So, my sweet sister, Leah, told me about a week ago that she has lost 9 lbs. by calorie counting and exercising a couple of times a week. My initial thought, as it always is when people mention "dieting" was, "I exercise so I can eat whatever I want!" Well, that night I watched an episode of The Biggest Loser. I've watched that show for several seasons and I really enjoy it. But on this particular episode, three of the team members on the black team threw the weigh in. They were scared that the younger team members, many of which had a lot more weight to lose, would lose the least amount of weight and therefore, go home. Each of these three team members gained weight instead of losing! They did this, despite the fact that they exercised an obscene amount of hours! So how did they do it? They blew their calorie counts!
Food really does matter! No matter how much you exercise, if you're taking in thousands of calories each day, you're not going to lose weight. So here's Leah's solution:
www.myfitnesspal.com
This website it awesome! It's free and easy. You simply put in what you eat and what you burn through exercise and you get your count for the day. The first few days, all I thought about was food. How many calories are in this or that? I immediately found that I was wasting A LOT of calories on junk. A hershey kiss here, a few chips there. All of them added together were keeping me from making any progress. Now, I know that I can eat a huge handful of carrots for only 40 calories. I can eat 16 wheat thin crackers for 140 calories, or I can eat 2 oreos for 140 calories and 6 grams of fat! For me, it has become more about the quality of my calories.
Now, sure, I still eat cookies! I am just more aware now of how many I eat. It truly has not been that difficult. So, give it a try! Just for fun, for the first day, eat like your old self. Eat like you would normally eat. Don't hold back. You'll be amazed how many calories you're consuming! I sure was!
I love myfitnesspal.com! I've been using it for years and it helped quite a lot in getting my baby weight from Henry off. Now I have it as an app on my iphone and I use it even more than I used to. It's a great app!
ReplyDeleteyou've never counted calories and you're are THAT skinny?? lucky person! Cute blog. I just came across it through facebook :) ... i lose weight when I eat egg yolks and coconut oil. its not all calories. its sugar :P :) happy blogging!
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