Weights, Measures and Counting

You're going to despise me for this, but my recommendation, if you really want to lose weight, is that you need to measure and weigh your food and count your calories.

I know. It sounds like drudgery. I fought it forever. And back in the old days, counting calories stunk. Food labels were confusing. You had to do it all by hand. I don't do math, so that presented a problem.

And then Al Gore invented the Internet and changed all of our lives. You can send him a thank you note later.

There are a zillion websites out there that make counting your calories so easy. I was shocked, SHOCKED I tell you, the first few days I started tracking my calories. I've been doing it now for about two years. Occasionally I miss a day, but I have discovered that over time, I've finally become pretty good at eyeballing things and using portion control. Portion control was always my nemesis. You mean I can't make and eat an entire packet of Lipton flavored rice? Seriously, in grad school I remember making these. They were yummy with all of their chemicals. If I only ate that, why couldn't I eat the whole packet? Why was I gaining weight? Duhhhhh.

So, pay attention to serving sizes. Weigh and measure your food (you can get a little scale really inexpensively). Track your calories.

I know it sounds horrific and time consuming, but it's very educational, and after awhile, it's second nature.

If you are confused about how many calories you should be eating, let me know. There are some online tools we can use to figure it out.

When I got my BodyBugg, it walked me through my fitness goals, my current exercise plan, body types, etc., and it told me how many calories to try and burn each day and how many calories to eat each day.

The free website I used for tracking my calories pre-BodyBugg was www.myfitnesspal.com. But there are tons of other ones out there.

Do a little experiment and track your food for a few days--every little morsel. I was floored by how much I was actually eating, mostly comprised from mindless grazing or eating kids' leftovers. Do not eat the leftovers, I'm telling you. Don't do it. Now I think twice before I pop something in my mouth because I don't want to confess it. Clearly, I would have made a terrible Catholic.

Today's information
And actually, as for yesterday, I didn't input my data--how about that after a post lecturing you to count calories! I think this may become typical for Wednesdays when I'm working on the mountain.

Workout: Burn Intervals (an interval workout from Chalene Johnson's ChaLEAN Extreme program); big walk with my sister's dog

Food
Breakfast: Chocolate Shakeology, original flavor almond milk, ice

Snack: skipped in a frenzy of work

Lunch: leftover salmon and wasabi potatoes

Snack: two oranges, pumpkin seeds

Dinner: Cooking Light's corn chowder w/bacon, tomato/onion/avocao salad

Dessert: Two bites of leftover pound cake, 2 squares dark chocolate

Total Calories: 1612

BodyBugg Stats as of 10:24pm MST:
Calorie burned: 2400

Steps: over 11,000 (I took it off before I saw the final number)

Activity: over 2 hours