Why calorie counting ‘seems’ like it doesn’t work

Do Whatever it takes to remember what you've eaten.

So I’m in the middle of a short weight loss run (looking to lose about 10lbs) by mid sept…I’ll put pictures up when I’m at my goal size/weight.

I’m shooting for around 1200-1500 calories per day. As I eat throughout the day I keep a running total in my head (rough numbers) of how many calories I’ve consumed and when the number gets into the 1200-1500 range I just stop eating.

This is a pretty simple system and it’s working well (I actually have no idea how you could possibly lose weight any other way without knowing how much you’re eating, but I digress)

The crazy thing is how easy it is to forget an entire meal you’ve eaten. The other day I was thinking of having a snack or something to eat before going to the gym and as I was thinking of all the things I ate that I day I concluded that I was only at 1000 calories so far…so I thought to myself I’m good to go for a pre gym snack.

Then on my way to get my snack I remembered an entire meal that I had forgotten to count into my total daily calories! And I had only eaten that meal a few hours ago.

I was shocked how easy it was for me to forget what I had eaten so easily and so soon after eating it.

Well thanks to my memory kicking in (albeit a bit late) I realized it wasn’t the best idea to have the preworkout snack.

So I just headed to the gym without and that kept me right on track for my weight loss calorie total for the day.

The point is that calorie counting does work IF you can remember all the food you’ve eaten! That is the biggest trick of all.

If you don’t believe me try it right now. Try to think of all the food you’ve eaten in the past 24-48 hours, it’s not that easy, and I’ll bet you that you can’t think of it all right now and at some point later today another thing you’ve eaten will pop into your head.

Doing this exercise will show you just how much and how often you eat and how easy it is to forget.

John

Posted by johnbarban in Calories, Weight Loss
Tags: calorie counting, food |7 Comments

7 Responses to “Why calorie counting ‘seems’ like it doesn’t work”

  1. usernametooshortnowitstoolon Says:
    August 11th, 2010 at 2:11 pm

    This is exactly why I like to stick a routine so I can more easily remember when I last ate. I like to eat generally the same foods. This is what I do on the weekdays, and I generally eat well below maintenance on these days (I only eat breakfast and dinner – it’s easy for me to skip lunch since I’m too busy at work to think about food). When the weekend comes around, I have a lot of breathing room to eat whatever I want (within reason, of course) and still be on target calorically.

  2. usernametooshortnowitstoolon Says:
    August 11th, 2010 at 4:12 pm

    Clarification: I plan my meals ahead of time for the weekdays. It just happens that a lot of the planned meals are repeats. Because I opt for the same quick-and-easy to prepare meals.

  3. Girlwithnoname Says:
    August 11th, 2010 at 6:40 pm

    This is also why WRITING IT DOWN as you eat it is very helpful. Keeping a food log is a very valid way of keeping one’s calories in check. John, curious why you rely on memory? Writing it down is too much work?

  4. johnbarban Says:
    August 11th, 2010 at 10:29 pm

    Jax,

    I’ve never written it down just cuz Im usually pretty good at keeping track…I might also just lose whatever paper I write it down on!

    This works pretty well for me (minus the odd lapse like this one)

    JB

  5. clementinho Says:
    August 12th, 2010 at 9:28 am

    Really, really good post, John. I see that this is some ultra-flexible version of fasting. Basically, it’s a caloric ceiling approach. I’d like to do this as well! Maybe you can recommend this diet.

    On a different note, I’ve decided to unsubscribe from all the fitness mailing lists, thanks to you. I really believe that this takes away loads of stress!

  6. mrlanda Says:
    August 12th, 2010 at 10:23 pm

    I like writting it up or just use my cel phone calculator app and just add everything up as I have some food.

  7. sanjosesean Says:
    August 20th, 2010 at 9:16 pm

    Excel spreadsheet on my phone.

    I plan out my fasts & calories before the week starts and then make slight adjustments to it (as I get off track :-)

    Just added a rolling average feature to it.

    Gotta get rid of the peanut butter in my house by 9/1! (PB + Chocolate Chips = A Caloric Bomb! :-)

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