Losing weight is a lot like getting your money under control.
You need some form of “budget” if you want this to go well.
In order to lose weight, you have to burn more calories than you consume.
I know that’s old news, but most people don’t know how to apply it.
When you really want to get serious about your money, what do you do? You make a spreadsheet or create some way of tracking your spending.
You don’t just say “I’ll eyeball it” or “I’ll try to spend less,” and if you do, you’re likely not getting the results you could.
I realize that tracking calories isn’t something you wake up excited about. Nobody wants to stop what they’re doing and enter what they ate into an app. It takes time (although it’s less than 6-7 minutes a day), it’s inconvenient, and it isn’t fun. Even most of us who do it regularly don’t “enjoy” it.
But, there is NO better way to get an idea of how you’re “spending” your calories.
It’s a tool to accomplish the task. It's not the task.
Let me be clear here: We don’t track calories because we need something else to stress and obsess over. We do it to teach us how to use our calories and to create a plan we like and that is sustainable long-term.
In the same way people are surprised to learn how much money they spend on certain things when they really track it, you will be surprised by what the majority of your calories go to.
It might not even be things you enjoy that much.
Everyone has a different Total Daily Energy Expenditure, which is just the amount of calories they burn throughout the day. This number is a total of calories burned through moving, physical training, bodily functions, etc. In order to lose weight, you have to consistently eat under that it.
Let’s look at a few examples, and I’m intentionally mixing in different types of foods so you can see the contrast. Keep in mind that to start losing weight, the number of calories you need to consume is probably somewhere between 1800 and 2400 calories.
-1 cup broccoli: 31 calories
-1 cup chocolate ice cream: 286 calories
-1 cup orange juice: 112 calories
-1 12 oz Coca-Cola can: 140 calories
-1 tbsp butter: 102 calories
-1 apple: 95 calories
-1 cup brown rice: 216 calories
-1 cup peanuts: 828 calories (not a typo)
-1 tbsp peanut butter: 94 calories
-1 Reese’s cup: 87 calories
-1 cup 2% milk: 137 calories
-1 cup carrots: 45 calories
What you’ll notice here are that some foods you think of as “healthy” are high calorie, and some that you think of as “unhealthy” are actually not that bad.
There is a difference between foods that are good for weight loss and foods that are good nutritionally. Ideally, you’ll get most of your calories from foods that are good in both ways, but that’s not the point.
Tracking teaches you. It helps you learn this stuff. It helps you identify good and bad trends in your spending so you can make wiser choices.
When you understand this, you can build in foods you enjoy without guilt and without hindering your progress.
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