One key to maintaining a healthy weight is to balance the calories you eat with the calories you burn.  But that’s sometimes easier said than done.

Balancing your calories sounds deceptively simple.  Eat more calories than you burn and you’ll gain weight. Take in fewer calories than you burn and you’ll shed some pounds. Keep your “calories in” and “calories out” about the same, and your weight should stay pretty stable.  So why is it that hardly a week goes by that someone doesn’t complain to me that they’re “exercising like a madman, but not losing any weight” or, “eating like a bird but the scale won’t budge”?  It simply boils down to this: when it comes to counting calories accurately – the ones you eat and the one you spend – there are so many ways it can go wrong.

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Everywhere you go, it seems, there’s pressure to eat.  Here’s how to push back.

For most of us, the last thing we need is the pressure to eat more.  But it happens all the time.  A few years back, one of the fast food chains in the US began a push to add a whole extra meal to your day –  “the meal between dinner and breakfast”.  I do understand the desire for an occasional midnight snack – sometimes you eat dinner early, you stay up late and you get hungry. But once that midnight snack morphs into “the fourth meal”, it starts to sound more like an everyday need – which just makes it easier to justify why we cave into the pressure to eat it.

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An occasional indulgence isn’t really cheating – especially if you’ve planned for it.

Cheating – on your taxes, on a test, on your partner – is just plain wrong.  And chances are, even if you were to consider cheating, you probably wouldn’t ask for permission from your accountant or your teacher…or your mate.  So why are people always asking me if it’s “okay to cheat” on their diet?  Does it feel “good” to be “bad”? Do they want to place the blame on my shoulders if their cheating doesn’t lead to weight loss?  Or are they simply saying, “I just can’t be this strict with myself every single day – I need a break!”

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Here are some reasons why you might eat when you’re not hungry – and what you can do about it.

You’re not hungry but you eat anyway:

Life and calorie control would be a whole lot easier if we only ate when we were truly hungry.  Then it would simply be a biological drive that needed to be satisfied – like downing a glass of water when your throat is parched. It’s the rare person who doesn’t eat for reasons other than hunger – most of us find ourselves doing it from time to time.  Read more »

A client I saw recently said something to me that I know resonates with millions of women about women’s weight loss.

“I work out so hard,” she told me.  “I follow my diet to the letter, and it’s a battle just to lose a couple of pounds in a month.  But my boyfriend – even if he cheats on his diet a little bit – still  experiences weight loss week after week.  It’s just not fair!”

Fair or not, that’s just the way it is.  But why? Why do men tend to lose more quickly than women? Read more »

Calories.  We count them. We curse them.

And ask the average person to define ‘calorie’ and you’ll usually hear something like, ‘they’re things in food that if you eat too much of them, you’ll get fat’.   Even though we think of them this way, calories aren’t really ‘things’ in food – you can’t see them, touch them, pick them out or push them to the side of your plate.  Calories are actually a measure of the energy in your food, and no matter what activity your body is performing – whether it’s pumping blood or pumping iron -  it needs energy – in the form of calories – to make it happen.

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It looks as if the obesity crisis in America isn’t going away any time soon. In its sixth annual state-by-state survey, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation recently reported that the incidence of obesity among adults has doubled – or nearly so – in 17 of the 50 states over the last 15 years.  What’s even more staggering is that 20 years ago, not one state reported an obesity rate higher than 15% – now, obesity incidence tops 15% of the population in all 50 states.

Yes, we’re not as active as we should be, and we eat too much – but why has our calorie intake gone up so much in recent years?  High calorie foods, bigger portions, and more frequent eating contribute, to be sure – but a recent study¹ attempted to tease out which of these factors have contributed most to America’s problem with girth control.

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Every time I have a new client scheduled to see me for weight loss, I have a pretty good idea of how our first conversation will go.  The first thing they usually want to know is how much I think they should weigh.  The answer is usually less than straightforward (see my post of October 7) and that question is inevitably followed up by a similar, and equally vexing query:  “how long will it take?”.  I’ve had this same conversation countless times over the years, and my answer is always the same – “it depends”.

Not a satisfying response, I realize, but the rate at which a person will lose weight depends on a lot of things.  It’s like a road trip.  You can look at the map, determine how many miles you have to travel, figure your average speed and then estimate how long it will take you to get there.  That works sometimes.  But maybe you come across a traffic jam, or a detour.  Maybe you drive through a town you’ve never been to and decide to stop a while.   

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Generally, this isn’t the time of year that most people are watching their weight – because if they were, they’d probably be watching it go up. But you’d be surprised. It’s not unusual for people to call me in a panic mid-December – realizing they’ve got a big New Year’s eve event coming up – and wondering what they can realistically accomplish in a couple of weeks. Of course, this comes up at other times of the year, too. An upcoming wedding, a cruise or a graduation – all can spark the question: How much can I lose in a couple of weeks?

Let me start by saying that there’s no simple answer that applies to everyone. For one thing, a lot depends on a person’s starting weight. The larger a person is, the more calories it takes for them to maintain their weight. So heavier people can cut their usual calorie intake back quite a bit, and will usually lose more weight in two weeks than a smaller person will.

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Yes, you can pack on five pounds between now and January – and it’s easier than you might think. Most people only add a pound or two over the holidays, but when you look at what a few extra indulgences can cost you, the calories add up fast. To gain five pounds, you’ll need to take in an extra 17,500 calories or so between now and January Here’s how to get the job done.

First, turn the clock back a couple of weeks – to October 31. The average Halloween bucket holds about 250 pieces of candy at about 35 calories each. If you’re like most people, you bought too much – so you’ve been putting away a couple of pieces a day for the last two weeks. That’s given you a 1000 calorie head start.

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