Between January 1st and March 4th, I counted every calorie I ate or drank.
The mental results:
A fully formed habit of more conscientious eating, and a better understanding of eating for sustenance versus pleasure or boredom.
The physical stats:
Starting Weight: 205.5 lbs
End Weight: 187.9 lbs
Net Loss: 17.6 lbs
After 7+ months of taking my fitness seriously, and 60+ days of calorie counting here’s what I’ve learned.
Counting Calories is work. At least to start
Forming the habit of calorie counting is a massive pain. Apps like Noom, MyFitnessPal, and Fitbit make it easier, but it’s still a chore to scan packages, log individual ingredients, and spot-check the database calories against the nutrition facts from restaurant websites. The meals I eat by myself, breakfast and lunch, became more consistent by sticking to the same staples and formalizing salad and smoothie recipes. This not only allows me to log food faster but drives simpler, healthier, meals. After about two weeks of consistent logging, I settled into a groove of tracking the meals as I go, and while I occasionally need to fetch a nutrition label from the recycling bin, the process is now mostly automatic.
The food database you use really matters.
I started the year using Noom as my tracker of choice. I loved the lessons and gamification of the process, but opted out after the first week, and turned to the classic MyFitnessPal app. Why? The Noom database was not nearly up to par. I’m fine with manually entering the occasional meal, but almost everything I logged in Noom had to be entered by hand either because the food wasn’t listed, or worse, the identified items were wildly inaccurate. The MyFitnessPal database is far more comprehensive and cut down on the logging friction.
Hitting your calorie goal is not as important as logging the food.
I set a 1.5-pound weekly weight loss goal in MyFitnessPal, which allots 1,620 daily calories. Rarely do I stay under this count. Instead, I use the number as a guideline and try to make the best choices possible throughout the day. Sure, if I’m already at or over the goal at the end of the night I’ll typically turn down the beer or ice cream sandwich. But sometimes I don’t, and that’s okay. In the past, I would so strictly adhere to the calorie goals set that life lost its flavor. Meals and snacks were no fun.
Now, while I log everything and work to make smart choices, I’m not beholden to the number. Every week I have a day or two where I’m well over 2300 hundred calories, sometimes over 3000! Those aren’t the norm, but I don’t beat myself up when they happen.
Exercise matters
“You can’t outrun a bad diet.” The adage is overused, but there is truth to it. If you’re routinely overeating no amount of exercise is going to compensate. However, regular exercise goes a long way to ensuring you won’t forget the taste of mint chocolate chip ice cream. This philosophy won’t help you cultivate six-pack abs, but in my experience, a mid to heavy regimen of cardio and strength training will accelerate your weight loss and help reconfigure your body shape. All while still enjoying food that tastes good.
I do 20-60 minutes of cardio 5-7 days a week, and strength train three days a week. According to the Apple Watch and Fitbit, my cardio workouts burn between 100 and 140 calories every ten minutes. Therefore, if I workout for 20 minutes, I don’t hesitate to have that 160 calorie ice cream sandwich after. Instead, I luxuriate in it as a reward, and I still burned a few dozen bonus calories to boot. The calories burned in strength training are far lower, but in doing workouts like the 100 Push-Up challenge, I found my metabolism fires a little cleaner, and the physical changes in my body make the weight I am carrying look a bit more appealing.
Not every day is the same.
I weigh myself every morning right after waking up. Some days I’m a pound or two heavier. Others a pound or two lighter. Though the scale vacillates each day, my overall weight continues to trend down. There’s no reason to beat yourself up over a weight fluctuation. Although I typically exceed my aggressive calorie goal, I more often than not eat below my maintenance level. In doing so, I continue to lose weight over time. Just trust the process and you’ll get there.
Eating out of hunger vs boredom
Tracking calories raised the question early on, do I want to eat right now because I’m hungry? Or just because of habit or boredom? More often not, it turned out to be the latter. Drinking a lot of water and eating high volume, low-calorie meals like salad helps a ton. Social eating and drinking is the next level of this challenge, but the ongoing pandemic has curbed those tendencies almost entirely.
Be kind to yourself
Sometimes the meal I log is just close enough. I eyeball it rather than dissect my deli sandwich for ingredient weights. I recently had eye surgery and didn’t track my weight or calories for 5 days. That’s okay too. The biggest lesson I’ve learned is being kind to yourself pays dividends. Don’t lash yourselves for your failures, and over time, you may appreciate saying no to that snack or extra helping, as you learn to treat your body kindly.