The Daily Calorie

So when I quit smoking here's how I did it: I quit putting cigarettes in my mouth. And when I wanted to stop watching TV I just didn't turn it on anymore. Diet Coke? Same thing! I just didn't drink it. And therein lies the major problem for us 'lifelong dieters:' we can't just quit eating!

If I could say "OK I'm no longer eating food" there wouldn't be much of a problem. For me, it's a lot easier to quit altogether than to cut back and only eat the healthy foods in certain amounts. It really gets my goat that not eating anything at all is almost worse than eating too much. But, there's obviously no way around this universal quandary, so we know we must eat. But how much and when?

The best tool I have found so far is online calorie counters. You can sign up for free and they will track not only your calories, but your fiber, sodium, fat, carbs, all the major amounts that should factor into your weight loss goals. Its difficult to say "only eat 1,500 calories and you will lose weight" because if all of those calories come from cake and are eaten at 10pm, you still have a problem. The program I use is www.TheDailyPlate.com and has been quite useful in achieving my goals this New Year.

The main reason why I find calorie counters so useful is that it eliminates the guesswork. I know exactly how much protein I still need in my day, that my sodium is a little high so I'd better skip those pretzels, and I have 300 calories for dinner so I cannot have an evening snack today. It also helps me to spread out my calories throughout the day. I think a lot of people (myself at the top of the list) are "good" all day, and then cave at dinner and have two large helpings, or snack in front of the TV for an hour at night.

The best way to lose weight is to eat 200-300 calories every few hours throughout the day. If all of your calories are eaten at night, your metabolism is chillin for hours, wondering if its going to get any food. So when dinner comes and a large amount of calories shows up, your metabolism is out of practice and takes longer to gear up to digest that food. But if smaller amounts of food are ingested every few hours, just as your breakfast is finished digesting - here comes a snack! Eating throughout the day means your metabolism is constantly working, and in effect may even burn more calories digesting the same food as if you ate it all at once.

So try out a calorie counter if you have trouble spacing out your food throughout the day. Stick to it and pretty soon you might even find that eating throughout the day is way more fun than "being good."