The first step to counting calories is knowing your goal calorie amount. This is different for everyone because you must take into consideration your height, weight, gender and activity level, age and how much weight you want to lose a week. There is a free calorie counter to the right on this blog that can let you know exactly what you should be shooting for or you can ask me. Most of the ladies will need between 1200 and 1900 calories. I think I have talked to most of you but if you aren't sure let me know. For men it will be more.
After you have your goal calorie amount the second step is to plan your meals and snacks for each day. Everyone has good intentions of writing it down as you go but once you eat the calories you can't take it back so you might be stuck before dinner with only 100 calories left and that is not healthy. Or, you might get to the end of the day and have only reached 1000 calories. That is also NOT OK. Less is NOT more when we are talking about less than 1200 calories. DO Not go under 1200!!! After you have it all written down and added up make sure you have what you need to make your meals. You can do this one day at a time or a week at a time but eventually you will find as you go along that you don't have to look everything up or add it all together because you will already know what the calorie counts are.
Tomorrow I will start posting some meal ideas and numbers for you. Please feel free to post what you ate and the numbers to share ideas with others. Believe me we all need as much ideas as we can get. Sometimes when you are trying to cut calories you feel limited so share, share, share.
I can post some of my quick snack ideas now since I have a minute. Besides the obvious healthy snacks of fresh fruit, Special K has "cracker chips" that are delicious. 30 chips for (I think) 100 calories. they are on sale right now at Safeway. Rice cakes have also been good for me. There are flavored rice cakes and as well as the regular ones. And sometimes I just grab a can of fruit(usually peaches) 175 for the whole can.It's very finite. Just make sure that it's in juice or water not syrup. Fruit(canned and fresh) also goes well with cottage cheese(got that from mom) which gives you some protein.
ReplyDeleteAnd I'm out of time. :) But there of some of my snacking ideas.
Wow. That was a fun year 2012. But I figured I could update my snack ideas. Usually I grab an apple or orange. Celery is great with hummus. The kids prefer peanut butter over hummus. I've also been working on a recipe for whole wheat crackers. (If I make it myself then I dont get all the sugar and additives). They aren't perfect yet but still go well with hummus.
ReplyDeleteI LOVE HUMMUS!!!!!
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