look this up, it’ll say 337 calories, but the entire entree contains 3 servings, so you have to multiply 337 by 3 if you are eating the whole thing. This does not include the serving of rice that comes with it. The white rice serving contains 220 calories. The brown rice contains 190.

So, the Mongolian Beef with brown rice contains a total of 1,201 calories, which isn’t bad if you compare it with meals in other chain restaurants. This did, however, made me decide not to get any appetizer. My wife and I usually get the lettuce wraps, which are 158 calories each.

I wanted to limit myself to about 1,500 calories for the day, so I had a bagel for breakfast, and went to the restaurant around 4pm. I was pretty full and didn’t feel the need to eat anything else for the rest of the day.

There are 580 calories in Wendy’s 1/4 lb. single with cheese (500 without the cheese). Consider having this with a bottle of water instead of getting the combo. If you were to get this with a medium coke and medium french fries you would be consuming 1,250 calories!

Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches are pretty good as far as their calorie-content. I have one for lunch sometimes. The one in the picture is made with 100% whole wheat Pepperidge Farm bread, which contains 100 calories per slice.

1 tbsp of Smuckers Straberry Jelly = 50
1 tbsp of Skippy Peanut butter (creamy)  = 95
2 whole wheat Pepperidge Farm bread slices = 200
Total = 345 calories

White wonder bread has even less calories (under 100 per slice).

Eating snacks in the middle of the day is a great way to make sure you don’t overeat when you get home. However, as always, you have to pay attention to what you are eating. Let’s compare the Smart Food white cheddar popcorn with the Fritos corn chips.

160 calories	480 calories

The interesting thing to note here is that if you look at the nutrition labels for both of these, they both say they contain 160 calories. However, if you look at the amount of servings per bag, the story is quite different. The white cheddar popcorn has 1 serving, while the corn chips bag contains 3! So 160×3 gives you 480 calories for that little snack! That’s more than a small turkey sub from Papa Ginos; not the best snack to be having.

A small turkey sub from Papa Ginos has only 410 calories. I usually ask for mayo on the side and estimate the mayo to be 90 calories to make the whole sub an even 500.

Even the large turkey sub isn’t so bad, at 640 calories. Compare that with a large steak & cheese which has a little over 1,200 calories.

When you start counting calories you realize how easy it is to gain weight. If you burn 2,000 calories per day and you are going to Papa Ginos for lunch, and having a large steak & cheese, you are consuming 60% of your calories in that one meal.

After all the eating I did on Thanksgiving, I’m hoping to have a good week this week. This is what I made tonight, for my wife and I. I’ll estimate the calories for the whole thing, and then calculate my calorie-intake based on how much of it I ate.

Roasted Potatoes

I cut up two potatoes and bake them in the oven with about 1 tablespoon of olive oil and some salt and pepper. I bake them for about 20 minutes at 400 degrees.

• 1 tablespoon of olive oil (Filippo Berio) = 120 calories
• 2 medium potatoes = 340 calories

Salmon with tomato paste sauce

First I pour about 2 caps of vinegar on the salmon, and squeeze a whole lemon on it. I then season it with garlic powder, pepper and a little bit of salt.

I then heat up the pan, pour a little bit of olive oil, some tomato paste, onions, and water.

Once the tomato paste dissolves, I put the salmon on the pan to begin cooking it. I cut up half of a red bell pepper and put it in the pan a few minutes before turning the stove off.

• 1.5 pounds of Atlantic salmon = 960 calories (1 pound contains 640)
• 2 tablespoons of tomato paste = 25 calories
• 1 tablespoon of olive oil (Filippo Berio) = 120 calories

I ended up eating half of the roasted potatoes and about half of the salmon.

• Roasted potatoes = 230 calories
• Salmon = 553 calories
• Estimate for other stuff = 50 calories
• Total = 833 calories

Here’s the finished product:

Notice that I don’t even bother itemizing the rest of the stuff like garlic powder, and the bell pepper, since their calorie-content is so negligible. What I usually do, is add a little extra to my total.