How To Count Calories
Counting calories is actually very simple and a great way to lose weight. This article will show the essentials of how to count calories. If you commit to counting calories you must write them down in a food journal so that you can keep track of your daily intake.
Food journal
Keeping a food journal is very instrumental when counting calories; write down all the foods you have eaten as you eat them and add up the calories as you go. This way you will be sure not to over eat and you will be able to see what you have eaten every day.
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Your journal doesn’t have to be fancy, just a notebook will do, you simply write down the food you ate, how many servings, and how many calories that meal had.
Calorie counter
Finding a calorie counter is very easy because you can find many of them on the internet. Some sites even offer diet plans to help you while you are counting your calories. For foods that don’t come with labels such as fruit or vegetables, you can find on the internet on your calorie counter. Even if you decide to eat out you can still find the calories consumed on your calorie counter and record them.
Keep in mind that every food has calories, you need calories to fuel your body to give you energy, extra calories will only result in fat storage. Foods like fruit and vegetables contain calories, just because they come straight from nature doesn’t mean that they won’t have calories. Gum and cough drops have calories and so do some flavored waters. Make sure you aren’t drinking all your calories by drinking juice or soda, check the labels and only drink one serving of juice and stop drinking pop altogether, if that is too hard then switch to diet pop.
Eating out
Just because you are on a diet doesn’t mean you can’t eat out; some restaurants off low calories menu’s for those trying to lose or maintain their weight. Of course, fast food restaurants don’t usually offer this, the best you can do at a fast food restaurant is to order a salad or a grilled chicken salad. Don’t forget to record them in your food journal.
Reduced calorie snacks
Buying special snacks that are packaged in a way so that they only contain 100 calories is an easy way to have a good snack and to find the calories in the snack. One package contains 100 calories and you can have a variety of things including chips, crackers, cookies, or cakes. Just because they are 100 calories each doesn’t mean you should eat more than one package in a day because you should use your calories wisely.
Junk food
Some people think that they can starve themselves all day and then have a giant 1000 calorie piece of cake and be okay. If you do this you will only overeat and if you somehow manage to only eat one piece of cake you will not have received the right amount of nutrients during the day. Vitamins and minerals are just as important as your caloric intake. You should only eat foods that are high in vitamins and low in things like sodium, fat, cholesterol, or sugar.
Counting calories is very easy and is a great way to keep track of what you eat so that you can lose weight. Keeping a food journal is very important when counting calories because it helps you keep track of your calories you’ve consumed and to help you see what you’ve eaten day to day to detect a pattern of unhealthy eating.