Counting calories - my experience!

Before I start, let me clarify that this post is by no means a ready reckoner for weight loss or based on dietary research.  Nor is it an Ad for any fitness app. This is simply my experience with counting calories and weight management.

Recently I posted a survey on Instagram to find out how many people counted calories on an every day basis. More than 75% voted a No - not very surprising. Most think that it’s enough to just avoid junk food and that should be OK. I can’t completely agree to this for various reasons. It’s a very simplistic approach and will not work for people who lack discipline (read someone like me). Which  is why I thought it a good idea to pen down my experience with weight management through calorie counting. This is my story:

I have always had a battle with weight - I wouldn't say I have a very large appetite but I love to eat fried items and I just cannot resist food that I love. I can eat at any time of the day - even just after a rather heavy meal. Whether it's chips or cheesy nachos - I can never stop with one. And though I don't have a sweet tooth, I have a weakness for chocolates, and dark chocolate ice cream. And of course coffee - hot or cold! Quite obviously, with this kind of eating coupled with a sedentary lifestyle, accumulation of unwanted weight over the years was only natural. 

By the end of 2013, I realized that I could not go on like this forever and started to look for tips from the internet for weight loss. Any kind of dieting was out of question - I can never go on a diet. 3 solid meals a day was and still is a must. So I decided on eating less per meal and cutting out unnecessary junk. But this is easier said than done. Merely cutting down food without understanding the Nutritional information will not help. Besides, it is very easy to slip up and eat "just this one small cup of ice cream" or "just one extra poori"- these things add up!

So I decided to dig deeper and find a solution to this. I thought the best way to follow portion control of food was to count calories. This, I thought, was more scientific and I'd know exactly how much to eat. Many would argue on this point saying this is simply a superficial way of looking at it, but at that point I just wanted to go with my instinct. I read that the average calorie intake  should be around 1,800-2,000 kcal for a woman and ~2,500 for men. So if I had to lose any weight, I had to eat less than 1,800 kcal. When you eat lesser than you burn (over the course of the day), you tend to lose weight and I liked this approach of Calorie deficit. I discovered this App called myfitnesspal on the internet and installed it on my phone. 

Myfitnesspal has an exhaustive Database of different types of food and the calorie chart and nutrition info for each. I was delighted to see that it was not limited to only Continental/Asian food but also included Indian food - even things like Dosai, Jowar roti etc. It is so exhaustive that you would even find local brands like Thaayar dosai maavu, Mambalam Iyer, 777 etc in it. And if it doesn't, you can check the nutrition info in the packaging of the product and add to the app's database yourself.

By end December 2013, I started meticulously measuring my calorie intake by feeding whatever I ate into the app. The App lets you set a "Target weight" and helps you decide your Net Calorie intake to reach this target weight. The word "Net" is key here. It is important to note that it is not just about food, but also about exercise. So if you eat food worth 1,600 kcal but burn 200 kcal by walking for half hour, your net calorie count for the day is 1,400.

Till that point I would eat 4 of each in each meal - whether it is 4 slices of bread or 4 dosais or 4 chapatis. Sometimes if I was very hungry, I'd even eat five. I cut it down by half. It was incredibly difficult and I would get hunger pangs.... but trust me, once your stomach shrinks you'll get used to the quantity after a week or so. And that is what happened to me.

I set a daily goal of 1,200 calories (Net) and tried to stick to it. I would eat all three meals a day (but portion controlled), coffee with milk & sugar twice and made no other changes to the kind of food I was eating. Yes, I still had my cheese toasts and peanut butter sandwiches, chapati subzi, rice etc. I started walking everyday (something I wasn't doing earlier). This helped me maintain by net calorie goal. In fact I even ate ice cream and food loaded with cheese at restaurants at times. But I would compensate it by walking more. A 1,200 kcal a day diet is very difficult because even one single plain dosai is about 100 calories. A cup of sambar is about 150 kcal. A cup of coffee with milk and sugar is 120 kcal. One banana is about 80-100 kcal. If you keep adding the extras like pickle or a slice of cheese or oil for idli podi or walnuts -you get the drift - you will exceed the daily goal if you aren't careful. But with exercise, this was easily achievable. I would burn at least 400-500 kcal a day and my daily gross food goal became 1,600-1,700 kcal.

Counting calories and tracking what I ate & exercised helped me in the following ways:

•  I was able to portion control my dietary intake
•  Since I was meticulously measuring what I ate, I would hesitate to take an extra bread or reach out for the chips because every single thing was being counted. I was very cautious of not exceeding my goal.
•  I started taking keen interest in exercise (even though it was only cardio), since that helped me be flexible with food. This in turn was very good for my exercise starved body.
•  Apart from mere calories, the app helped me track the overall nutritional intake. So I knew if I was getting enough proteins, iron and Vitamins in my diet and didn't go overboard on carbs, fat and sodium. This is important because one mustn't simply eat things that have no nutritional value just to lose weight.

And after a point it was no longer a simple exercise of counting calories - it was driving behavioral changes for the better! Of course there were cheat days (because there was a family function or I was going out with friends or whatever). But I was quite sincere in this on most days.

I was astounded by the results. In 3 months, I'd lost 8 kgs. You might consider it less, but for me it was a dream. 

In less than 3 months I went from looking like this:

to this: 

Mar 2014

And I owe this change 100% to my sticking to the daily calorie goal !! So yes guys, it works! All it needs is a little motivation and consistency.

After this I got a little more ambitious and decided to hit a gym. I chose Gold's Gym which was walkable distance from my house. I even paid up for personal training. I would go to gym 6 days a week - alternating between cardio (treadmill, cross-trainer etc) and intense strength and functional workouts with the personal trainer. Going to the gym was hard initially but once you get into a rhythm it's absolutely addictive. The strength workouts were super intense. I went to the gym for a little more than a year, and I lost only about 3 kgs in all this time, but I toned up tremendously. And though I went easy on my diet, I felt and looked much fitter than ever before. 

Me in 2015

However things went awry when I met with an accident in Sep'15 and I had to be operated for an ankle fracture. I was bed ridden for 2 months and I couldn't walk without a limp for months after. Gym was not an option at all since I had a ligament tear as well (which was left as it is to be healed on it's own). Ideally I should have started to go back to calorie counting (via myfitnesspal) but I was not in the right frame of mind. I put on weight again and tried to lose it on and off by cutting down food but I had neither the sincerity of 2014 nor the discipline. I have now joined a gym and I am not even regular. I only walk on a treadmill and do nothing else. 

A few weeks back, I decided to restart calorie counting with myfitnesspal once again. It isn't easy but I have been on it for 2 continuous weeks now. I hope I am as sincere and dedicated as the last time. So let's see how things go this time around! Wish me luck!!!