Before I started eating right, but well after I knew that I should, I seriously dreaded the thought of counting calories. I was determined not to live my life obsessing over how many bites of food I’d eaten or carefully measuring out how many grams of carbs I ate. The whole process seemed overly complicated and not worth the time. Besides, I was determined to find a short cut to getting skinny and that certainly didn’t include sacrificing the foods I loved most or becoming a “salad guy”, whatever that is. However, I never found the short-cut I was looking for and the foods I loved didn’t seem to love me back. When I decided to get serious about fitness, the dreaded calorie-counting measures proved to be easier than I could have imagined.
Life on a budget – If you can manage your own personal finances, then you can manage you calories. The goal is to simply set a budget for how many calories you need and do your best to stick to it. Calorie calculators like this one, can tell you how many calories your body needs per day to maintain your current weight.
3500 cal = 1 pound – Once you know how many calories you are currently consuming, the next step is a gradual step down. I started by simply removing 500 calories from my daily diet. Since 1 pound of fat is essentially 3500 calories of stored energy, if I removed 500 calories from my daily diet I would have consumed 3500 calories less than I was used to in one week’s time. This would result in 1 pound of fat lost per week. And when you think about it, 500 calories per day isn’t that hard to cut. For me that simply meant drinking water with my meals instead of the usual Mtn. Dew. ( It is important that you don’t go overboard here. 1500 calories per day should be a bare minimum for anyone. When you start going below this number, you run the risk of losing muscle and bone mass rather than fat. If you have any concerns, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to consult your doctor. )
Count it up – The last thing you need to do is simply figure out how many calories are in the food you eat. Most items have this information readily available on the packaging. However, if you are eating out at a restaurant or even fast food, the info can be easily found online. CalorieKing.com has virtually every restaurant’s menu stored in their massive database. If you want to know how many calories were in the baby back ribs at Chili’s (1000) or the Bacon Turkey Bravo Sandwich at Panera Bread (830) this is the place for you to check out.
The rest is just math and discipline. I know those are two of the most painful words in the English language to most people reading this, but it really isn’t that bad at all. The key is to eat foods that you enjoy and satisfy you nutritionally, estimate the calorie content in the foods, and try to stay within budget. Don’t feel bad if you go over your goal either. This isn’t about performance, but about living a better lifestyle.
