Does anybody else hate counting calories?

absie107

I agree - it's absurd that the cheapest food is the most calorie-dense. And it's cool, my blog is like my writing little novels. It's great to hear people's opinions and mindsets on this subject because we need everybody's inputs to get a better idea of what people are really living like and feeling. It's also absurd that social workers/teachers are not paid well. We need to do something to change this country's approach to food because it can really account for a heck of a lot of issues we're facing today. I have to go to class which is why this is short. But yes.

melodyg

Melodyg - I guess I can see how if the goal is weight loss only, then calories are the forefront.... Initially it helps me see how much I'm taking in on a daily basis. ... I think it's great that you're gaining a new approach to salads - I love experimenting with different greens. But we shouldn't be afraid of butter, of full fat. We just have to, I think, remake this country's culture and form a cuisine. In France... I mean, goodness, they have bread with meals, they have croissants... but when I was there, eating lunch took hours. So did dinner. You get small portions of delicious, pleasurable food, and you eat slowly and savor the bites. They just have their culture to guide them in a lot of ways. I think we just have a very unhealthy relationship with food in America, and it makes me want to get out of here that much more.

It's hard to shop in season in college though... stupid meal plan. I'm currently figuring out how to learn exactly where my school's food comes from. Also, don't buy industrial organic. It's still industrial.

I think one thing I have learned is that by eating fresh food and eating healthier that I *can* eat butter (healthier for you than margarine anyway!) and bread and full fat foods. I do think that as a nation we have gotten so into the "diet" food that isn't really good for you and that is part of the problem.

As for college... I know the college I went to had a salad bar and also a "healthy" food line where they had vegetarian options, soy burgers, etc. Now that may not be the healthiest either, but better than the cheeseburger and fries options! I've been thinking too how much access to working out and exercise I had in college that I didn't take advantage of -- free gym, free fitness trails, etc. Not to mention more time! Take advantage of it all. Do you *have* to be on a meal plan? I know it is tough to cook for yourself in college, especially if you are relying on a microwave in a dorm room, but I actually felt like I ate better (and it was cheaper) when I got off of the meal plan and started going to the grocery store and supplementing with the cafeteria food as well.

Dreaj79

I hate the idea that this is something I have to think about everyday. Idk if this will ever be second nature for me. I have to make the decision to eat healthy and exercise everyday. Just so I don't get bogged down in day to day calorie counting, I plan my meals on Sunday as I'm preparing for the work week. That way all I have to do each day is consult my list. If we have to eat out unexpectedly, I adjust my meal plan and so on. I've spent so many years trying to fit my life into a weight loss plan that now I'm trying to fit my weight loss plan into my life. I might not look the same for me as it does for someone else. But at the end of the day I know that I need some structure and boundaries bc just going willy nilly has me with more than 100 lbs to lose.

leix

yes, at firsti hated it. It got boring, seemed very restricted, now 6 months down the line its normal day to day life & i enjoy it. I enjoy food, most important part!

kayemme

i think the US has lost a connection with their food and food sources. We utilize far too many convenience foods and don't put out the work required to eat it.

it's a matter of energy transfer.

kayemme

i think the US has lost a connection with their food and food sources. We utilize far too many convenience foods and don't put out the work required to eat it.

it's a matter of energy transfer.

michlingle

I agree with the above poster. I also think that a lot of Americans are lazy and have a sense of entitlement and think that they can reward themselves with food because they deserve it. Our values are warped and we teach our kids to reward themselves with food at such an early age....i.e. m and ms for using the toilet? We are taught to be such huge consumers, no wonder the rest of the world hates us, we consume to a fault, we're like the big fat kid on the playground that steals everyone's lunch money and pushes them over...hahaha.

Alleghany

Counting my calories actually helps me enjoy my food. I'm more in the moment and aware of what I'm eating. I don't shovel it in and instead am thankful of the farmers who grew my veggies. Unfortunately I don't have a garden but will some day. Then I won't have to buy food that comes from "who knows where" with "who knows what" in it/on it.

I look at counting cals now as my "$ in the bank". I manage my cals like I do with $ and have to be wise on how I spend them. I won't log my food forever and soon I won't need to since I will have learned portion sizes and healthy balances of vitamins/nutrients. MFP is like my own Suze Orman to assist in my food "finances" and get me on track.

Just my "2 cents"...:flowerforyou:

Galathea

I learned to love counting calories. It's crazy what you eat over a day, if you don't watch calories or nutrition infos. To me it seems most people have lost the feeling for their bodies and what they need or just eat because it's available. Counting calories has helped me to get a better understanding of my body. And I already feel a change. I feel better in myself.
It can be annoying for people around (especially my mom), when you count everything you put in xour mouth. But this is about me and how I feel, so why should I care what others think about what I do?

kayemme

i don't really count calories. i'm using mfp as a method to examine my eating habits and the benefit of it telling me how many calories i've consumed is really just a big bonus.

i don't always eat perfectly, but i think i mostly do. if i can eat as normally would, record it here for, say six months or a year, i can refine and build my diet to something that is really working for me, not against me.

i've made so many changes in the way i eat already, that now i'm trying to just be really aware of what i'm doing.

Precious_Nissa

I think we are where we are on the charts with weight because we do not schedule health in our daily lives...we stop thru a drive thru because its convenient, we eat late night snacks because we are rushing to bed etc...

I personally love watching the calories i put in my body but I am not depriving myself of food...if i want steak, i eat steak, i just proportion it...if i want chocolate, i eat chocolate, just in small calorie size.

leavinglasvegas

I agree. Its not so much that I hate counting calories. I hate that I can't trust my food. I think its insane that we have to focus on it at all. Eating is a natural part of survival. You don't see lions stopping and saying, I can't eat this lamb because I already had an antelope today. We forget that we too are animals. Eating is for survival, it is necessary! Yet here in the US, it is for profit and social acceptance. We've totally lost track of what is important to human survival.

I'd love to live a totally natural life. While I'm considered more natural than anyone in my circle of social surroundings, it doesn't actually mean anything. Living naturally should not take any work at all. However, for those of us who choose to live a less hectic, proccessed, chemically coated, typical American lifestyle, its actually more work. Its easier to pop a frozen lasagna in the oven and jump on the tredmil in the morning (not that I'm against tredmills) yet its more work to provide a meal that is regognisable by the human body as food and get exercise just from being human. Like by getting and preparing your own food. (that used to take alot of work)

Why can't I even have an organic garden in my own yard? Because if my neighbors still use chemicals in their gardens and on their lawns, I can't totally prevent the soil from washing into my yard.... let alone it washes into the ground water that I water my garden with anyway.


I may just be rambling now, but this is something that I think about often. Our society is so focused on the American dream that we've let go of the dreams of humanity in general. I wonder what our ancestors would think. Those wild beasts who ran around on the African savannah, were the size of modern bodybuilders without carb loading, weight lifting, or steroids. They had morals and cared for their elderly and sick without nurses, drugs, or emergency rooms. And they are the reason we are here, yet for some reason, we still think they were less intelligent. Could a modern man elude a lion without a gun? Could we feed a town without a factory? No. I don't think todays technology makes us smarter, I think its made us lazy, which has made us dumber in a sense.

OK, I'm done now. Thanks for letting me get that off my chest.

pfenixa

I agree. Its not so much that I hate counting calories. I hate that I can't trust my food.

SO. TRUE. When I read the thread title I thought that anymore I don't mind counting calories, it's EVERYTHING ELSE that drives me crazy. Do companies sit around talking about just how much sodium and sugar they can force into everything they produce? Like today my totals are all messed up because I wanted to have a ham sandwich and the sodium was through the roof. When I look at nutritional info anymore I could almost care less about calories, I have to skim down and see if I'm going to end up retaining a bathtub's amount of water from all the salt.

Alot of posters have already hit on the point that we're so rushed and grab the easiest, cheapest, and therefore most processed foods around. I know it, but I still find it hard to get away from them too. I grew up with my dad in a really poor household and Everything was cheap and processed. Now that I'm trying to do better for myself I find that I don't know what to buy, make, and eat. I hardly know how to cook and recipes with alot of ingredients kinda scare me away. It's almost like I've lost control of part of my life.

godblessourhome

I may just be rambling now, but this is something that I think about often. Our society is so focused on the American dream that we've let go of the dreams of humanity in general. I wonder what our ancestors would think. Those wild beasts who ran around on the African savannah, were the size of modern bodybuilders without carb loading, weight lifting, or steroids. They had morals and cared for their elderly and sick without nurses, drugs, or emergency rooms. And they are the reason we are here, yet for some reason, we still think they were less intelligent. Could a modern man elude a lion without a gun? Could we feed a town without a factory? No. I don't think todays technology makes us smarter, I think its made us lazy, which has made us dumber in a sense.

OK, I'm done now. Thanks for letting me get that off my chest.

holly, i so agree with you! because of my kids, i think about this alot, especially in the schools. it is astounding to me that our forefathers were mostly homeschooled, mostly taught history from the bible, were considered to only have the equivalent of an eight grade education, but yet i feel they could THINK better than any of us today. ugh! my son was asked a question the other day that he should have been able to figure out on his own but instead he said 'i don't know, can i google it?' because of the ease in finding answers online/food sources/material possessions, none of us has to work as hard and we have become very lazy as a society (even though we think we are working harder that any generation before us).

i recently bought a betty crocker cookbook and i was looking for a recipe to make fetticine alfredo. instead of having a recipe for the sauce, the ingredients actually called for you to buy a jar of it instead of making it. how crazy is that?!? even our cookbooks no longer have us cooking, but heating up processed junk.

kayemme

You don't see lions stopping and saying, I can't eat this lamb because I already had an antelope today.

love this!

it's a lot of work to grow food; we have done a true disservice to not only ourselves, but to our children, the soil, the water and the air all in the name of "progress."

i sometimes wonder what would happen if everybody over the age of 16 just up and died. how would our kids survive after there were no more pop tarts and tasty ohs? that's why i started working with kids and building /managing community gardens. it's my responsibility as a citizen of this really wonderful country (with all its faults) to engage them in what it costs to eat a strawberry.

the kids dig it, too, when we give them the chance to.

kayemme

i recently bought a betty crocker cookbook and i was looking for a recipe to make fetticine alfredo. instead of having a recipe for the sauce, the ingredients actually called for you to buy a jar of it instead of making it. how crazy is that?!? even our cookbooks no longer have us cooking, but heating up processed junk.

joy of cooking, anything pre-1970. it's like my bible.

godblessourhome

i recently bought a betty crocker cookbook and i was looking for a recipe to make fetticine alfredo. instead of having a recipe for the sauce, the ingredients actually called for you to buy a jar of it instead of making it. how crazy is that?!? even our cookbooks no longer have us cooking, but heating up processed junk.

joy of cooking, anything pre-1970. it's like my bible.

thanks. i had the recipe in an older better crocker cookbook (which is pretty ratty so i had wanted to upgrade), but the newer version has cut much of it's 'food' out. i kept the tattered and tired one and tossed the other.

jennylynn84

i recently bought a betty crocker cookbook and i was looking for a recipe to make fetticine alfredo. instead of having a recipe for the sauce, the ingredients actually called for you to buy a jar of it instead of making it. how crazy is that?!? even our cookbooks no longer have us cooking, but heating up processed junk.

I can't agree with this enough. I actually have trouble finding "ingredient" type food. Like rice vinegar. Took three trips to the store! Because stores carry only what people actually buy and people seem to only buy pre-cooked food lately. Seriously, if I had been in the market for hamburger helper or a frozen bagged dinner, I would have had a plethora of choices. I just wanted ANY rice vinegar to prepare fish with. I have this problem with a log of ingredients. No one cooks, so no one sells actual ingredients.

A friend of mine was recently making a cake for someone's birthday. She wanted to make a pineapple angel food cake. Almost every recipe called for buying a boxed cake mix and a can of pineapple in syrup. How twisted is that?

keith0373

People have always had to worry about food, but for most of history it has been from the opposite view point. I am glad that I worry about getting too much rather than whether or not the early frost or lack of game is going to starve my family to death next winter.

absie107

Wow - so many varied points of view! It's just so, so interesting to see what people's beliefs are these days. That's the anthropologist in me... haha

keith0373 - the issue is worrying to a point of obsession, of disorder. i think that the costs outweigh the benefits of cheap food loaded with corn-derived chemicals and additives, and the system surely doesn't make sense when 1 billion people are starving and 1 billion are obese/overweight, some countries sitting on mounds and mounds of food and others going without. it's just not a sustainable system. agriculture and human 'progress' per se have helped some of the world's population immensely, but i think we've forgotten how fortunate we are, especially in this country.

everybody on this thread, no matter whether you love or hate calories/food science, my goodness - watch this video of Paul Roberts. please. it's so... so... good. the guy just wrote a book a couple of years ago, and it discusses the global food crisis, food quality, industrialization... seriously just listen to him.

http://fora.tv/2008/06/18/Paul_Roberts_The_End_of_Food