The calorie countdown – Three days to face reality
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I have mentioned earlier about the importance of increasing protein consumption as well as trying to avoid high GI products at all times except for in the exercise period. I have also told you how many calories a sedate woman of 35 burns each day. So where do you fit into this? How many calories do you eat each day? How many calories do you burn each day? And how many calories should you be having? How much protein should I include in my diet?
In order to be able to answer these questions you need start by going through what I call a “calorie countdown” to find your status. A calorie countdown is what I define as a three day period where you go through absolutely everything you eat and drink and write down the details. Three days are sufficient to get an overview of your caloric situation and not so long that you are getting fed up by the whole thing.
There are two ways to getting the details of what you are eating:
- Look on the back of the packaging of what you are eating
- Look up the excellent USDA National Nutrient Database for Standard Reference
Look for the data for 100 g and get the information about the weight (in g) proteins, carbohydrates and fats (lipids) and write it down.
After you have found the nutritional data of the food / drink you are having you should be weighing it with a food weight and write down the weight in g. You could use a converter if you are using US measurement units. Weighing is quite difficult when you are away from home, but try to remember the size of the food / drink so that you can get an approximation when you get home.
To help you out with the calorie countdown I have made this nice little excel sheet where you can write down the details for each food / drink and get the overview. This is how you get started:
- Fill in the nutrition data in the green cells (protein, carbohydrate and fats per 100g). If you find it difficult to convert from a serving size to 100 g you can use the converter on sheet 2. Two examples are already filled in: whey protein and tuna. You can remove this if you wish.
- I have added what I call a “protein index” which rates how much protein the food contains (protein energy and weight). Higher means more protein. You could look at this if you think proteins are important.
- Fill in the serving size you have consumed in the column for the day you are in. If you have several meals for the same food you could add the amounts together.
- The totals for each day are shown on the bottom of the nutrition sheet. You could write down your daily values for further use
I agree that a calorie countdown is a difficult thing to go through, but the results are so revealing that I would recommend anyone who has not done a calorie count before to try at least one time. You will learn a lot about foods, calories and macronutrients – Good luck!
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