Back to calorie counting

Don't you just love those diet programs which promise massive and quick weight loss seemingly with no effort.  Lose weight while you sleep, eat all you want, no exercise required.  Sign me up! But wait a minute.  If that is all it takes, why am I still seeing so many overweight and obese people everywhere?  Why are hundreds of thousands of people resorting to extreme measures such as liposuction and even bariatric surgery?   Clearly society as a whole will never wake up to the fact that there is no magic bullet, no little blue pill, no powdery substance and no gadget that gets delivered by UPS, that will shed your pounds for you.  It's all you and only you.  You and your will-power, you and your motivation.  Do you really want to look and feel great, or are you really happier hiding behind an extra 20 or 30 or heavens forbid 100 lbs of fat?  Is it just less effort to give in to temptation and eat the whole packet of chips rather than just a few, or maybe none?

Day 11 of the 100 days of weight loss is a timely reminder for me that one should eat for only two reasons, being to fuel your body and to appreciate flavor.  The author recommends a minimum of three 'fuel stops' per day, with a couple of mini-stops in-between.  Regular planned fuel stops during the day will improve your energy and focus and will help to avoid the deadliest of all diet pitfalls, unplanned snacking.

Although I am committed to seeing this program through, I'm having difficulty figuring out how many calories I am really getting in.  Even the tiniest handful of 'healthy' snacks such as peanuts can bump up a day's calorie count by a surprisingly large number.  How many?  A measly 1/4 cup of roasted peanuts packs a whopping 200 calories. Pita bread and hummus sound like they belong on a serious dieter's plate but watch out: a serving of hummus (2 TB) contains about 70 calories and let's face it, very few of us are going to have just 2 Tablespoons.  Add in a few pieces of pita bread and before you know it there's 400 calories down the hatch. 

The only way to be sure - or at least get an accurate estimate of daily intake - is to count calories on one of the online programs such as Fitday.  It takes a few minutes every day but once you have all your 'regular' foods in the rotation, it is not too much of a hassle.  Rather spend a few minutes every day now than hours of exercise and effort next year and the year after, to get rid of excess weight.

So for the last few days I have been getting going again on Fitday; still not quite there but getting back into the swing of measuring and weighing portions and ingredients.  If you are really curious, there is a link below. 

Weight this morning: 170
Body fat percentage: 21%

Dec 21:
Running:  5 miles with Kathleen and 'the boys' along Buffalo Bayou.  Kath is in week 1 of training for the Boston Marathon which will be in April 2012.
Calories consumed:  1,630

Bert's Fitday Journal