One must do, before one does not.
Old Guy Saying (probably)
COUNTING TO NOT COUNT CALORIES – Prerequisites:
A calorie is a unit of measurement. A unit equivalent to the large calorie expressing heat-producing or energy-producing value in food when oxidizing in the body or an amount of food having an energy-producing value of one large calorie.
Counting calories, as discussed in this post, means utilizing the First Law of Thermodynamics on your isolated body (system) to create a calorie deficit to lose body fat (stored energy) by restricting caloric intake to be less than caloric expenditure. A.k.a. “You ran out of energy, so it went and got the difference from your muffin top and also slightly decreased the size of your muffin top.”
TRACKING AND COUNTING CALORIES TO LOSE BODY FAT – How to:
How does a beginner start to count calories in and calories out? Complete each step before moving on to the next. This is not meant to aid in losing body fat quickly. The most sustainable approach to losing body fat is over long periods of time.
Keep in mind the body is only able to utilize stored body fat for energy at a certain rate and losing body fat faster than this rate (whatever it is) is impossible. Similarly your body can only store excess body fat at a certain rate therefore you can’t gain body fat super quickly as well. So if you are looking to get fat you will slowly get fat and the same goes for losing body fat, but losing body fat takes extra effort.
7 Step-by-step guide:
- Start recording your current diet’s calories.
No matter what you are eating, eat the same amounts and foods, do not change your diet. The goal is to get an honest average of how many calories you are currently eating in a day. This number will tell you two pieces of vital information, (1) how much you need to restrict your calories in the future, and (2) how much weight you were gaining by overeating everyday.
To complete this utilize calorie tracking apps like my fitness pal, Lose It! (what I currently use), or any of the many others, but find the one you like and stick with it.
- Examine your diet’s nutrition.
To go forward with losing body fat it is not effective or healthy to simply just adjust portion size or exercise more, you must make sure you are eating a balanced diet.
A person can eat purely pizza and lose weight by simply eating less than burned, but will feel awful because the body and diet is lacking nutrition. For example, if you only ate 4 pieces of pizza and a few soda’s everyday, you could easily be in a calorie deficit with some activity.
- Determine your total daily energy expenditure (TDEE).
The amount of energy you need to stay alive plus any other energy expenditure that was needed throughout the day is your TDEE or calories out. This is the number you subtract from the number you recorded in step 1 or calories in.
The different ways: online calculator, fitness watch, fitness app, or guesstimating. No matter what method, stick to it to keep data coming from the same source so it can be altered to fit your needs.
Currently, I use the Samsung Active 2 smart watch and have had the same one since 2019 with no sign of slowing down.
- Track.
Use a piece of paper, program, app, spreadsheet however just keep track everyday until it becomes part of your routine.
The spreadsheet I made for myself to track my fat loss goals and my updated daily calorie tracking here.
- Adjust as needed.
If you find that your calorie intake is more than calories burned here are a few tips help put you into a calorie deficit:
- Start using a food scale adjusting the portion size of some of the less nutrient dense foods (breads or pastas for example) to get in a slight calorie deficit.
- Start only eating serving sizes of foods. Makes it much easier to track and adjust.
- Complete some extra activity to burn more calories like going for a walk, playing a sport, or put on an air guitar concert.
- Replace some of the higher calorie foods with low-calorie dense foods. For example: replacing rice with vegetables.
- Completely removing some higher calorie dense foods. For example: stop eating ice cream after meals.
- Limiting the times in which you can have certain high calorie foods. For example: only eating sweets on the weekends.
- Take up a new hobby or learn a new skill that is active. For example: join a softball league, get into photography and go hiking to take beautiful pictures, get bow staff skills, train for a 5k charity run, do fitness app challenges, learn how to do a cartwheel, learn how to refinish cabinets, make a potato cannon, adopt a dog from a shelter (you can find any breed you want in a shelter somewhere so, ADOPT don’t shop), literally anything that requires some physical effort.
- Repeat adjustment to achieve goals.
The industry standard is to aim for a 500 calorie deficit everyday. This theoretically results in about a 1 pound per week body fat loss or a weekly calorie deficit of negative 3500 kcals, although newer research is suggesting there are more calories in 1 pound of fat than previously determined. Regardless, I and many others aim for the -500 calories everyday and body fat loss results so as a rule of thumb this is completely acceptable.
- Keep going…
It really is not enough to be in a deficit for a few weeks to see results. It can take 5-6 weeks to see real results (or 5-6 pounds lighter!). Which you can see, fat takes up a lot of space on us:
With that in mind you can see that losing 5 pounds of body fat is a noticeable amount of fat to lose and therefore will take time to be free of the fat.
THINGS TO CONSIDER:
- Prioritize nutrition and exercise over portion size.
- This is a marathon, averaging approximately 500 calories deficit is ideal and results in a healthy and manageable fat loss of about 1 lb. per week.
- A massive caloric deficit can lead to overeating/binging and an unsustainable and unhealthy diet that stops most people’s progress.
- Too much exercise can lead to a large deficit and lead to overeating and unsustainable diets.
NOT TRACKING AND COUNTING CALORIES TO LOSE BODY FAT – How to:
In the adjustment phase of the counting calories how-to (Step 5) it is suggested to measure the food you consume. This small effort is the key to long term success. At first it is difficult to measure all the food, but after a while it becomes a habit and really does not take up much time and also from my personal experience it leads me to eat without regret because I know without doubt I am not overeating.
If you haven’t spent time measuring and learning what serving sizes are and caloric content of different foods, not counting calories is just not possible.
How-to step by step:
- Take notice of serving sizes of different foods you eat during a long period when you are counting calories.
- Over time you will have a great feel of how many calories are on your plate, especially the ones you eat more regularly.
- After enough time and experience you will notice you can guess the amount of foods and the amounts of calories to a point that you don’t need to measure or count your calories.
SUMMARY
Not counting calories is a skill you learn through practice.
HD Quiz powered by harmonic design
#1. Which bowl of cereal is a 1 cup or 42 gram serving ?
#2. What is a calorie?
#3. How many calories are in a gram of fat?
#4. Which is a serving size of cereal (1 cup)?
#5. One full measuring cup equals a serving size.
#6. If you are not counting your calories but gaining weight, how should you react? (select all that apply)
Select all that apply: