Big Revelation!
Wow..I just had a big eye-opener!
I have never been a calorie counter. I always sort of thought that people who counted calories were sort of going overboard. Boy was I wrong. The basics of losing weight is calories in vs. calories out. Its that simple. I always thought that counting calories would be annoying etc....but if you are really serious about losing weight as I am, then you WILL do it.
By punching in some numbers I learned that I need around 2300 calories per day just to maintain my weight. In order to lose weight I need 1656 calories per day based on the exercise I am doing each week.
When I thought about this some more...I realized that there must have been sooooooooooo many days in my life, maybe even years that I ate more than 2300 calories per day. Think about it..if I was just eating 2300 calories I would maintain my current weight..but over the years I have gained like 10 lbs per year. So that means I must have been eating much more than 2300 calories per day! Thats insane, and I have to say that I am sooo ashamed. Everyone knows that you are not suppose to eat more than 2,000 calories per day for MOST people. I was eating waaaaaaaaaaaaay more than that.
So now that I know roughly how many calories I need to eat per day...I have to start counting. This morning I had two waffles with butter and syrup of course. I thought that was an okay break, not super good, but its not like it was McDonals or something. Well I was wrong. All that was 450 calories! Thats sort of a lot. The waffles were okay...for two its 210 calories. Not bad, but of course the syrup was 100 calories for a small amount, and the butter was about 60 calories per serving and I had 2 servings so thats 120 calories for both.
210+100+120= 430 Calories. But I also had a few sips of diet coke so I just figured I had 450 calories for breakfast! Thats nutz!!!! I can see I need to eat some oatmeal and fruit for breakfast from now on. Taking a look at exatly what I am eating is really going to force me to change what I eat. I need to make better choices.
Also I took a look at the liquids I had in my fridge. I have diet coke, lots of juices and water. I took a look at the calories in each serving of juice. Its like 100-120 calories in each serving of juice. Ive hear about the studies that said to watch what you drink because a lot of our calories are found in what we drink, specifically in juices that you think are healthy but are loaded with sugar. I have not really been a big water drinker, but this whole thing is making me open my eyes a lot and I am going to try ever harder to switch to drinking water and keep the sodas and the juices to a minimal. I always knew that drinking water was the best thing, but when you look at how many calories there are in each serving of juice, you see even more clearly.
I have to say that taking a look at my caloric in-take was really suprising. I must have been eating waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay waaaaaay, waaaay more than I needed to. Part of the problem was just like with the waffles, I had no idea how many calories I was eating per meal because I never counted calories before. Now that I am going to start, I think this is going to make a huge difference real fast.
