The Calorie Question

You'll notice I don't talk a lot about calories. It's not because I don't believe that counting calories works--it does. I'm just not the kind of person who's very good at counting them. More importantly, I believe, if you focus too much on calorie counting, you're paying less attention to nutrition, and nutrition is key to good health and weight loss.

To be honest, I don't know how many calories I eat in a day, I never counted calories while I was losing weight and yet I still managed to lose 25 lbs. and keep it off. If calorie-counting works for you, then great! But I find it more effective in the long run to develop a different relationship with food than you've had in the past. Get to know the foods that will help you in your weight-loss efforts; make those foods your friends. Get to know how much of them you need to eat in order to see the scale numbers decrease and what it feels like to eat just the right amounts of them. Pretty soon, you'll gravitate toward those foods and away from those that won't help you--not that you'll never eat them again, but you'll know how to be careful with them. It just won't feel right to overindulge. And if you do, you'll go right back to the more-healthful foods the next day because it feels better to eat them.

Of course, you do need to be aware of which foods are high in calories and which are not. Even though it feels good to eat avocadoes and walnuts, and they're certainly healthful, you don't want to overindulge because they're high in fat and calories. It's important to know this, but I don't believe you need to know the exact number of calories and/or fat grams in 1/4 of an avocado in order to eat it and still lose weight. If numbers are your thing, then go for it. But don't let it get in the way of developing a natural sense about what's good for you and what isn't. And if you need to know more about calorie counting, go to http://www.calorieking.com/.