How Much Do I Eat?

To start this journey, let's figure out how much I eat and how much I need to cut back. According to various sources I have seen, most recently on the Live Strong website quoting the Mayo Clinic, it takes somewhere between 8-12 Calories to maintain a pound of body weight. Calories represent the amount of energy in the food we eat. The energy we eat in food is used to maintain our body. The number above is a little vague because the exact amount of calories you burn varies depending on your precise physical make-up. Let's just split the difference and say it takes at least 10 Calories to maintain a pound of body weight. So to figure how many calories you are taking in, multiply your weight by 10. That's how many calories it takes to keep you going. But in truth, to lose weight you not only have to take in less than that, you also have to burn the calories stored in body fat. Fat stores about 3,500 Calories of energy per pound -- something you can be grateful for if you find yourself starving. But, it means you have to decrease 500 to 1,000 Calories a day to lose 1-2 pounds of fat per week.

The National Institutes of Health says that 1-2 pounds of weight loss per week is a safe and stable approach to healthy weight reduction. In fact, I worked for a heart surgeon who said that 1600 Calories per day is a fairly rigorous reduction to try and stick with. So I am going to start with a daily calorie intake of about 1800 Calories. This is Sunday, let's see how I am doing by next Sunday.

I have my scale ready. I am going to weigh myself in the morning, before I eat or dress. I know from experience that my weight can fluctuate by almost 4 pounds depending on how much I have had to eat and drink and the time of day I weigh myself. I am not going to weigh myself more than once a week because my daily fluctuations will just drive me crazy. Weight checked once a week is plenty. I will have to count my daily calories to make sure I am reducing by at least 500 per day. I will use the labels on food packages or the calorie counting sites available online. You could just Google the calories in many foods, but occasionally, I have found Google to be quite a bit off when compared to packaging or calorie counting sites.