Strength for Her

Nobody enjoys counting calories. Not only is it tedious, but many times it can be difficult to estimate how many calories are in certain foods. Still, learning to understand the caloric content of food plays an important role in weight management.

By now, you should have a general idea of how many calories your body needs per day to sustain its weight (see Estimating Daily Calorie Needs). The next step is figuring out how many calories you’re actually eating. The best way to get an idea of your calorie intake and evaluate your diet is to keep a daily food log.

I don’t recommend tracking your calories indefinitely. It can become an unhealthy obsession if you’re constantly thinking about every bite you eat. But when you’re first learning how to adopt a healthy diet into your lifestyle, it’s necessary to learn the effects of your food choices.

With a little practice, calorie counting eventually becomes second nature. You’ll quickly learn which foods are the best choices and what portion sizes look like. You won’t have to record your diet forever. But by writing down everything you eat in a day, you’ll start to understand how to fine tune your diet. Sometimes we don’t realize how much we eat or how many calories some foods have until we start recording it.

There are several web sites and resources that list the nutritional information of foods. One I like is Fitday. It allows you to create an account and track your daily food intake. This is a great alternative to writing it all down, and the benefit is that it calculates your daily intakes for you. Not only will you see how many calories you’re taking in, but you’ll also see your fat, sugar, carb, and protein intake, as well as many vitamins and minerals. You can log your exercise and your fitness goals, and it’s free.  Pretty cool.

How to Keep a Daily Food Log:

1. Commit to a timeframe – Set out to record your diet for a certain time period, no less than one week. It’s important to get an accurate snapshot of how you’re eating. Since our diet can vary widely from day to day, a longer period is necessary to really see what kind of food choices you’re making.
2. Record everything – It can be easy to forget food items, usually those eaten impulsively. However, our body doesn’t forget them! Remember to include everything that goes into your mouth, including a bite here or there or just one cookie or handful of chips.
3. Be thorough – Remember to include not only the food but also any condiments, accompaniments, or special preparations. Adding mayo to a sandwich can add hundreds of calories and many grams of fat. If you have a baked potato, don’t forget any butter or sour cream that you may have used. A fried chicken breast will have much different nutritional content than a grilled one.
4. Don’t forget beverages – It can be easy to overlook our drinks, but they can add quite a caloric punch. Don’t forget to record sodas, juices, or alcohol. If you have coffee, remember to include any cream or sugar you may add.
5. Count it up – At the end of each day, add up the calories from each food item. If you’re using a web resource like fitday.com, this step is done for you. If not, look for nutritional info listed on the packaging. For foods that aren’t packaged, there are several web resources that will give the nutritional info. For each item, write down the calories and the fat content.

Remember to pay close attention to serving sizes – they make a huge difference. One serving of pasta may have 200 calories, but if you actually ate three servings you’ll need to account for that in your log. It can be tricky to figure out serving sizes. We’ll discuss this topic further in an upcoming article.

6. Evaluate – Once your log is finished, take a look at the trends. About how many calories do you eat each day? Do you have any days where you go way over that average? What triggers or food choices causes that surplus? By looking closer, you may realize that those were days you ate lunch out, had a few beers at happy hour, or ate an extra helping of dessert. You’ll start to see exactly which food choices contributed to the total picture.By looking at how each food choice affects your totals, you can see where to pick and choose. If you’re going out to lunch, perhaps you can eliminate your soda or dessert those days to save some calories. Maybe you’ll see that you tend to overeat in response to certain triggers, like stress or your menstrual cycle. By learning why you make certain diet choices, you can look for alternative methods that will serve your health better.You may be surprised to learn how seemingly inconsequential things can add a lot to your calorie totals. Many people are shocked to find out how many calories they’re getting from beverages alone – soda and juices pack quite a caloric punch. Adding cheese or mayo to a sandwich can add a lot of calories and fat. A few handfuls of potato chips or even pretzels eaten mindlessly throughout the day can end up adding up to a lot of excess calories.
7. Don’t Beat Yourself Up – Remember, the point of your food log isn’t to chastise yourself for overeating or indulging. This is a learning tool to help you understand food and nutrition. You’ve already taken the first step to a healthier diet by getting this far. The more informed you are, the better able you’ll be to make smarter choices from here on out.The goal of healthy living shouldn’t be to eliminate all ‘bad’ foods. Everything can be enjoyed in moderation in a healthy diet. Hopefully, your food log will help you prioritize your choices. You may not even enjoy soda that much, but drink it out of habit. Once you realize that it’s contributing quite a few empty calories to your diet, you might choose to eliminate it in favor of water. If you really enjoy eating ice cream, you may choose keep it in your diet. Although it’s high in fat and calories, it can be eaten on occasion as part of a healthy diet, as long as you make adjustments elsewhere in your calorie totals.I love pasta and rice. However, these choices add a lot of calories at once. So I usually create balance by eating only one of those items once a day. If I have rice with lunch, I’ll choose a low-carb dinner, and vice-versa. That allows me to enjoy my favorite foods while keeping my calories balanced. I also choose brown rice and whole wheat pasta often, since they provide more health benefits. But I enjoy the less healthy white versions as well, and I’ll eat those from time to time without guilt.

It takes awhile to get a grasp on which foods are high in calories and which aren’t. But keeping a daily food log is the easiest way to learn, and after awhile you’ll be able to balance your diet simply by instinct. You’ll have a feel for how much food you can eat and which foods you can have more of. The goal is to learn by using a food log, and eventually get to a level of understanding where you don’t have to think about your calorie intake every day.

Calories and Weight

We’ve learned how to estimate our Active Metabolic Rate (AMR) in our last article, Estimating Daily Calorie Needs. Remember, our AMR is the number of calories we need to maintain our weight. Take some time to compare that number to the calories you’re actually eating each day. If you simply need to maintain your weight, they should be about equal.

If you need to lose weight, you must take in fewer calories than you burn. Compare your daily calories from your food log to your AMR. If you’re daily intake is higher than your AMR, start evaluating your diet for areas where you can cut back on calories.

Remember, your AMR is dependent on your weight. As you lose weight, your body needs less calories. Remember to recalculate your AMR as your weight goes down. If you’re trying to lose weight, calculate your AMR with your goal weight instead of your current weight. This will give you an idea of what kind of calorie intake you’ll need to maintain that goal weight. If you calculate your AMR with your current weight, remember that if your calorie intake is equal to your current weight AMR you’ll simply maintain that weight. You’ll have to cut back on calories to actually lose weight. To figure out your AMR, see our handy Calorie Calculator.

If it seems impossible, don’t despair. Even slight modifications in our diets can have big results over time. To lose one pound, we need to create a 3,500 calorie deficit. That’s cutting out 500 calories for 7 days. That may sound like a lot, but you might be surprised to see that if you simply cut out two sodas and a couple cookies you’ll be there. Some calorie-dense foods add up faster than you think.

A word of caution: don’t cut back too much on calories. Severe calorie deprivation can fool the body into thinking it is starving. Its response will be to hold onto as many precious calories as it can, resulting in a slowed metabolism. You will lose weight this way, but overall it’s damaging to the body. A slowed metabolism will make you gain weight fast once you increase your calorie intake back to normal levels. The goal should be a gradual decrease in calories to a sustainable level.

If you’re trying to gain weight, you’ll do the reverse – eat more calories than your AMR. Although it’s rare for women to fall into this category, it does happen. If you’re trying to gain muscle mass you’ll need more calories than your current AMR. Try to choose healthy foods that are calorie-dense when adding calories to your diet.