Counting calories with MyFitnessPal
Disclaimer: I have no affiliation with MyFitnessPal.
Last week I noticed that I had passed the fail safe point on my belt. This is the point where my girth expansion causes me to move the adjustment out one hole. I’m guessing this correlates to an extra inch or so of circumference. This also correlates to around 195 pounds for me.
This is also the point where I heave a big sigh and take hold of my self control mechanisms and start watching what I eat. I don’t ‘diet’ per se. It’s more switching from mindless eating to paying attention.
What is a good example of mindless eating? How about grabbing 5 Reeses peanut butter chocolate cups from the Halloween candy? Or, how about mixing Fluff with Chunky Peanut butter in a big bowl and sitting down in front of the TV late at night with this concoction and a box of Ritz crackers?
That is the kind of mindless eating that I do. I do it not because I’m hungry, more because I’m bored and I crave the happy chemicals that my brain squirts when my belly is full.
When I lose that notch on the belt I begin to watch what I eat. The best way to watch what you eat is to log it. I log my food now in an online App called MyFitnessPal.
Logging everything you eat is a big pain in the butt. Once you get a few entries in it gets much easier. The app remembers everything you have entered before so you can just choose from the list of existing foods instead of having to search or type in calorie content. One particularly useful tool is a quick copy where I can just the previous day. I have the exact same thing for breakfast every day.
The other super useful tool is being able to scan barcodes with my iPhone. I just scan the food label and viola! Entered!
It also lets me log my exercise and gives me calorie credits. One of the things I’ve found, that we already know, is that exercise makes a big difference in your daily calorie count. 30 minutes of running is worth almost 500 calories which is close to a quarter of my calorie budget for a day.
I think it may overestimate the running and biking calories burned but on the other side it underestimates the core workout calories burned. The way I do my core workouts I’m burning fuel as much as an easy run.
When you first sign up it runs you through a wizard that asks you what your goals are and calculates roughly what your daily calorie budget is. Mine came out to around 2000 calories.
I usually screw these things up by being too aggressive. I basically go on an all carrot binge for a couple days, starve myself, lose 10 pounds and quit.
This time I’m trying to take it slower. I actually had General Tso’s Chcken from the Chinese food place one night and Pizza last night and still stayed close to my target. It’s much more encouraging when I can eat the stuff I like and still make some progress.
It’s interesting and I think the big point is that if you measure something you will automatically do better. The other point is that you’re not going to do it unless it’s easy and this one seems pretty simple for me.
Your app sounds like mine- which is called “Lose it!”- taking it one step further we purchased a Withings scale, which syncs with the Lose It! App. The scale keeps the weight for multiple family members, way fun! Our scale is no longer in our bathroom, Its where everyone can access. Once you reach your goal, Lose It! bumps your calorie intake, in my case, by 500 calories. But if you go over your goal weight by even .5 pounds, say good bye to those extra 500 calories. By the way, kudos to you for going up steps two at a time, I’ll think about that tomorrow as I walk up the flights to my desk on the 4th floor.