It was my senior year of high school I started playing around with the idea of counting calories. At the time I did not really understand the concept of a calorie but with A LOT of research, within a couple months there wasn’t a morsel of food I didn’t count and I could pretty much estimate the number of calories in any type or portion of food. Now at first when I did not have my eating disorder it seemed harmless to just be “aware” of how much food I was consuming. But I do believe that it was the start of my calorie counting days that later on led me to develop my eating disorder. I don’t blame calorie counting alone, but it was definitely a significant factor. Now I am not hating on calorie counting, because I do believe that it can be a great way for people who are mentally strong enough to keep track of their diet and monitor their eating habits (especially for those who are overweight and trying to loose) but it’s not for everyone. For those who are weaker and easily submissive it can act as a gateway drug, as it did for me. The more I got into the habit of calorie counting the more research I did on what the numbers actually meant. I learned about the theory that weight loss is a math equation as simple as burning more calories than consumed. It made enough sense to me that I adopted that way of thinking. I researched and calculated the number of calories a person of my size and weight [5 3’ft 115lb] should eat in a day to maintain my current weight and found that number to be around 1350-1500 calories a day and I wanted to loose weight therefore trying to eat below that amount. So the game began, daily I would do my best to consume an extremely low number of calories. There were days that I would get away with eating just 800 calories. Keep in mind that I also lead a very active lifestyle: walking everywhere and I go to the gym to do HIIT 4-5 times a week and in these sessions I would burn anywhere between 300-600 calories. So over all I was eating so close to nothing that my body was starving and I refused to admit it. It was also these streaks of low calorie consumption that would push me to binge.
I now have a system that stops me from under eating that so far has proven relatively effective but the technique is not 100% bullet proof yet, some tweaking is in order. What I do every night before bed is plan out my meals fro the coming day, counting the calories in each meal to total around 1300 calories because I know I will snack about 100-300 calories. This gives me room to mess up and have it be okay! And by planning out my meals I satisfy the monster inside me that lives to count calories.
So what is my overall opinion on calorie counting? It all depends on the person! Because one thing that I cannot stress enough is the quality of the calories you are consuming. I eat wholesome healthy foods no junk. What type of food you are eating is far more significant than the number of calories in it. In all honestly I hope I reach a point where I wont feel the need to count my calories because I know that for me personally it can be dangerous. BUT at the same time I knew individuals who count calories and thrive with that system. So I say with a heavy hand BE CAREFUL!
I now have a system that stops me from under eating that so far has proven relatively effective but the technique is not 100% bullet proof yet, some tweaking is in order. What I do every night before bed is plan out my meals fro the coming day, counting the calories in each meal to total around 1300 calories because I know I will snack about 100-300 calories. This gives me room to mess up and have it be okay! And by planning out my meals I satisfy the monster inside me that lives to count calories.
So what is my overall opinion on calorie counting? It all depends on the person! Because one thing that I cannot stress enough is the quality of the calories you are consuming. I eat wholesome healthy foods no junk. What type of food you are eating is far more significant than the number of calories in it. In all honestly I hope I reach a point where I wont feel the need to count my calories because I know that for me personally it can be dangerous. BUT at the same time I knew individuals who count calories and thrive with that system. So I say with a heavy hand BE CAREFUL!