I’m starting my cereal diet tomorrow, and according to the Special K website, I can “consume fruits and vegetables for additional snacks.”  Yay!  I love fruits and vegetables.  After class tonight, I went to the store and got food to prepare for my two week cereal challenge.  I got my kettle corn 100 calorie bags (cause I ran out).  The last box lasted me over a month.  I usually air pop my popcorn, but sometimes I like kettle corn. I also bought another box of cereal.  I spent a long time in the cereal aisle, looking at the nutrition information on each box of cereal that I considered.  I looked at many different boxes.  Among them:
Multi Grain Cheerios
Bran Flakes (but then I realized that we have some at home already!)
Fiber-One Honey Clusters
Go Lean Crunch
Raisin Bran
Special K
Total
Basic 4

I was stuck between Go Lean Crunch (made by Kashi), and Fiber-One Honey Clusters.  I wanted a cereal high in protein and fiber.  Here are the nutritional information on both.

Ok, Fiber One obviously has more fiber (13g vs 8g), but Go Lean Crunch has more protein (9g vs 5g).  Go Lean Crunch has about 30 more calories, and LOTS more sugar (13g vs 6g), but if you look at the ingredients, they certainly look better in GLC.  It is made by Kashi, which is a healthy living and eating type company. The sugar comes from evaporated cane juice, brown rice syrup, and honey.  While Fiber One mentions the word “sugar” six times, and “corn syrup” twice.  It also contains honey.  (The ingredients got cut off on the picture.)

In the end, I ended up picking GLC, cause I’ve had it before, and I loved it.  Fiber One sounded a lot like HBOO, but with more fiber.  I will continue to have my HBOO for breakfast, and will switch off GLC, Bran Flakes (yeah, right), and High Fiber Trader Joe’s Os.

Megan left a comment on my last entry that said her day would consist of ALL cereal, even snacks!  Cause she just loves cereal so much.  I do, too.  Here’s her “day”:

Breakfast - cereal (and maybe toast if I’m still hungry)
Snack - cereal and/or fruit
Lunch - bagel? really big salad? soup and bread? something lunch-y
Snack - Cereal
Snack - cereal or bagel
snack - fruit
dinner - vegetarian yumminess (like what we cook now, but without the mess) plus ALWAYS homemade pie for dessert… that appears magically
snack - cereal

I like the looks of all that cereal, but why does she have THREE snacks in between lunch and dinner?  That’s a LOT of snacking.  Especially with a morning snack, and a night snack.  Crazy Megan.  But that’s a good point.  At around 200 calories (if its a full cup of cereal, and 1/2 cup milk), cereal might make a good snack.  Especially at night when it’s 9pm, and I’m starving, and want to just munch on stuff.

At 200 calories a bowl, I could eat 10 bowl of cereal if I ate or drank nothing else during the day to reach 2,000 calories.  Now that would definitely be a cereal diet.

Ok, on to the other food I bought!  I bought summer squash and zucchini to grill.  I usually add them to pasta, but I also like just snacking on them.  Yum!

Then, I bought a bunch of fruit to make a fruit salad.  Cantaloupe, pineapple, red grapes, and 1/4 watermelon.  It’s a LOT of fruit salad, but the diet said I can eat as much fruit as I want!  How long does fruit salad keep?  I think it will take me a long time to eat.

I think the key to me eating well is to not have crappy stuff in the house.  I came home from class, and while I was cooking my food, I sampled both fruits and veggies, and then was still hungry and had some chips and salsa.  That’s where a nice bowl of cereal will come in! But seriously, I just can’t have food around without eating it.  I love eating.  I wonder what I was doing back in June/July when I was at my thinnest?  I was eating pretty healthy, but what the crap?  I know for sure that I wasn’t this hungry all the time.  That happened around August, where I just started needing food ALL the time.  I’m looking forward to going back to work at Macy’s for Christmas time, so I won’t be home to just eat!  I’ll only be able to eat the food I bring with me.  I’m also looking forward to being on my feet all the time, and gaining lots of steps on my pedometer!  That will probably be the change in life that I need to drop these extra pounds.  (And yes, Megan, I feel that they are EXTRA pounds.  That appeared out of no where, and my pants don’t fit anymore.  I need to lose the weight.  I can’t buy all new pants.)

Ugh, why am I always so hungry? Stupid food.