CALORIES - FOR WEIGHT LOSS AND IN FOODS

CALORIES - FOR WEIGHT LOSS AND IN FOODS

Filed under Control your weight · Tagged calories, food choices, food scale, weight loss

Yesterday I had a couple questions concerning calories in foods and calories needed for weight loss and thought I’d address those questions here. The first question was how many calories in fruit and that was a pretty open ended question. What kind of fruit? How big a piece? How much are you eating? The way I now find out calories IN ANY FOOD is at www.calorie-count.com but there are many, many sites you can go to. Just google calorie counts! Now, once you get the calorie counts the question is - what do you do next? It doesn’t do any good knowing that a medium (138 gram) apple is 72 calories. I mean most of us will just say, okay, this is a medium and it won’t be that far off but I get pretty fanatacal when I’m losing (or trying to lose) weight and I weigh everything. I don’t want to cheat myself in either direction - by eating too much or, even worse, by not getting my calories worth! What if that was really only 50 calories and I counted 72. Oh my, the world is coming to an end!! Really that wasn’t a great example - a better one would be something that was 300 calories and I actually ate 350 - do that several times a day and I’m not losing any weight. So - do yourself a favor a get a food scale. They’re not expensive and will become your best friend. Most of them will weigh in ounces and grams and that’s important since sometimes it’s easier to do the gram bit. All labels have that on them.

Okay, so that answers how many calories in foods. Now the important one - how much of those food calories can we eat and still lose weight? Back to www.calorie-count.com or goggle. The end result will be determined by how much you weigh now, what you’re goal weight is, how much exercise you get per day, etc. I know that given my height (5′2″) and my weight (115-116) and my activity level (moderate) the most calories I can eat and still lose weight is 1,200. That’s not a lot for sure and the only way I can have more is to exercise more and I do that in the spring, fall and winter but not in the Tucson summer! By the way, no one should go below 1,200 calories to lose. Eating too little is just as bad as eating too much! What happens when you eat too little is your body thinks you’re trying to starve it so it will hold on to that fat for survival - not what you want. Given smart food choices and exercise losing weight doesn’t have to be a punishment. Just think of the results and how good you’ll feel about keeping that promise you made to yourself to get healthy!!