
Photo: Markus Krisetya, Unsplash
Make A Tough Journey Easier With A Few Simple Tricks:
A really important point came up while working on the last post.
Can’t we just make losing weight a little bit easier?
It turns out intermittent fasting is very effective for the work you put in.
-If you can power-through the inevitable hunger pangs.
A tougher problem comes up when people try calorie counting because it’s really effective, too.
But after doing it for a very long time myself, I think I may have a couple of valuable hacks to share with you…
The Short Answer:
- Calorie-counting works very well, but people hate math.
- So one way to deal with that is to simplify the numbers.
- Step 1: Find out how many calories you get to eat every day at TDEEcalculator.net.
- Hack 1: Round down the number of calories you’re allowed to the nearest multiple of 100.
- Hack 2: Round up the number of calories you eat at each meal to the nearest 50 or 100.
- Get those numbers from the restaurant’s nutrition facts when dining out.
- Just write these round numbers down in a small notebook or an app.
- Check your progress across the day.
- For complex food items you cook from scratch, go to calorieking.com and find a processed food that’s similar.
- Use the average of 1 or 2 to guess the calories in your home-cooked meal.
- By using someone else’s data, you can save a ton of time and headaches.
- If you round enough of the right ways, you should get close to your calorie number.
- Ideally, you should end up eating a little bit less.
- The rounding exercises should help with that.
- Make sure you eat good-quality, non-processed food and get the bad stuff out of your diet.
- You’re unlikely to lose much weight eating junk food.
- Try not to have more than a 10% calorie-deficit if you’re not under the supervision of a doctor or a registered dietitian.
Read on to find out the details…
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The Problem With Calorie-Counting. People Hate Math:
The most daunting part of calorie counting is the math.
Most people hate math.
Gas prices at the pump? Prices on the shelves at a supermarket? Fine.
Adding and subtracting on paper, or a calculator, or God-forbid in your head? Forget it!
So here’s how you get the benefits of counting calories without doing that much of it.
Forget Calorie-Counting. Start Calorie-Approximating!:
I want you to transform yourself into something new.
I want you to go from being a potential calorie-counter into a Calorie Approximator.
The first thing you should do is go to a site like TDEE calculator.net.
Find out what your ideal calories are for each day.
It’s really simple info.
Age, sex, weight, height, activity level, maybe % body fat. -Boom: A number.
Then here’s where the magic of calorie approximation comes in!
Let’s Make Things Simpler And Just Round Down:
For Part 1, I want you to take the total number of calories you’re allowed to eat and to round it to the nearest whole number.
1) So if the last 2 digits are in the 50s, round it down
2) Anything in the 60s and above, just round it down to multiples of 10
2a) If you’re feeling more aggressive, you can round-down anything below the 80s to 50, or even the previous 100-mark
Calorie Tricks Part 2. Round The Other Side Up!:
Then for Part 2, the other trick is to very slightly round up the number that you eat.
So say your lunch was 871 cals.
Round that number up to 900.
A few rules-of-thumb for this might be:
1) Anything at/over 70, round to the next 100
2) Everything else, just round up to the next 10. (Ie: 333 becomes 340, 525 becomes 530, etc.)
2a) Just like the above, this can be done more aggressively later depending on your results, so start slow.
Now, wherever you can find nutrition facts on something you eat, say at a restaurant, make a short note.
Do this in the most convenient way for you; in the notes app, a custom app, a wallet size notebook, calculator, whatever.
Just write down the calories, maybe the date.
If you want to say what food it was that’s fine too, but that’s a little more advanced into food-journaling.
Make Numbers Easier And Track To Lose Even More:
At the end of the day, you should have a list of simple round numbers.
These are easy to add, and should be getting somewhere close to what you’re allowed to eat.
Also, as you go through the day you can tell:
1) About how many calories you’re supposed to have at each meal
(the average for 3-meals and 2000 calories could be rounded-down to about 650 each)
2) How many calories you’re supposed to have by a certain time in the day.
2a) If you’re on track or not for the day, over or under.
2b) If/how much you should adjust accordingly.
(this one step is worth the whole price of admission, and could be a huge source of weight-loss all by itself)
How Do You Do This For Food You Make At Home?:
This also can work for food you make at home.
The problem is it can be much more complicated to figure the total calories with home cooking.
How do you come up with a number for an entire baking dish of lasagna?
That’s a hard one, especially for people who hate math!
You can add-up the number of calories in a open face peanut butter sandwich with 3 tablespoons of peanut butter on it very easily.
(it’s about 380-400)
The Million-Dollar Hack For Complex Food At Home:
But that lasagna is a much more difficult thing.
So what are you supposed to do?
Now here is the million dollar hack…
You go to a nutrition facts site or app and use their database.
Because what you need is a good reference!
Go to that site, like calorieking.com, and find the average of the one or two most popular brands of what you’re making.
Look at how many calories it lists for a standard amount like 1oz, 6oz, etc.
Now you have a really good guess at how many calories your complex food dish actually has.
And you can portion accordingly.
-Except this time you did almost none of the math!
This way you can now estimate lots of different dishes you might have at home, all in a way that’s painless.
-All without having to buy any processed food!
But Wait! Isn’t Calorie-Counting Supposed To Be Perfect?!:
Now you might say, “Wait a minute. Why the hell is this supposed to work? I thought calorie-counting was an exact science!”
The reason is, There is a study for that!
A UVM study of people who were trying to lose weight and counted calories but weren’t accurate showed that they succeeded anyway.
-Which is an achievement, because most subjects in nutritional studies lie!
So there you go!
You don’t need to get things exactly right.
All you need to do is get close.
Combining Techniques Can Make The Whole Thing Even Easier:
If you pair those study results with the previous two tricks we discussed,
There might be a great chance, depending on your bias, to get close to your real calorie number every day.
If you’re lucky, your total will be just a bit lower.*
And it’s a whole lot faster!
You can get really get into the weeds with this stuff like calorie deficits and other things.
But leave that till much later.
Okay, Real Truth. You Probably Won’t Lose Much By Eating Junk Food:
Just to say it for the record, you should also pair these hacks with The High-Quality Approach, too.
Try to get the best quality food you can.
Get as much sugar, (high-glycemic) fast carbs, processed foods, omega-6/seed oils, and saturated fats out of your diet as you possibly can.
That’s something that’s got to happen too.
-Either by cold-turkey or tapering-off slowly.
You really shouldn’t be living on ultra processed foods, anyway.
Approximate First, Nerd Out Later:
So to sum up, the essence of it is that approximation works.
It still helps you, and you don’t have to drive yourself crazy with the math.
You can also tune it as you go to suit yourself even more.
Who knows? By the time you’ve put in enough effort, you may want a nerd out and start actually counting your calories exactly?
PS: After All This Time, I’m An Approximator Too!:
By the way, little insider tip here. I’ve been counting calories for so long that even I estimate most of my stuff every day now anyway.
And I’m the one who put in the time and practice to memorize these numbers and have them right at my fingertips.
So if if I am ultimately a calorie-approximator then you can be one too!
Take care, hope this helps. Be well!
PPS: Calorie Deficits & Saving Your Work For Later:
When it comes to calorie deficits, be careful if you start eating less than 90% of your actual calorie number.
A 10% calorie-deficit seems about the safest unless you’re doing your plan with a pro.
PPPS: One other hack is to make a list of all the researched numbers so you have them on hand in your kitchen or on your phone.
This way you only search once and then you’re set.
If you do want to take things further, keeping a list of calories for ingredients can help you guess for complex items you really want to cook and can’t find a reference for.
-But that’s way outside the main point of this article.
After awhile, you might just start remembering things like 1 Tbsp of olive oil is 120 calories and 1 tsp of sugar is ~15, etc.
-But that’s still a further down the road after you’ve become a routine Approximator and find yourself doing weird things like compulsively buying kitchen scales; in your sleep…
References & Links:
• Source: UVM
• More Coverage: HT-UVM Calorie Counting Study
• Source Study: Obesity – Log Often, Lose More: Electronic Dietary Self‐Monitoring for Weight Loss
*For the real nerds out there, this process is done to create a small calorie-deficit each day.
The average American doesn’t get any exercise and still eats almost 2x the 2000 calories/day that they’re allowed to.
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