Comments | health_ontd: Counting Calories & Types of Foods & Weight Loss

unnecessaryhat in health_ontd

Counting Calories & Types of Foods & Weight Loss

Aug 03, 2011 15:24

Segments on today's Here and Now & Talk of The Nation (PRI and NPR news shows, respectively) focused on weight loss and counting calories. Here's the Here and Now Link and Here's the Talk of the Nation Link (the audio/podcast will be up later today).

( Summaries of the Shows, including what foods are associated w/ weight gain and loss )

food, eating, research/studies, personal experience, diet

Comments 5

watchsnowfall August 3 2011, 20:09:48 UTC

I definitely count calories - I aim for 1500 a day, and then aim to work off about 500 through exercise. It's not completely rigid though, and I do aim to just use it as a tool not to over-eat.

In terms of restaurants, I try to calorie count through quick service/take-out stuff - like how much is that frapp from starbucks gonna set me back? But at nice restaurants, I don't bother, because otherwise it'd drive me crazy.

I still think portion control / the type of food you eat is important...yeah you can eat only twinkies and still lose weight, but that's because you're still only eating 1500 calories of twinkies.

icanseenow August 3 2011, 20:18:10 UTC

counting calories is for me the no 1 thing where i realize Im back in eating disordered behaviour.

midsummerskies August 3 2011, 20:31:03 UTC

yeah me too, I just try to eat healthy stuff without worrying about the calories

bearit August 3 2011, 21:38:29 UTC

Counting calories definitely helped me out the most when I was undereating. It's recommended for women to eat at least 1200 calories/day, and according to my age, weight, and activity level I needed to be eating anywhere between 1300-1500 calories/day, depending on the resource. When I first started counting calories, I was hard pressed to make it to 1000. So counting is useful not only for control but also to make sure you're getting enough.

Anymore, so long as I'm eating real, whole healthy food and not processed food, I really don't care about how many calories I'm eating, typically. And at restaurants, well, I usually only go for special occasions, and I don't care about calorie count then because it's more than okay to let loose every once in a while. One day of indulgence will not suddenly make you gain weight and/or lose health. :)

(The comment has been removed)

mark356 August 6 2011, 08:42:09 UTC

I can't count calories in terms of how many calories I eat over the course of a whole day-- at least in the sense of reducing. A day is too long, and there's just too many variables, and it makes eating way too stressful. However, there are a couple of situations for which I will count calories. I need about 2500 high-quality calories every day to function well, so if I'm planning a road trip or something, I'll add up the calories in the food I'm bringing to see if I have enough. When I'm cooking a dish, I'll often do the same-- there's really no better guide to portion size. Some dishes say they serve 4, but then you see that each serving has only 200 calories-- no wonder you're still hungry! Or they'll say that the cake is for 12, but you'll see that each slice has like 900 calories if you cut them that big. I also use calories when I'm substituting ingredients: say I'm substituting ground walnuts for butter, for instance, and the recipe calls for 3 tablespoons of butter. That's 300 calories. One ounce of walnuts has about ( ... )