Many people think calorie counting is a tedious and overwhelming project. I used to be one of those people. When I was in high school and struggling with my weight, my mom used to try to push counting calories. I totally pushed her away. I couldn't imagine sitting around with a book and looking up foods every time I ate and writing them down.
Fast forward 22 years (sheesh, that hurt to write) and technology caught up to me. I downloaded Lose It to my iPhone and tried using it. At first, it seemed to be a lot of work. I used it for a few weeks and then gave it up. About 3 months later when I was still really unhappy with my body and the way I felt, I went back to Lose It. I learned that as I used the app more and more, I got faster at recording my foods. It remembers so much information, it made it easy.
When people ask me how I lost weight, I tell them that it wasn't anything fancy. I counted calories and exercised more. Many people instantly tune me out. Counting calories is such a turn off.
But there are so many tools out there that make it easy. If you do a search online, you'll find many free programs that will track calories for you - dailyplate and calorie lab are two that pop to my head.
I think about the people who are totally motivated by watching the Biggest Loser... how do those people lose weight? They count calories and exercise. No 'diet' is going to work if it doesn't change how you manage your food when you stop the 'diet'. Period.
Last night I had a sushi combo meal from a local restaurant. I knew I had about 800 calories left in my daily budget for dinner, so I didn't pay really close attention to what I was ordering, but I didn't go crazy. I had a tuna sashimi dinner, it came with 2 pieces of CA roll, a salad, brown rice and a small scoop of macaroni salad. It was yummy. When I finished, I sat down with LoseIt and recorded my estimation of my dinner. It was about 550 calories. I may have underestimated a bit, but at that point it didn't matter in my daily total. However, I was surprised that the total added up to that number. You think sashimi, small sushi roll dinner and that it shouldn't be too much. I do try to keep my dinners around 600 calories.
Normally, I analyze my calorie budget before dinner. The other night we were going to Islands for dinner. I was thinking that I might want to splurge on a burger. However, I spent a few minutes looking at the nutritional information of the restaurant and decided that the patty (which is almost 500 calories by itself) wasn't as appealing as the french fries. So, I had a low cal order of chicken tacos and then shared some fries with my kids. If I hadn't done some calorie investigation, I would have probably had a protein style burger and fries. Then my dinner would have been about 800 calories. Considering my weight at the moment is at the higher end of my tolerance number, I decided that this average weeknight dinner wasn't worth a splurge day.
There are times where the snacking mode hits me. When I sit down to track my calories after the fact, I am ALWAYS shocked at the calorie total of the snack. It's usually easily 200 calories. Think about it, a few crackers and some cheese spread, 150-200. If I did that every day, I'd never lose weight. I can't tell you how much easier to count calories the more I do it. I can't recommend it enough. It works for the long term, diets don't.