Calorie Counting is Not a Good Strategy
I have never agreed that calorie counting was a great way to lose weight. Calorie counting takes the natural process of eating and turns it into a science experiment with measurements, numbers and graphs. The troubling part about calorie counting is that it never seems to fix the problem. I have known people in my own family who have counted calories all their adult lives. Fixing the urge to overeat is the real solution and that has nothing to do with counting calories.

Plain and simply; if you are gaining weight or not losing weight when you want to then too much food is reaching your lips. To slow your food flow, I prefer teaching portion visualization rather than counting. Because food is visually oriented, learning a correct portion size is more effective in the long run, easier to learn and follows more naturally with how you eat in the first place. 

Food is Always a Visual Experience
Food is visual and not numeric. When it comes to food, you will hear someone say, “that food looks really tasty” or “I am hungry, let me see what looks good on the menu.” Those too statements are much more emotionally than analytically based. The first step to effectively fixing overeating is learning correct portion sizes. The step that follows is to understand and stopping stress eating. In the vast majority of overweight clients I have worked with, emotionally based stress eating is at the root cause of their condition.

So how do you start learning correct portion sizes? Very simply. For each and every food you eat, look for the serving size listed on the package. Serving sizes are a good way to start learning what a true serving really look like. Once you have a good visual of a serving size (it differs from food to food) then you can see how much food to eat. What happens when you eat a meal and you are still hungry? I will write more on that next time when I cover the roots of emotional eating.

Please feel free to comment or send me an email with individual questions or thoughts. I can be reached at woody@sequoiahealth.com.

Woody