Calorie Counting

In my Internet reading on dieting, I came across this great article from The Huffington Post with tips from medical doctors on weight loss. There were two key points of this article that stuck with me.

This has certainly been true in my experience. When you increase your exercise without dieting, your body naturally wants to consume more calories to make up for what you burned off in your exercise session. While exercise alone is still better for your body than doing nothing, it is not going to achieve a weight loss goal.

When I saw how low these caloric intake recommendations were, I was shocked! 1200 calories is not very much at all! When you work with this target in mind, you have to budget your calories just like you would budget your money. For me, it worked out to 300 calorie breakfast, 100 calorie snacks, plus 2 400 calorie salads. That’s it! You can see in the pictures in this post how this worked out for me. Everything has to be carefully weighed and measured to stay in caloric “budget.”

Salads are a great choice for dieters because you get a lot of “filler” vegetables for almost no calories. My salad base is about 100 calories. I then have 300 calories to spend on “yummy” ingredients. Here is how I tweaked the salad for dinner.

Are you shocked at the minimal caloric requirements for dieters? Do you even know how many calories you consume in a typical day? Before this experiment, I certainly didn’t. Please share in the comments.