Is Calorie Counting Really Necessary?

Calorie counting - is that really necessary to successfully in losing weight?

I’m sure you have known about calorie deficit. You need to make sure that you burn more calories than you eat in order to lose weight. But it is not easy to monitor it, unless you have changed your eating behavior drastically or even went on a fast.

The easier way to diet is to go onto a calorie deficit of about 500 calories, which would make you lose one pound per week. However this is not the fastest way in losing weight compare with the promises of the weight loss industry, especially with their diet schemes and pills where it looks so easy to lose 10 pounds in only 5 days.

However, a tempo of losing 1 pound per week is healthy and achievable. You don't even need a specific diet plan, just cut down 500 calories per day. The danger is that after a few days you start slipping back eating something extra here and there and soon you are up to your old level of daily calorie consumption. The way to control your calorie intake is to measure it! There is a saying that you only can control what you can measure.

And we can measure our calorie intake, we are just too lazy. But it is not even that hard to do. Yes, you need to consider your food and consult how many calories there are in 100g of that food and then count how many calories you just ate. But on most food items, there are even labels indicating the calorie content making it fairly easy for you. For the other food items, just look up the caloric value on the internet and write it down, so you don't have to look it up again the next time. You will see, we really don't eat that many different dishes, we are creatures of habit!

So difficult? Well, the best way to create your own calorie counting is using the calorie counting widgets that you can load into your yahoo account or igoogle. Or you can get more advanced using an electronic food scale which stores nutritional values for up to 1,000 food items.