These past few days, I’ve found a couple of different calorie counters that determined that at my height, weight, and activity level, I must be consuming approximately 2300 calories per day to maintain my weight. That’s what I needed to know, but I sure didn’t like hearing it! So, I’ve decided to count my calories and try to lose about a pound per week, which means I need to cut about 500 calories per day. The funny thing is that I’m down about 1000 calories per day, and I’m not sure where it came from! How did that happen? Sure I get hungry sometimes, but usually I’ll just drink a glass of water or eat an apple or something healthy. Honestly, I don’t think I’m really that much hungrier than I was when I didn’t think about what I ate and just shoveled it all in. Maybe I just think now about how food affects me–that is, it makes me gain weight.

My particular problem is that if I don’t eat until I’m over-full, I don’t feel satisfied. No, let me rephrase that so it’s the Biblical definition–my problem is gluttony. It’s habit, I know, but it’s hard to break. It’s particularly hard when in certain situations, like going to an all-you-can-eat restaurant–you feel like you haven’t gotten your money’s worth if you don’t stuff yourself sick. Also, meals like Thanksgiving and Christmas are supposed to be feasts, right? We’re supposed to chow down and eat till we can’t button our pants any more, right? Well, if we ate on a daily basis and worked on a daily basis the way the Pilgrims did, we could probably afford to feast like they did. The only problem is, I think what we eat on a daily basis is more like their special feasts. And then there’s the meals at my mom’s house–her homemade tacos and pizza–I eat like a teenager, but gain weight like an adult.

And it’s gotta stop. That’s why I’m making myself count calories, so I know how much I’ve taken in. It’s far too easy to forget that you ate something, or to minimize how much you ate: “It was just a bowl of cereal, and 1 serving size is just 130 calories!” True, but what about the fact that a bowl-full is over two servings? and you forgot the full-fat milk you poured over it! All of a sudden your “healthy snack” of 130 little calories becomes a full meal of 500 calories–that’s 5 miles you’d have to walk or run to get that extra off! Enough!

So I’m down 1000 calories per day! And it’s easy (but not fun). I feel different, too–maybe it’s my empty stomach, but I feel cleaner and lighter inside. Probably because I’m not weighed down by so much daily food–and so much extra sugar and other bad stuff I shouldn’t eat. Plus, I’m exercising again. I’ve got my old videos out, and I’m doing one or two a day! Two pounds a week looks doable for now!

Just for the sake of honesty, it’s about 9:30 in the morning right now, and my stomach is grumbling. So I’m going to go have an orange or something.

I’ve decided to lose weight, which means that I must eat less and exercise more. How much less should I eat? How much did I eat before? Well, I didn’t write it down before, so I have no clue how much less I should eat! Then I found this calorie calculator that tells me at my current weight, height, and activity level how many calories I typically eat, plus how many I should eat in order to lose one pound or two pounds per week. (Since a pound is 3500 calories, that equals out to 500 or 1000 fewer calories per day.) I could exercise more (and I need to!), but walking a mile only burns 100 calories, so it’s a lot easier to eat less than to suddenly start running 5 or 10 miles a day.

So the calculator tells me that I am currently eating about 2300 calories per day, which means I need to eat 1800 or 1300 calories to lose 1-2 pounds per week. Yikes. This means I have to actually figure up how much I’m eating and write it down (which I am actually doing today).

For breakfast, I ate a banana muffin, which I had previously made. I figured up the total # of calories in the recipe, and then divided by the number of muffins, and found out that this little bitty muffin had over 300 whoppin’ calories in it! That’s over 3 miles of calories!! Normally, I would probably eat at least two for breakfast and then a third one as a snack, but when you really equate number of calories taken in to how far you’d have to walk to get rid of it, that makes you change your priorities!

So, I’ve decided to start looking at calories in terms of how far I’d have to walk so that I wouldn’t gain weight from consuming it. A Snickers candy bar is almost 3 miles of calories; a McDonald’s “Big Breakfast” is over 7 miles; a Big Mac meal, supersized is almost 16 miles (and almost all of the calories I’d be allowed for the entire day!); my husband’s favorite fast-food meal is from Popeye’s–two chicken breasts, with red beans & rice and a biscuit, which tops out at nearly 13 miles (1280 calories, to be exact).

It can be a little difficult to figure out some foods, but not impossible; also people tend to eat the same things over and over, so you can figure that stuff out once and go from there. But it is imperative to know what a “serving size” is, because I bet that most of the time when you eat junk food, you eat a lot more than one serving size. A serving size of Santitas tortilla chips is 9 chips; Pringles is 15; that bottle of Gatorade may be 1 serving, but then again, it might be 4. Even if it’s not “junk” food, you still may be eating a lot more than a single portion size–a bowl of cereal is probably at least two portions, but you won’t know unless you measure. If you eat out a lot, you can probably get a calorie menu (I think fast food places have to have those available online, if nowhere else), and if you can’t get an official count, you can probably guestimate pretty well by finding something similar online. However, there are a lot of hidden fats used in restaurant meals that you might not use at home, so some restaurant’s rice may have several tablespoons of butter added into it, so you have to figure for that, too. If you cook most of your own foods yourself, then it’s simple (but time-consuming) to figure out the calories in a portion: just add up all of the calories for each ingredient in the recipe, then figure out what fraction of the recipe you’re eating.

Then, transfer the calories into miles, and stop before you eat and think, is this roll of Smarties really worth walking a quarter-mile? If it is, then eat up and then go walk. If it’s not, tape your mouth shut!