Counting Calories

Counting calories is a hassle! This is true. It takes some patience to sit down and do it. It also takes some practice. At first I have to measure everything, I can't eyeball anything. I also have to make precise portions, and divide them out, so that I know how many calories are in each portion.

Tonight we are having macaroni salad and buffalo chicken strips. And salad. We mostly have salad to fill out a meal, we both like it alright, but is is just salad from a bag lately. I know this isn't the healthiest dinner, but it is okay. I will have to figure out have many calories it is before I know how much I can have, and whether or not the calories were worth it.

1/2 package whole wheat elbow macaroni: 735 (whoa! loads of calories, but they have a LOT of fiber too, so that is at least okay) (Also, to be honest I was chewing up little handfuls of pasta while I was preparing this. Now I have to count those calories into my day too! Sheesh)!
1/2 cup of light mayo: 280 calories
2 Tbs black olives: 25 calories
1 tea mustard: 0 calories
salt and pepper: 0 calories, but being aware of the negatives of salt
2 Tbs yellow onion: hard to tell actually, and 10 or 20
couple of dill pickles: 0 calories, but again with the salt

Tada! It has a total of 1050 calories. I had some with lunch and some with dinner, so I ate 525 worth of pasta salad calories today. I am trying to have around 2000 calories a day. So this amount of calories is fine. I should probably have more calories in the fruit and veggie arena, but it's okay for now. Small steps!

I won't go into the details of counting the calories for the rest of dinner, but it mostly goes like this.

Tips  -  Things that help me keep counting calories even though I think it is boring

Don't throw away the packages! I often open up something and toss or recycle the package right away, and then have to dig it out later to find out how many calories it has.

Measure everything. Like I wrote above, I was eating little bits of pasta as I cooked. These little bites really do add up. Also, if you are doing all this boring stupid work it might as well be accurate.

Count calories in drinks! Beer and wine have calories, don't forget them.

Write down the calories right away, you won't want to go back later and add them all up again. It is time consuming and boring!