Calorie Awareness - A Doable New Year's Resolution

So it's New Year's and therefore it's also resolution time.

Sure lose weight, exercise more, are the most common New Year's resolutions, but how many people stick to them?

May I suggest an easily achievable resolution - Calorie Awareness.

I'm not telling you to count Calories, I'm not telling you that Calories are bad and that a food simply having lots of Calories makes it unhealthy. What I'm suggesting is that you make 2007 a year where you practice Calorie Awareness.

Simply know what you're eating.

I've used the money analogy before - before you buy something it's a good idea to know how much is in your bank account, how much you make a month and how much it costs. As far as weight goes, it's currency is Calories and therefore it's a good idea to know how many Calories you burn in a daytime, how many you've had and how many you want.

In terms of how many you burn I've provided the link before, but here it is again. The best online how many calories do I burn calculator I've ever found is located here.

In terms of how many Calories you have, yes counting works better than simple awareness, but I bet lots of folks don't keep carefully balanced cheque books every month, instead they simply try to remain aware of how much they've spent. How do they do it? Well certainly they know how much they make and definitely they read the price tags. There may be some months here and there where their Visa bills are surprising, but it's definitely a better strategy than not paying attention to prices at all.

The price tag of weight is Calories. Look at the food label and use the four simple rules I posted before to evaluate it. With regards to home recipes, spend the time figuring out how many calories are in them. Most families only have a few recipes that they eat over and over, once you've figured them out once, you'll never have to do it again. Simply take all the ingredients and head over to a website like Calorie King and plug them into their search engine and add them all up.

So eat high Calorie foods, but you pick and choose when they're worth it. And a simple rule for eating out - estimate and then add at least 40%. Lastly remember that Dr. Wansink would tell you not to trust your eyes. Consider buying a high quality kitchen scale to really track how much you're choosing. Scale's job is to tell you how much you've had, not how much you're allowed.

So by all means, pick those other resolutions, but make sure at the very least, you keep this one.

Happy New Year!