What if you were playing in a basketball game in which no one was keeping score? Since you would never know if you were winning or losing, you would probably feel like you’re losing all the time. This is how most people feel about weight loss.
Those of us who struggle with our weight typically don’t want to know what the score is because we live with the sinking feeling that we are always losing. If that describes you in any way, I’ve got good news for you. If you start keeping score, you’ll find that the game is closer than you think, and that you can easily tip the game in your favor on a daily basis by making just a few, easy adjustments.
So what is the score, anyway?
When it comes to weight loss, the score refers to the number of calories you eat vs the number of calories you burn. That’s it! It’s a simple math problem. Burn more calories than you eat, and you’re on your way to the body that you want.
We all know that this is the case, and this is why when we diet, we work to limit our caloric intake. I’ve gone through several rounds of this, and each time I’ve fallen short. I’m in the midst of another round (and I’ll go through as many rounds as I have to until I get it right!), and I believe I’ve discovered three important reasons why I’ve failed in the past.
Reason # 1: My strategy was focused on deprivation and resistance
I made an amazing discovery recently: I don’t have enough will-power to deprive myself of the foods that I love indefinitely. I might be able to do it for a few weeks, or even a few months. But before long, those cravings will just take over. In fact, the deprivation strategy is all wrong from the start because it fixates the mind on what it can’t have, and whatever the mind receives as a command whatever becomes its focus.
The documentary, Hungry for Change: Ditch the Diets, Conquer the Cravings, and Eat Your Way to Lifelong Health, opened my eyes to a truth that applies not only to food, but to life: deprivation doesn’t work. Instead of trying to stop eating the wrong stuff, just start adding the right stuff . . . one item at a time. In the long run, the good stuff will crowd out the bad stuff. The practice of eating foods that nourish the body will actually change the appetites of the body.
I’ve got a long way to go, but I’ve already found this to be true with juicing. When I first began, I struggled to drink Mean Green, but now I love it!
Reason #2: I tried to eat the same number of calories every day
The problem here is that my strategy was not flexible enough. I would always say, I’m going to eat 2,000 calories a day. Sounds like a good plan, right? But for some reason I would always mess up on Sunday afternoons. I always thought it was just an emotional thing . . . you know, I preached my heart out, now I’m going to eat my heart out.
But then I picked up my latest new gadget: the Fitbit Flex. If you don’t know what the Fitbit is, it’s a band that I wear around my wrist that syncs with an app on my smartphone. It keeps track of every step (or step equivalent: anytime I expend the amount of energy equivalent to a step, it counts it as a step) that I take in conjunction with my heart rate and calculates the number of calories that I burn in a day.
In other words, it keeps score for me!
But then, there’s my part: I have to enter in the foods that I eat, one by one, and it tells me the number of calories in those foods. If I faithfully enter all of the foods that I eat, the fitbit will tell me at the end of the day whether I’m winning or losing. In addition, I also purches the Fitbit Aria Wi-fi Smartscale. Each morning when I step on it, it tells the app how much I way and keeps track of fluctuations in my weight so that I can always see how well (or poorly) I’m doing.
As I’ve tracked my caloric score, I’ve learned a few things. The first thing I learned is that on Sundays I burn almost twice as many calories as I do on an average day. That’s why I eat more! My body needs more calories because I burn more calories! What a liberating discovery!
Reason #3: I so often feel like I’m losing when I’m actually winning
My biggest problem is that whenever I eat anything, if I feel even the slightest bit full, I feel like I’ve overeaten. When you don’t know the score, you always feel like a loser!
The other day I burned 3,285 calories after walking 12,621 steps, which is equivalent to 5.7 miles. I went for a 45-minute walk during my lunch time. I bought a Togo sandwich, which was 985 calories, ate half of it and drank a bottle of water. I felt full, and I immediately felt like a failure. I’ve over-eaten again!
But after entering everything that I ate into the system (and I’ve learned to be brutally honest with myself in these entries!), at the end of the day I had only eaten 1,191 calories. That is about a 2,100 calorie deficit on the day! 3,500 calories is a pound! Are you as excited as I am?
My new goal is not to limit my calories to an arbitrary number, but simply to see to it that I have a weekly caloric deficit of 1,750 calories, or 250 calories a day. If I am able to do this, I’ll lose about a half a pound a week. If I go gangster and achieve a greater caloric deficit, I’ll lose even more weight.
The key is knowing the score every day. Technology can help, but at the end of the day, I’ve got to be the one to keep score. In this game of weight loss, no one is going to keep score for you. You’ve got to love yourself enough to accept a bit of self-accountability. You can do it! Let’s do it together!
