Stuff I Learned from Counting Calories

As I mentioned the other day, calorie counting is not really something I love. But having gotten to 204# and knowing from experience that it worked, I've committed to it for a month. This time I am using an app (Cronometer) that has really made the worst parts of it much easier while providing a wealth of previously hard to ferret out information about my diet.

Here are a couple of things that I have learned so far.

1. I eat when I eat, not when I am hungry. A lot of my eating was nothing more than habit. Sure I love nachos and ice cream (not together!) but am I really hungry? Many, maybe most, times no.

2. My diet was not as perfectly balanced as I thought it was. For example, I am falling about 15% short of the protein I need every day, while consuming almost 800% of the iron. It's taking some thought to change this, but awareness was the first step.

3. I have re-discovered portion sizes. Its amazing how our perception of a normal portion of food creeps up over time. Even if you are eating all the right things, eating too much of them is going to add pounds over time.

4. Calorie counting motivates me to exercise. You want that pizza for dinner tonight? You can have it! But you have to go burn off 500 calories first. For me that is about an hour and forty minutes of brisk walking. Don't feel like walking today? No problem. But no pizza. It makes these choices explicit and the trade-offs become decisions. I look at exercise as extra calories to eat now rather than an annoying thing I need to do.

5. Success feels pretty good. In my first two weeks I have shed over 6 pounds and am already 2/3 of the way toward meeting my goal for the month. I definitely do not feel hungry all the time, I have tweaked my menus a bit but eat mostly the same foods I had been eating anyway (just a little less), I've not missed a single day exercising and I don't spend hours obsessing over the whole thing.

I also feel more in control. When and what and how much I eat are becoming conscious choices that I make with a goal in mind.

I've still got a way to go, and I also know from experience how easily such progress can be reversed.  But so far, I'm feeling pretty good about it all.