Feeling good, feeling great

The App I use to track calories and exercise (loseit.com)

Ok, so it's been three days of counting calories. I'm down 2.6lbs! yay! Even when I get a craving for something, coca-cola and chocolate ;-) I remember my motivation situation and it's easy to overcome. Praise God! In my post yesterday, I stated that counting calories can feel restrictive because you have to really be mindful of what/how much you're eating. But there is a definate upside to it too! Usually, when I don't exercise, I stress out that I'm not going to lose weight, or that I'm going to gain weight. With counting calories you just don't add the extra calories per day you normally would to offset calories burned during a workout. Am I making sense? For those of you confused....Here is a little calorie/fat lesson.

"A pound of body fat equates to approximately 3500 calories. So if you have a calorie deficit of 500 calories (meaning that you burn 500 calories more than you eat each day) you would lose approximately one pound per week:

500 x 7 = 3,500

It's easy to see that a calorie deficit of 1000 calories would mean that you'd lose approximately two pounds per week. And that's a good number to remember, because two pounds a week is commonly accepted as the maximum rate of weight loss that is healthy." (http://www.caloriesperhour.com/tutorial_pound.php)

When you count calories, you calculate the number of calories you need each day, just for the basics, including calories burned while sleeping. Then you can take that number and subtract the number of calorie deficit you need to create in order to  reach your 1-2lbs. per week weight loss goal. So, the number of pounds you need to lose each week is already calculated aside from exercise you do. When you do exercise, you then determine the number of calories you burned (I use a Timex heart rate monitor that does it for me) then you get to add those calories to your diet for the day!! That's too great for me! I suppose it can work the other way too. If you don't want to restrict what you eat, as long as your diet is a reasonable number of calories, you could exercise enough to burn 1,000 calories for the week giving you the same 1-2lbs. weight loss!!!

Now, I'm sure that counting calories isn't for everybody. For me, it takes away the guessing. If I stick to the plan, the weight is going to come off! Yes!!! One questionable thing is, I haven't had to count calories while out yet. I've been making and eating my meals at home, so I know what/how much is going into my food. The up side is that many restaurants and eateries have the calorie counts listed next to each food item. If that doesn't prove to be practical, I may have to brown bag it wherever I go ;-) We shall see! For those of you that count calories, what do you do when you go out?

Alrighty then, I'm signing off for now. Until next time.

Grace and Peace,

Char

P.S. Praise report of today, My husband got a promotion today!!! I'm truly grateful and proud of him. Praising the Lord from who all blessings flow!!!