Keeping Track

There is so much information out there when it comes to weight loss. The weight loss industry makes a whopping $60.9 billion dollars as year on people trying to find a way to get slim. It's almost to a point where it's complete overload, a big mess of conflicting information out there that you need to sift your way through. You learn to keep the good and throw out the bad.

For me, the basics of it is "Calories In - Calories Out". This meaning that if you want to lose weight you need to consume less calories than you burn. If you want to maintain weight you need to consume the same calories that you burn. And of course, if you want to gain weight you need to consume more calories than you expend. Makes sense right?

I'm going to bore you here with a little bit of caloric jargon, but it's just a little, so hang on for a second :)
How do you know how many calories you need to consume? Your baseline calories is called your BMR (Basal Metabolic Rate) and that is how many calories you burn just by lying in bed all day. Then, based on your activity level, you can calculate how many calories you burn if you do no exercise, light exercise, moderate exercise, and heavy exercise. There are many different helpful calculators online to help you out so all you need to do in input your basic information and viola! you can find out your calories that you need to be consuming!

Now comes the hardest part...keeping track of those calories! Yet again, there are many helpful websites out there to help you out on that. Many health professionals recommend that you keep a food diary, whether you write it in a book or use a computer program. The important part is that you keep track of what you are eating so you know if you are above your calorie goal or below.

Let me tell you, that this has made a world of difference to me. Before I got serious about my diet and exercise I just tracked what I was currently eating, I wasn't concerned with my calories, I just wanted to see what my starting point was. I was shocked to see how many calories I had been consuming. And you also get an eye-opener to how many calories are in some of you favorite foods!

My favorite program right now for tracking my calories is MyFitnessPal.com. It's a great website that is easy to navigate, and the best part is that it's FREE!! And they even have a FREE app for your smartphone. I use mine all the time!! You can program in your weight and height and your goals (in my case weight loss) and it calculates for you how many calories you should be eating every day. Then you just input your food. It's as easy as doing a quick search, or even using their handy barcode scanner (on phone app) to find your foods. I like to input my foods before I eat them so I know what portion sizes I should be eating.

You can have your friends join too, and you can choose whether or not you want to share your food diary with them or keep that to yourself. I like being able to share my food log right now, it helps keep me accountable. Before I eat something bad I think "well, I don't want my friends on MFP to see that I ate that!! There are also community boards that you can go to and meet friends, get advice or, my personal favorite, see success stories of people who started where you are and are now where you want to be. I make sure to check out that board once a day to keep myself motivated.

So, maybe for you, your first baby-step is to start looking seriously at the calories you consume and the calories you burn. It was mine...and so far it's been working!