Be Real About Your Calories

It's Thursday, September 6th, and my weigh in is September 11th. My goal is 2 lbs/week. I’m hoping to be 129-128, but we’ll see.

I drank a big cup of coffee this morning and I’m going to have a glass of water before breakfast even though I don’t really want one.

It’s not really hard to abstain from eating, it’s just kind of hard to stop once I start going.

On being honest about your calories:
Most people eat too damn much to meet the weight loss goal they’ve set. A lot of people who have criticized me for being too skinny have been “trying to lose weight” for years and failed. Why? Too much food. You need to take in fewer calories than you burn to lose weight. You can’t go out to eat and gobble up 1,000 calories 3x a day and think you’re going to shed pounds.

A lot of people just don’t know what they’re eating, sometimes due to willful ignorance. I totally did the same thing with beer. I’d drink 40 oz. of high gravity lager each night and not factor in the calories because I just didn’t want to know.

It really irks me when people with awful dietary habits criticize my weight loss and question me about whether or not I’m getting adequate nutrition. Fact is, I was doughy and out of shape when I weigh 135 pounds. I don’t care what the BMI says. I couldn’t run more than 5 minutes and I had little fat rolls on my belly.

But people around me see how overweight they are, what they’re eating, and it’s easier to decide something must be wrong with me because I’ve lost weight.

One relative who was particularly critical of my weight at 118 pounds is quite overweight and has been trying to lose the same 25 pounds for the last 20 years. The reason this person just hasn’t been able to shake the weight is because they eat too much. I’m talking three roughly 1,000 calories meals out to eat in a day, snacks, a cocktail, and ice cream on top of that. All in one day.

We all know someone super thin who doesn’t watch what they eat at all, but that’s really not realistic for most people. If you want to lose weight, you need to be real about how many calories you’re consuming and whether or not that’s conducive to the amount of weight you want to lose.