To Count Calories or Not to Count Calories…

After years of closely monitoring what I eat, and how much I eat, I definitely am a supporter of short term calorie tracking. It is the easiest way to gain knowledge on your daily eating habits, what works for you specifically in terms of diet, and gives you an idea of where you stand in terms of caloric intake. Although I do not believe that one should count calories their entire life, due to the fact that it is time consuming, takes away from the enjoyment of food, and gives a false impression that all “calories” are the same, I believe it is extremely important for this generation to reset what they believe a true serving is, and truly how much they are taking in with a meal.

Food portions have grossly increased over the last century… and we are eating 90% more sugar daily.

This is very scary!! Even most pre-packaged snacks or items that most people assume are one serving, may have a couple servings within it. I heard a stunning fact that no matter what you order at restaurants, you can almost always tack on a mere 100 calories more than you anticipated, due to extra uses of butter, oil, salt, and sugar which help to make the food so mouth watering and savoury!  This is besides the fact that foods at restaurants are almost always more calories than homemade meals of the same calibre. These few somewhat depressing food facts will definitely add on the pounds if you aren’t being diligent with what you are putting in your mouth. And as much of a supporter as I am of exercise, diet contributes 90% of your weight! Exercise can only go so far. A small order of fries is about 250 calories, which is about half an hour on an elliptical, let alone the big mac and pop you ordered along with that…

So what do I recommend? Purchasing an app on your phone that tracks your meals for one month- 6 months to get yourself accustomed to and responsible for your food intake. The app I use that I find very helpful is, MyNetDiary.

This is the what the homepage and the food page basically look like.

You can take before/after photos, track your food intake, it has a nutritional breakdown of the food. You can see more details in the food report:

As I said before, make sure you are eating nutrient dense foods (the most nutrients per gram of food)  that are hitting all the nutritional requirements, versus eating open ended calorie rich foods (little to no nutrients per gram of food). Also, specifically for vegans/vegetarians, it is nice to track to make sure you are not being a lazy vegan/vegetarian and are receiving enough B12, and protein, which is easy to do once you are educated on what works and what doesn’t!

Here are approximate serving sizes of food that you will need to know to input your food intake into the app:

You don’t necessarily need this app, there are many like it but I find this one works really well for me. It will help keep you on track! The other major thing is does, is it takes in some of your physical information and will calculate approximately how many calories you should be eating in a day. This is important! Take it into consideration, but do what you think is right for you, or make an appointment to your naturopath for more guidance 🙂