how many calories in a day?

[Jem]

Robert M,

That sounds like a pretty intelligent approach. Pretty similar in many ways to what I try to do. For lunch though I usually include some kind of protein on the salad (Shrimp, Chicken, or steak). And I make my own Caesar salad dressing... so that bumps it up a little, but it FEELS like a real meal and tastes great, without being off the charts in terms of calories, etc.

At dinner I make up for it by watching my portion sizes.

Exercising is key though, and it seems you have a very good routine. I have a harder time making it to the gym regularly, because it is a 1 hour round trip journey, not including the actual workout.

[Filliam H. Muffman]

Dave, I think you should read South Beach or Atkins. This is a little bit of a generalization, but ANY TIME your glycogen reserves are close to full, say from eating more than about 60 grams of carbs (not counting dietary fiber) during the previous 24 hours, every extra gram you eat starts getting converted to fat within 2 hours. Fat and protien take longer to convert (they have to wait to get to the small intestine to be absorbed) so it is less likely that they will get stored as fat unless you overindulge. Drinking alcohol with other carbs when your glycogen reserves are close to full generally does the same thing. All the alcohol gets burned before your body starts to use glycogen for energy, so if your stores are full, any calories from carbs you eat get converted to fat until all the alcohol is out of your system.

Cutting out most of the fat from your diet and eating 'empty' carbs can actually make your blood sugar levels swing more, resulting in cravings. (cough*chinese-food*cough) Except for nutrients like folates from whole grains, you can easily get more carbs than your body might need during the day just from fruits and moderatly high carb vegetables like peas and carrots.

A short list of carbs to avoid:
refined/white flour
pototoes
white rice
corn

If you really have the willpower, going on SB/Atkins can result in a 2% weight loss in a week from the loss of water that your body used to use to keep all that extra glycogen in solution.