Counting Calories

Sometime the best strategy for losing weight is just good, old-fashioned counting calories.

If you have conquered your food addiction to where cravings are not killing you, lose the weight you need to lose by counting calories.

Get a notebook, start out with breakfast and record everything you eat and how many calories were consumed.

Don’t try to crowd all your calories into one meal thinking you will eat less the other meals. You probably won’t. Decide how many calories you need each day and spread them out over the day.

Go easy on carbohydrates, especially sugars and pastas. Heavy carb loading will leave you hungry and sabotage your diet plans. Mix a reasonable amount of carbs with protein and healthy fats such as olive oil and fish.

Measure all your foods, including the oils or butters you cook with.

For low calorie diets you need to pay attention to the quality of foods you are consuming. Adding fruits and vegetables will give you hunger-satisfying bulk for much fewer calories than pasta and cookies.

Low-fat dairy products are also foods that satisfy hunger for a low calorie expenditure. Consider skim milk, light yogurt, low fat cheese, cottage cheese, ricotta cheese, cream cheese and sour cream. Don’t forget to measure.

How many calories do you need? That depends on several factors.

How active are you?
How old are you?

As you age you get very efficient metabolism and it takes less calories just to live (bummer!). The only solution to that is burn extra calories with exercise. There is always some kind of exercise you can do even if you can’t run 5 miles a day.

Most people can walk. If you can’t walk, ride a bike. If you are chair bound do aerobic arm exercises. ________________________________________________________________

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