6 Ways to Cut Calories without Tracking
Follow these tips and you won’t need this guy to help you track your food.
From One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish by Dr. Seuss.
One of the most common things that people are told to do to lose bodyfat is to track their calories. I recommend this all the time. But if you’re new to this whole diet thing, then it can be a bit overwhelming. You probably don’t have the time or energy to be measuring and counting everything you eat and drink. You’ve got a demanding job, two kids, a spouse, and who knows what else already on your plate. With that in mind, here are a few ways you can cut calories down without actually counting them.
1. Drink only 0 calorie drinks. This one is a really simple trick you can play. Look at the math. A grande caramel macchiato from Starbucks has 240 calories. If you have one of those a day for a week, that’s 1680 calories. That’s almost a full day of eating. Have a 20oz. Coca Cola with lunch? That’s another 240 calories. If you’re doing both the caramel macchiato and the coke, you’re getting 3360 calories a week from drinks alone. That’s a day and a half’s worth of food. By now you probably know where this is going: cut them out. But what should you drink instead? Water is the obvious choice. However, if you’re like me, going without a caffeinated drink will leave you feeling like your eyeballs are being sucked into your skull by an industrial vacuum cleaner. To fix that espresso and black coffee variants are now your best friends. Tea is also an option. Real tea, not the ultra-sweet bubble milk tea you get at the Asian shop. What’s funny about switching to the calorie-less drinks is that you probably won’t even notice they’re gone. They never really filled you up anyway, so you won’t feel hungrier than normal. Losing weight without making yourself hungry? How can you say no?
2. Eat slower. I don’t know who started this, but somebody said it’s a groovy idea to chew your food 32 times before swallowing. That’s a weirdly specific number and how am I supposed to chew tomato soup? Puzzles like that aside, the idea behind it is solid. If you eat slower, you’ll get less food in before you feel full. You’ll also digest that food better because you actually took the time to chew it instead of doing your best python impression.
3. Purge the house and stop buying junk food. How many times have you been at home, doing a great job of sticking to your food plan, when your eyes falls upon the Oreos. They look so good. The sinfully good chocolate flavor combined with the fluffy whatever-that-filling-is stuff. The crunch as you take the first bite. The way it pairs perfectly with a glass of milk... The internal battle over whether or not and how many to eat begins to rage. Before you know it, half the package is gone and you’re left like an alcoholic coming out of a stupor, wondering how you got there. The whole thing could’ve been avoided so easily. No Oreos in the house = no temptation to eat those Oreos. If there’s no junk in the house, it’s impossible for you to eat it. That strategy falls apart pretty fast, though, if you just go out and buy more when you go grocery shopping. Having a shopping list is a great way to help prevent that. If you start thinking “Maybe I should grab a few frozen pizzas,” check the list. It’s not there? Guess that’s a hard “No.”
4. Cut out alcohol. This is related to number one, but it deserves its own explanation. Alcohol is a huge piece of the problem for some people. The calories in beer, wine, and hard liquors are there, but the worst offenders are those sweet mixed drinks, usually the ones with umbrellas in them. Even if you just stick to beer, wine, or liquor, problem number 2 shows up. The calories from the alcohol aren’t usually what get you into trouble. It’s the loosening of inhibitions that comes along for the ride that does you in. You’ve had a few beers, you’re feeling nice and chilled out, your eyes fall on the chicken wings and pizza and your booze-laden brain says “Oh, that looks gooooood.” Do this on Friday and Saturday nights and you’ve blown the calorie deficit you worked so hard on all week. Skip the drinks or cap it at one or two when you go out.
5. Eat more vegetables. Mom was right, you need to eat your vegetables. First, they’re low calorie. A cup of spinach has 20 calories. If you wanted to eat 200 calories, you’d need 10 cups. That’s enough to fill a one-gallon milk jug. I don’t know anybody who could eat that. They’d fill up before they got halfway through. And there’s the real beauty of vegetables. They fill you up. Try this. Eat an 8 oz. lean cut of steak, two cups of steamed vegetables, and drink two glasses of water. Let me know how much room you’ve got left. If the steak was filet mignon (510 calories) and the vegetable was broccoli (110 calories,) that whole meal has 620 calories. The fiber from the vegetables will leave you feeling full for a long time.
6. Downsize the junk food. This one is not for everybody. If you’re one of those people who doesn’t do things halfway, that goes all in when they do something, this probably won’t work for you. There’s nothing wrong with that. We’re all wired a bit different. However, if you’re one of those people who does moderation well, this could work. Whatever junk you’d normally get at the fast food place, order a size smaller than you normally get. Drop the coke and fries from a medium to a small. Drop the Big Mac to a regular cheeseburger. Life happens and the kids want McDonald’s sometimes. That doesn’t mean you have to be the parent who dares not let the innocents into the nutritional abyss that is fast food America. It just means you have to be smart about it. It’s actually better to purposely and intelligently go of the diet for a meal than it is to religiously adhere to it and then whip yourself when you deviate. The last thing you need is an unhealthy psychological relationship with food.
Though not as ideal as counting all the calories, the above are a great starting point for somebody looking to make some changes. They’re quick, require very little thought, and get the job done. Give them a try and see what happens. At worst, you’ll have some new good habits. Most likely, though, you’ll drop a few pound without breaking your back to do so.
