Watching your diet is essential when transitioning to a healthy lifestyle. I don't think you need to calorie count your whole life, but when starting to eat healthy, finding out the calorie content of what you often eat can be extremely helpful in busting down your some of your misconceptions about food. For example, when I started to count calories, I realized that the hummus, bananas, avocados, and pineapple that I would previously gorge on unlimitedly actually are pretty calorie dense. For avocados, those calories come from fat, and for pineapples, the calories come from a ridiculous amount of sugar. Whole foods are great, but if you are trying to lose weight the calorie dense whole foods should still be eaten in moderation. After I reach my goal weight, I hope to not have to be as restrictive, but by then I also believe that my body will crave healthier, and not crave calories that I don't need.
When I was younger, I used to look up how many calories are in what I ate and write it down in a notebook. These days, I use technology to help me keep track. Lots of people use MyFitnessPal, but the iPhone app that I'm using is called Lose It! I don't think it matters which one you use because they're pretty similar. You can get a weight loss goal, such as 1 pound per week, enter your weight, and the app will calculate how many calories you can eat. What I really like about it is that it tells you the nutritional content of the food you eat as well, so you can easily keep track of your carbs/protein/fat ratio and keep that in check. I try for 50/25/25 but often end up higher in fat and lower in protein, unfortunately. The other great thing about this app is that for packaged foods, which you should obviously limit, you can scan the barcode to input the food. For everything else, you look it up in their pretty extensive catalog. One thing is that they don't have a lot of Asian foods in the catalog, so if you eat pho and dumplings, you'll have to calculate those on your own and input them. Once you input a new food once, you can save it and use it again. Here's what the interface looks like:
Of course, how many calories you eat is not the only important factor in transitioning to a healthier diet. One thing I've learned from watching a lot of raw vegan YouTube videos is that 2,000 calories from a ton of fruits and vegetables, which raw vegans eat every day, is not the same as 2,000 calories from two Cheesecake Factory burgers. Although that seems obvious, it's easy to start counting calories and "make room" for your favorite greasy, processed foods by eating less of other foods, but this is not a good idea and should be done sparingly. Eating whole foods gives your body the vitamins and minerals it needs to function properly, as well as giving you more energy so that you burn more throughout the day from activity. So I found another great app that helps you keep track of the quality of the foods that you are eating called The Eatery. You upload pictures of every meal, and other people who use the app rate the fatness or fitness of your meal on a scale from 1-100. Of course, the opinions of others are not that reliable in determining the health of your diet, so it's still important for you to keep track of your calories and nutrients quantitatively. I just like the interactive nature of The Eatery because it keeps you accountable to someone other than yourself. It's good to make a rule that you will take a picture of everything you eat, so you don't portray a biased version of your diet. It's great to look back at what you ate throughout the day or week and figure out your eating patterns visually.
I'm sticking to a 1 pound per week weight loss plan on Lose It! and trying to keep my fitness scale on The Eatery at 80 and above. Took a break from Insanity, but going to do a workout right now, actually. Going to start month two after moving into my new apartment this weekend. I hope my roommate will do it with me for extra motivation.
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