How do you allot your calories?

dbashby wrote: »

Let me first say I despise reading labels, weighing and measuring food amounts and planning in general but it is the single best way (and teacher) to stay on track with weight loss. Particularly early on when your idea about 5oz serving of meat or 1 cup of any product is in all likelihood so skewed that if you wing it or don't plan in some form your consistency and overall success likely goes down. Humans are notoriously bad about serving sizes and it always in the favor of bigger/more calories. I think you will find over time your skills at accessing serving sizes and rough amount of calories will improve to the point where you will be able to look at something and know both approximate size and calories with that serving size. Why is this important? One thing I read multiple times and the answers I received from skinny people (minimum age was graduated from college because fast metabolism skews results otherwise) when I asked, they consistently ate the same things over and over. I can't tell you how much I hated the idea of that, as I like almost all foods and the better it taste the more I want to eat, after all isn't variety the spice of life? Well, I came to find out that the biggest key to success of dropping and keeping the weight off is to choose a number of foods (typically high volume, low calorie dense foods) that you like and stick with them. This does not mean you have to eat the exact same thing every day or totally give up something your really don't want to but lets not kid ourselves we are talking about a permanent change in lifestyle not a short term loss for a class reunion. There are multiple reasons you sort of get to this point, if you don't want to have to measure forever you can't really memorize every calorie count and serving size of every product in the grocery store. The truth is there really isn't really an over abundance of low calorie high volume REAL foods to choose from (there are enough but its not like half the grocery store is comprised of them). The measurement shows you in simple math terms regardless of the foods you eat where your Total Daily Energy Expenditure (TDEE) is and how much the food you chose to consume counts against that number. If you are trying to stay below that number to lose weight it won't take you long to realize which foods will do that for you and still provide you satiety. The satiety part of the equation is important because lets say you have 1800 calories to play with to burn if you eat something that burns through half those calories in one meal. You are going to be hungry by the end of the day and be at your limit on calories. I don't have to tell you this is a formula for failure. Ultimately I guess this would be what you say is planning but after a while is sort of becomes second nature in the grocery store and planning would be when you do something special/different.