Calorie Counting Matters

When I started out with a determined focus this June to improve my health, the first change I introduced in my routine was food portion control.I did not need to eat so much as I am housebound for most of the time unlike before. This change alone helped me lose umpteen kilos. I gradually moved from 64.5 to 61 kg within a span of 2 months merely on basis of mindful eating, portion control and regular exercise.

By mid-August,I hit a plateau as it was turning out to be increasingly difficult to lose more weight and that’s when I decided to revisit my weight loss strategy.I own a Fitbit Ionic (purchased in Jan 2019) and I use it to track my workouts, steps walked etc. Since this lockdown I started using it to diligently track my sleep as well. I thought I should go a step further and use it to track my calorie intake via food as well.I never wanted to get into the ‘mathematics’ of weight loss as I found it taxing to meticulously track calories. However, necessity is the mother of invention.

The Basics:

How do you know how many calories are to be consumed?

While there are many ways to do this, the simplest one that works for me is to multiply your current weight (in pounds) x 15.

My current weight is 60.5 kg so the same in pounds = 60.5 x 2.205 = 133.41

Now multiply this value by 15 which gives 2000 calories.

This is the number of calories I need to consume in order to maintain my current weight.

In case I want to lose weight, then I have to consume lesser than 2000 calories.That is what is meant by being in a calorie deficit. If you want to gain weight, then you will have to consume more calories to stay in a calorie surplus.

Ideally, maintenance calories are calculated depending on your current weight, height, target weight and your activity levels. That’s how the Fitbit App arrives at a maintenance calorie value for me.

Also, please note that:

1 kg of weight is approximately equal to 7700 calories.

Hence, if you want to lose 1 kg in 15 days (the method which I followed) you will have to stay in a calorie deficit of approximately 500 calories per day. You can use a combination of diet & exercise together and tweak either parameter depending on your convenience.

The strategy which I have adopted currently is to have a calorie intake of upto 1300 calories via nutrition and an additional calorie burn of 250 calories via exercise. This ensures that I am in a calorie deficit of almost 700 + 250 = 950 on good days.

Where should you track your calories?

I started off by manually noting my meals on my phone’s Notes App which appeared something like the screenshot below. I did this diligently for a period of 2 months – June & July.This helped me take my diet seriously and also brought about a sense of accountability.At the end of every week I summarized my calorie expenditure, cheat meals and occasionally tried to draw a pattern. For example, I realized I was consuming a lot of fruits everyday which may not be desirable.

This allowed me to analyse my diet and make any suitable tweaks in the following weeks. There also were days when I couldn’t follow the updated diet but the point is to progressively bring about changes both to your diet and exercise.

As mentioned earlier, by August I moved to the calorie tracking feature in the Fitbit app and started logging all calories into the app by the end of the day. There is a drawback to this approach although – by the time you’ve tracked the calorie intake of the day, the day itself is already over. Whether you were in a calorie deficit or not is something that you will know only after the day has ended. A better approach is to track calories after every meal instead. This gave me a greater sense of control over what I should eat & how much I should eat for the rest of the day. 

Please refer to a snapshot of my calorie intact after every meal as below namely breakfast, lunch, evening snack and dinner.

There are a plethora of apps available to track your calories besides Fitbit like HealthifyMe and MyFitnessPal to name a few.

Please note:Fitbit App in particular has very poor options to record Indian food like Sabji, roti etc. and sometimes it is wiser to break down the dish into its components for better calorie tracking.For eg, I track our Goan Sol Kadi by logging it as coconut milk into the app. However, if your goal is to have a rough estimate then this app works just fine.

With consistent logging you will learn the calorific value of each meal item along with the macro nutrient and micro nutrient break up.This will help you structure your meals better in the short run.In the long run, your mind will get auto-tuned to understand how much a cup of cooked rice or a bowl of daal will amount to in terms of calories and needless to mention, your life will get much more simpler.

Also to mention, as a thumb rule (taken from widely acclaimed nutritionist Prachi Puri) always ensure that your daily protein intake approximately equals your weight in grams. So for me, I should have about 60 g of protein each day. However, by looking at my meal graphs I realized I consume barely 30g of protein a day while my fat consumption is on a higher side. Accordingly I altered my diet to increase my protein intake and lower consumption of fatty foods. 

Try to stick to the 40% carbs, 30% fat & 30% protein rule of a meal. Another way of putting this would be to ensure that half of your plate is filled with veggies, and the half of the remaining half with proteins and the remaining portion of the plate with low glycemic index carbs(like brown rice).This constitutes a balanced meal.

On a concluding note, it is very boring to painstakingly note your calorie intake everyday. However, I would ascertain that there hasn’t been a better time than now to get started with this endeavor. The lock down has made our meals very repetitive and therefore it is easier to track and bring about fruitful changes.

Trust me, eventually it just becomes a habit and like all of them getting started is the toughest part but the benefits are plentifold.