help, I HAVE to eat junk food.

shunkawakon

Okay, first, let me explain:

I am a sous chef, I've been in the industry as long as I could work. I work as a sous chef in a restaurant that me and my chef recently took over 6 months ago. It's been one long hell of a rebuilding journey so far. I work 7 days a week, and 12 to 17 hours days. I love what I do, and this is all I've done, so the no days off and the long hours are normal/not at all hard on me.

BUT, I work on the line with the line cooks every dinner service/brunch service on the weekends. I have, HAVE to taste everything I put on to plate and send out to customers. In addition, I HAVE to taste anything my cooks put up to plate as well. Nothing comes past me that I haven't tasted for more salt/more fat/to salty/more lemon etc etc.

It's an Italian-American sort of menu that we change seasonally. However, lots and lots of our dishes include a ton of fat, salt, butter, cream, refined sugars, bleached flours etc. (this makes our food sound scary to the health nut haha, but it's delicious!)

I absolutely cannot track every single bite of food that goes in my mouth, and not to mention they all are varying degrees of fattiness or healthiness (is that a word)?

How in the h*** do I include this in my diet? in logging every day? I have been of MFP for 2 years, lost a ton of weight, then had a big life event and gained 40 pounds back. I, back then, just totally guessed and added 300 to 400 calories extra in my dinner section, not really knowing exactly how many calories or what the breakdown of those calories were.

THis may be too complicated to ask for help in this forum, I'm just wondering what your guts' thoughts were on this subject, as this makes me kind of paranoid when I log my calories everyday and how it effects my workouts.

Unfortunately, NOT tasting these things is not the answer. IT is my job that we put out the best food possible.

ANy suggestions at all would help!

heybales

So, you'll have to do the very old fashioned traditional approach that is actually much easier.

Is your weight stable right now, say over the last 4 weeks, no gaining or losses, and not just because you are eating too little and stalled?

If gain or loss, how much what direction?

If so, examine your non-work tasting diet, whatever you do choose to eat for more normal meals.

Find 250 calories from that which you can leave out daily. Could be as simple as sugar pop. Couple slices of bread, bunch of fruit. Whatever. Obviously easier if there is something that is eaten daily you can leave out. Perhaps half of breakfast, tighten that up.

Don't go trying to totally switch things up, just leave 250 calories daily out of whatever you would normally eat.
No need to track, log, estimate, whatever, except first time to figure out what you are going to leave out.

If you do feel the need to switch things up too, then figure out how many calories of whatever you want to change, and eat the same amount of new stuff. Unless this is part of leaving 250 out. Perhaps you figure out breakfast of your own is 600 calories, so you are going to figure out a new breakfast of only 350 calories worth.

Now, find when you can do exercise, and whatever will allow you to get 1750 calorie burn weekly, which will replace current sitting time. Yep. If it replaced your already active time, you would not be adding on 1750 more burn, but potentially much less.

Maybe that is literally 250 cal burn of walking or jogging daily, perhaps 3-4 days of over 400 cal burn. Maybe 3 days of something intense.
However you work it out. Avg 250 cal more daily in burn compared to what you get now.

That will lead to 1 lb weight loss weekly at this weight. When it reaches less as you weigh less, sadly you'll have to figure out more food to leave out, or how to include more intense exercise.

CanGirl40

I Heybales!!! Great advice!