How to Count Calories Successfully – Week 2

I promise you that you have starved yourself more in pursuit of losing weight then you're going to feel starved during this program. We're going to talk about "Hungry time" in a minute.

First I want you to understand that you should not be "hungry all the time." If you're hungry all the time, then you are probably not eating enough OR you need to move things around a little bit to have the timing work better for you.

Taking 500kcal out of your diet daily should feel more like you've forgotten to eat and your stomach is reasserting itself. But once you've eaten you won't even think about those hunger pangs. It should not feel like a pre-occupation that you are constantly hungry.

You should look at the calorie log you're recording as information to help you adjust your perfect day of eating rather than a tool to punish yourself if you do not stick to your diet. You'll have a more successful time with this mindset. This way you're partners with the tool. The other way you won't open the tool.

When I was actively counting calories I found it best if I recorded my meals two times per day. I'd do it once around lunch time and then again after dinner. Often I would eat the same evening snack (and in fact I still eat it to this day), and so in MyFitnessPal you can set up "Meals" or copy from the previous day.

If it was a "normal" day I'd use my "Snack" meal to fill in my pre-bedtime snack too, so all I had to enter was dinner. You have to be engaged with your food planning and looking at the numbers, but you should NOT be pre-occupied by being hungry all the time. I hope that makes sense.

 

Finding the Low Hanging Fruit

Low hanging fruit is valuable because it's an easy way to accomplish your goal (get that fruit!). Now that we are armed with the information we need from the 7 days of data we've collected we can start to see the low hanging fruit.

After you have a week's worth of data you should be able to see trends in the information. Some things you might notice:

• Foods that you don't like taking up calories. Don't eat things you don't like!
• Multiples in one sitting (could you eat one, instead of having seconds? what would that do to your daily calories?)
• Are you snacking a lot? When and what?
• Are you drinking a lot of high calorie drinks? The afternoon mocchachino latte can really mess up a weight loss routine.
• What about alcohol?
• 239 calories is one pint of beer, so 1912 kcal is 8 pints of beer. Numbers like that stick out to me on MyFitnessPal.

• A shot of Vodka is 97 calories. 8 shots of vodka is less than 800kcal.

If you replace the beer with the vodka you would save over a thousand (1000) calories. If you replace beer with water, you'd save 1912 calories. *wink* If you have that many alcoholic drinks, make sure you have a designated driver. Also if you are drinking that much you will need a weaning program when you want to stop drinking regularly in order to avoid withdrawal symptoms. Do speak to your doctor about a weaning schedule if you need one.

 

For the step by step instructions and full access to the course you have to How To Count Calories Successfully for Weight Loss.

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