The Glory of Peanut Butter

During this diet, I have had an uncanny craving for a good, old fashioned PB and J, so I tailored my diet to include a PB and J every day.

So I went on the hunt for natural peanut butter, not the regular Jiffy with tons of sugar and other oils that make it a delightful spread. I bought Adam's brand peanut butter simply because the only ingredient on the back was PEANUTS! It required mixing, and it had an initial strange texture, but once I got past that I found it had the same delicious flavor as most of the other peanut butters.

I was talking to a friend last night about my diet and workout program, and calorie counting came up as it typically does when discussing diets with others. We figured that an entire PB and J had to have at least 400 calories, and that if going low-cal was the goal, these yummy little sandwiches were normally the first to go.

My program says not to be a fanatic about calorie counting (which I definitely can say that I hate doing, and love the fact that this program recommends being "calorie conscious" rather than worrisome). This leads to me not paying attention to food labels as much as just eating natural, healthy food. But as I sat at my table after work last night, I figured I might as well figure my caloric intake just to get a good bearing. Using Google's food calculator, I went around and looked at the labels of food I bought. Because I knew exactly how much of each food I was consuming, figuring the total caloric daily consumption was easy.

And here was the good news:

One day of normal meals as I have them planned out, including one daily PB and J with a small glass of organic 2% milk--which is surprisingly tasty--equated to between 2,000 and 2,100 calories per day. And a person my height, weight, and age requires exactly that to maintain a healthy weight loss!

Go me!