Week # 2 - Do I have to track calories?

It's time!  You knew this was coming, right?

Do you really need to count calories?  It depends.  If your eating has been out of control for a long time, or you have health problems that are diet related (like hypertension, high cholesterol, fatigue etc.) then you could benefit from tracking your calories.  Also, if you are lifting weights, competing in a race or otherwise need to be at the top of your game…  You would benefit from tracking your calories.

Why track calories?

Some people don’t want to track calories because it takes effort.  However, tracking calories is just something that many healthy people do.  They don’t do it just to lose weight, but to make sure they have the proper fuel to perform their best.  

For starters, it’s very hard to lose weight healthily without tracking your calories.  It’s just too easy to under eat (or over eat depending on the person).  Also, there a lot of hidden calories that you may have been ignoring like adding a ton of mayo to your sandwiches.  Tracking calories will help you decide which calories you want to keep (must have cheese!) and which you could cut back on (maple nut lard bars).

On the bright side, after several months of tracking your calories you will start to get pretty good at estimating how many calories are in foods.  At that point maybe you can stop worrying about keeping a log, but can just have a running total in your head for roughly where you are for the day.

How to track:

Paper tracking is easy and can be done anywhere.  I’m gonna include excel tools in the paper class.  It works, but its old school.  It works pretty well if you are just writing down what you ate, but if you are tracking calories, it is a lot more work to look up how many calories foods are.  Using electronic and web based methods may limit where/how you enter your food, but it’s faster and most tools will analyze your diet for you. 

Warning – many calorie trackers will recommend a calorie intake level for you.  They can be wrong, so go with the BMR*activity number that you figured out in week 1.

Which to choose?

There a zillion calorie tracking programs to choose from, but some of them are designed to sell you stuff.  I prefer to stick to the ones that have minimal ads.  Popular choices include:  livestrong.com, Calorieking.com, Loseit, DailyBurn, or Thedailyplate.  Many of these websites can be accessed by PC, phone or iphone/android app.     These have a good reputation for having large databases of food so you don’t have to manually enter much.

Here is a link to an article that discusses 10 big name iphone apps for tracking calories.  LINK (Most of these have an android version)

I use an online tracking program that has a companion iphone app.  Once I got used to doing it, I spend at most 10 minutes a day tracking my calories.  Most of your online tracking options are free, so try all of them!  Find the one that is easiest for you and that will be the fastest for entering recipes or meals that you eat often.

Today's reading is short.  Do you know why?  Because this weeks homework has to be done between your ears.  Tracking calories is actually not hard.  You don't need me to tell you all about it.  It just takes effort.  Decide if your health is important enough to you to put in more effort.  You almost can’t go wrong with HOW you choose to track calories.  You just have to take the leap and DO IT.  Decide to track your calories for 1 month and commit to staying within your calorie budget.   

Even the largest container fills one drop at a time.  Your health and fitness will also improve one drop at a time.  Remember that real progress is slow and you are okay with that.