Counting Calories

by Megan Henessy - Dental Clinic Assistant
(Fort Lauderdale, Fla.)

Counting Calories

This is a story that I hope will inspire you about losing weight by simply counting your calories. When my doctor told me I had to start counting calories, it felt like a lot of load was being heaped on my shoulders. If there was one thing I considered tedious, keeping track of details was the likeliest. However, my doctor warned me that with my weight and the unburned calories stored in my cells, I was bound to develop diabetes Type 2. Now I had a choice of counting calories or become a full blown diabetic which required more monitoring than what he was requiring me to do.

It has been a year now and I am glad I followed the advice my doctor gave me. Had I not been counting calories everyday, my dress size would still be size 16 instead of the size 10, I am wearing now. Today, a lot of people marvel at how healthy I look. All good things happened to me, a job promotion, my boyfriend finally proposed (which I accepted of course), and all feelings of depression gone, all because of the simple act of counting calories.

Here was how I went about it:

1. The objective was to burn more than the number of calories I ate. If I loaded about 3500 calories, I had to do some exercises that can burn even as I sleep. As long as I could keep burning 3500 calories per week, my doctor gave me the thumbs up sign.

2. Sometimes, if I could not exercise, I avoided loading up on food that had lots of calories. Counting calories was not really as hard as I thought; 3,500 calories a week meant I had to lose 500 calories per day. In a weeks time that meant losing 1 or 2 pounds every week. If I stayed away from a piece of cake, 2 to 3 pieces of cookies, a medium fry, and about 3 cans of soda, it would mean avoiding 500 calories.

3. I started eliminating the high calorie foods I liked by gradually cutting them off from my diet. I went down into small portions until I totally took them off from my diet and replaced them slowly with lots of fruits, vegetables, white meat, and low carb foods. In about two months, I was totally rehabilitated as far as my diet was concerned.

4. I did not have to starve, all it took was counting calories, made sure it was kept at the RDA of 2000. Then I got into exercising like treadmill, running, swimming but usually walking on a long stretch of beach road. It was light aerobics in the morning for about an hour and then an hour of treadmill or running around the block early evening before meals. A long walk after meals down at the beach road was also nice.

5. I thought exercise was something I would hate doing, although at first I did. However, since I started losing pounds I became lighter and it gave me a different feeling. I slowly felt some lift in my spirits. I became more agreeable as a person instead of constantly griping about something. I was in fact, a happier person.

6. If you are curious how I did the counting, I was like an obsessed person jotting down the calories of every food I used to eat. When I summed it all up, I was actually consuming 4,000 to 5,000 calories a day and was burning only 1,500 calories to match it. No wonder I grew fat.

7. Those food that had low calories, I kept them in my diet. In buying food I was into reading the labels. I checked everything and if they passed, they became included in my good calorie list and therefore became part of my diet. Initially, I always referred to this list if I had to shop for food or prepare a meal. In time, I came to know them by heart, hence, counting calories became easier.

I really cannot remember which came first, the feeling of happiness because I was losing weight or because my boyfriend did not make up any excuses any more not to go out with me. In fact, part of the happiness I felt was when my boyfriend started joining me in the late afternoon runs and walks down the beach road. (I think he was making sure I kept with the regimen).

If seeing more and more of my BF, made me happy and motivated me to keep watch over my calories intakes, it does not matter. What is important is I lost weight naturally by counting calories.

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