"count calories" news and stories

One of the reasons that nutritionists often recommend that you write down everything you eat is that people tend to underestimate how much they're consuming. Those extra calories, whether 10 or 100 per day, can add up over time if your physical activity levels don't change much. And, unfortunately, those 10 calories can be made up by as something as small as a few grapes and translate into a weight gain of about 1 pound per year. To avoid this, try to be honest about how much you eat and pay attention to what you're eating, even when it's "just one" of something. To give you can idea of how many calories those "ones" can have, here are a few from the Seattle Times:

• One Pringles potato chip - 10 cal
• One McDonald's french fry - 5 cal
• One grape tomato - 1 cal
• One green seedless grape - 4 cal
• One M&M - 4.3 cal
• One Jelly Belly - 4 cal
• One broccoli floret - 0.8 cal
• One baby carrot - 1.25 cal
• One cashew - 8.5 cal

Source

The secret to weight loss? Grapefruits. Eliminating white sugar. Raw foods. Try again: how about counting calories?

The oldest and tired-est of all weight loss programs, the trusty calorie counter, is the way to go, says nutritionist LouAnn Frisch, interviewed in yesterday's Oregonian. "I don't care what the diet says; weight loss comes down to counting calories. If you want to lose a pound a week, subtract 500 calories from what it takes to maintain your current weight." Multiply your weight, in pounds, by 13, and you'll get the maintenance number.

Good thing I don't want to lose weight - I'd be only eating 1,100 calories a day. That's five slices of Milton's Whole Grain Bread, four eggs, and a bowl of low-fat split pea soup (according to Frisch's recommendations). I wouldn't even have room for milk in my coffee.