When I was playing softball, one of the first things our trainer said to us was "If you eat one bite of pasta it will ruin your whole diet." Along with the fight against pasta and other breads, our other major rules were to eat mostly protein and to not count calories. That's right--don't count calories.
Over the last few years of being an off-and-on dieter/healthy person, I've done a lot of experiments with various tactics to being healthy. Here's what I've done, here's what's worked, and here's what hasn't: 1) Calorie Counting (with an app) Apps like FitBit or MyFitnessPal are awesome if you're interested in keeping track of your calorie intake. What I like about this is that it keeps the amount of food you're consuming in check--instead of reaching for your 3rd slice of pizza, you're going to see that you're going way above your calorie count for the day. Also, these apps hold you accountable by making your intake very visible. What I don't like about calorie counting is that it gives you the opportunity to ingest unhealthy kinds of food--as long as you don't go over your calorie limit. Also, as with most of the logging-through-an-app opportunities, you have to weigh everything or measure everything you consume to get the exact number--and that's ridiculously time consuming. Personally, I keep ebbing and flowing with this one, and find that I'll log my calories once a week then forget to do so again, just because of how tedious it can be. 2) Macro Tracking (with an app) According to a trainer I saw recently, your macros (or macronutrients e.g. protein, carbs, and fat) at the end of a full day of eating should be about 30-40% carbs, 30-40% fats, and 15-20% protein. While this information was specifically geared toward me and I encourage you to go see a health professional for more information, watching my macros was helpful because it gave me an idea of whether I was eating the right kinds of food or not. However, if you've planned your meals for the week and they don't actually fit with your macro percentages at the end of the day, then you're out of luck. Additionally, the same pitfalls that come with calorie counting (such as need to get exact measurements) apply to any situation when you're using an app. 3) Keeping a Food Diary--No Numbers What's nice about keeping a food diary or journal is that you don't have to sit on your backside for an hour after or before every meal trying to pick apart what you just consumed to log exactly what you ate. You log everything you've had for the day and see if it complies with your diet goals, and you are also given the opportunity to stop eating when you're full instead of when you've hit your calorie limit for the day. The downfalls to this are (as I've seen and experienced): you can end up over-eating even with the healthiest of meals, and forgetting to log meals or just plain old falling off track is common. 5) Carb Counting This is a new one for me--in fact, I'm in the middle of trying it right now. My partner was actually the one who told me about this process, and he has been using it for food management off-and-on in this last year. What we're doing for the next couple of weeks is counting only the carbs consumed for everything. Did you know that a medium apple has 25 grams of carbohydrates? I sure as hell didn't until this week. The rundown is that you choose your maximum value of carbs for the day--we chose 50 grams--and consume food within that range. What's great about this is that the calculations are fairly easy--every measurement is online. What's difficult is that if you've hit your limit for the day and are still hungry, you need to get creative, and "creative" for me has been eating a lot of eggs and more cheese than normal. So, while it's been relatively easy so far, you have to make sure that you're getting proper nutrients and not snacking on foods that don't have the nutrients you need even though they're low-carb (like cheese). Also, sometimes you don't get exact measurements and can only guess that your salad was probably about 13g of carbs. Here's an example of the menu we've had this week: Breakfast: protein shake (11g carbs) Lunch: Panera greek salad with chicken (13g carbs) Dinner: Burrito bowl (27g carbs) Total: 51g carbs Breakfast: 3 eggs, cheddar cheese, sugar-free ketchup, 5 blackberries (6g carbs) Lunch: Spaghetti squash w/ turkey and vegetables (15g carbs) Dinner: Hamburger with no bun and veggies (8g carbs) Dessert: Dark chocolate squares: (9.6g carbs) Total: 38.6g carbs I hope that you found some of these methods and pros/cons helpful! If you have any questions or other ideas, please feel free to comment on this post, or you can email me directly here.
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AuthorElena B. Archives
June 2020
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