A Word about Measurement

By doing this food diary I am learning new meanings for the label “convenience food”. Generally means something ready to go, which you don’t have to make yourself. However, in my case, these have the added joy of having all the nutritional information per serving right there on the back of the packet. Because when you cook at home, you have to work it out yourself. Normally this isn’t so hard, as I have a good set of measuring cups and a kitchen scale (which is why most of my portions are given in grams), so I simply measure the number of grams or millilitres of a particular food, then use the given nutritional information per 100g on the back of the package, or go to a calorie counting website like www.calorieking.com or www.nutritiondata.com to find that information.

The problem is when I make a large complicated dish like the Turkey Cottage Pie last night. The basic idea is the same; weigh or measure each ingredient before it goes in, look up the nutritional value for each, then add up the calories, protein, carbohydrates and fat for the total dish. The tricky bit is I then have to find the total weight of the finished dish, either by weighing each portion or the whole thing. Once I have the total, I then weigh my portion and divide that weight by the total to get the proportion of the total calories etc. in my portion. In other words, far more work! And even after all that, odds are good that my totals are only rough estimates anyways as cooking different ingredients together can change their nutritional values (are the just firm carrots in the pie raw, boiled or baked?).

I don’t think I will be switching to more frozen dinners anytime soon, but I admit there are days it’s tempting!

The Score:

Calories:	Protein:	Carbs:	Fat:	Alcohol:	Fibre:
1883.90	109.55g	234.04g	44.71g	15.5g	23.21g
	23%	50%	21%	6%
Calories burned through exercise:		367

What I ate:

Time	Item	Amount
07:15	Vitamins - Centrum Advance A to Zinc, 400iu of Vitamin E, 1000iu Vitamin D3 and 500mg Glucosamine sulphate	1 each
	Cold water	200mL
	Mattesson’s Turkey rashers	3 rashers
	Bob's Red Mill Pure Oats	40g
	and raisins	20g
	Sainsbury's orange, mango and passionfruit juice	200mL
09:00	Black tea	500mL
10:30	Brazil nuts	8g
	Cashews	15g
	Seedless Red Grapes	100g
	Raspberry and Echinacea tea	250mL
13:30	Sainsbury's Be Good to Yourself Pork medallion	69g cooked
	Roasted potatoes	86g
	Roasted Beets	92g
	all brushed with olive oil (and herbs)	10mL
	Colman's Bramley apple sauce	1 tbsp
	Spinach	25g
	Tomato	93g
	The English Provender Balsamic Italian Dressing	15g
15:30	Workout - resistance training
	Citrus Nuun electrolyte tablet in water	500mL
16:30	Total Greek yoghurt	125g
	Sainsbury's frozen mixed blueberries and strawberries	100g
	Sponser chocolate Recovery Shake	20g (1 scoop)
	mixed with skim milk	150mL
19:45	Red Wine	150mL
20:15	Homemade Turkey Cottage Pie	320g
21:15	Sainsbury’s Freefrom iced rich fruit cake slice	1 slice
21:45	Ellactiva Chocolate Calcium Chew	1 chew
	500mg Glucosamine sulphate	1 pill

Plus 500 to 1500mL of cold water sipped from a water bottle throughout the day.