Counting calories

I've spoken here before about SparkPeople. Counting calories was never manageable for me until I discovered SparkPeople, but now it couldn't be easier.

Here's a truth about me, and maybe about many other people as well: if I eat something sweet or unplanned, I mentally tend to say, "I've screwed up now, I may as well eat anything I want." I feel bad about eating it, and my guilt and feelings of failure push me toward emotional eating as a band-aid for the unplanned eating. It can be vicious.

Here's a truth about calorie counting: when I own up to eating those two lemon cookies (as I did yesterday at lunch, unplanned) and factor them into my calories, it's so much better than my mind made it out to be. An extra 220 calories? This is manageable. It means I have to eat a little less at my following meal, and it means I might go over my daily calories by 100, but it is so much less a catastrophe than my mind tried to convince me it was.

Counting calories and being honest on my food log helped me to avoid going overboard on food yesterday due to guilt. Writing it down, looking at it, and honestly assessing the damage is a great tool. No wonder food journaling has been such an important weight loss tool to so many people for so long!