Should I Be Counting Calories?

Hello.  Happy Tuesday.  Hope your week started off on the right foot.  Mine has finally.  I have been so pissy lately for no good reason.  Lots of little reasons that can add up to something significant, but it feels so ridiculous.  I also find that my food restrictions do get to me sometimes.  I’m generally good with them, I don’t need to have a lot of variety to be happy but there are times when I really miss a bagel with cream cheese for breakfast or a chicken fried steak.  Yum.  It really is the mental game, staying healthy and treating myself the way I deserve.  If you are struggle with what being healthy takes or what your illness might require, I feel your struggles.  But, it is all worth it in the end.  It is.  Even if you don’t see the reasons why it is worth it yet.

Let me give you an example of what I have achieved by being healthy.  I am 54 and I played 8 softball games last week.  I played 5 hard games on Saturday.  I say hard because I don’t want you to think I’m just a body on the field.  I am in the dirt to stop the balls and running my ass off just like everyone else.  And, I was sore, but I was still able to get up and clean my house yesterday.  In contrast, at 45 I could barely walk up the stairs in my house.  I had days that I had to sleep 20 hours just to be able to function for the rest of the week.  It has been a journey but so worth it.  All the struggles, all the disappointments, all the shitty test results, everything was worth it just to be able to do what I love.

And that is really it isn’t it, being able to do what you love.  What wouldn’t you do to be able to do what you love?

Just some thoughts for a Tuesday morning.

Back to our last blog of this month.  It is going to be a little short.  There isn’t much to say about this without repeating myself, but I will give you some suggestions and tips further down in the blog so keep reading.  I’m so excited to talk about this today because it really is such a misconception about weight loss and has been for years and years.  Are you ready because it is going to change the way you think about weight loss?

Here goes.

You don’t need to count calories to lose weight. 

As a matter of fact, you shouldn’t be counting calories at all.

The reality is that is you are counting calories, you are likely still eating in a manner that doesn’t support health.  You might actually lose weight by counting calories, but you won’t be eating to support health.  Just being skinny doesn’t mean you are healthy.  There are many skinny fat people.

So, how do you think you need to eat?

Paleo of course. 

I spent a whole month on it and if you haven’t been following me, you can find some informative blogs on eating Paleo here and here.

Eating a diet from a Paleo perspective means that you are eating healthy meats, fats, carbs and veggies.  Of course, the portions are important, and every meal should have all of these to support your body in the right way.  You don’t want half of your plate to be protein and only a quarter of your plate to be leafy greens.  Your body needs these foods in the proper amounts to thrive.

Breakfast is a tough one. 

Every meal, even breakfast should have all of the items above.  You are probably thinking, I don’t want to eat the same thing for breakfast that I do for lunch and dinner.  I get that.  There are plenty of options like breakfast muffins that can help you satisfy your need for a more breakfast type of meal and you can cook them in advance and just heat them up. The muffins can satisfy your need for protein and healthy fats and even carbs, but you still need your veggies for breakfast as well.  Skillets might also be a great choice as well.  You can put a lot of things into a skillet and have a great and healthy breakfast.

I opt for shakes as a quicker way to have a more complete breakfast.  Not only does it allow me to meet the requirements of protein, veggies, carbs and fats, it also gives me a great start to fiber requirements and it allows me to add everything else I choose to supplement with to give me a great start to my day.  I have no idea how many calories are in my shake.  I just go for it.

How do you make a shake?  Well, I have that covered for you in this silly little home video that we did a couple of years ago.  You can watch it here.

Struggling with meal creativity?  Here is what I tell my clients. 

Find some good sites online or books with Paleo recipes.  We have a lot of recipes captured on our Pinterest page here for your reference as well.  And to make it easier, do the following

1. Meal Plan on Fridays
2. Shop on Saturdays
3. Batch cook on Sundays as much as you can. Veggies don’t always batch cook well but you can meal prep and cook them on the night you planned to eat them.
4. Make extra of a recipe so that you have enough for lunches. That way you don’t have to cook lunch too.  You can also make extra and freeze it so that you have it available if you know you are going to run out of time.
5. You might also need another night of cooking during the week to make your Sundays easier. Pick Wednesday as your second day of batch cooking if you need it.

I feel like I sound like a broken record.  I hope that it is all starting to make sense to you as you continue to read through my rambling every week.  I certainly don’t want you to feel like I am lecturing you.  Please let me know if that is the case.  I will on occasion get a little blunt with my points but I will never lecture you.

Before I let you go for the week, I just want to really iterate again that Counting Calories is not the way you want to live your life with food.  Not something that will serve you from a health perspective.  I know we have been brainwashed for a very long time to think that calories are the answer.  Trust me when I say they aren’t.  And guess what, when you give up on the calories and focus on the foods you are putting in your mouth, you are going to feel so much better too.  An incredible bonus for trusting the process!!!

Have a great rest of your week everyone.  Talk to you next week.

Photo by Siora Photography on Unsplash