Calorie Counting vs Meal Planning

Back in the dark ages before cell phones were more powerful than the technology on Apollo 13, I carried in my purse a calculator, a pen, a small notebook, and a pocket-sized Calorie King Calorie, Fat, and Carbohydrate counter book, all bound together with a fat rubber band.  Meals became events:  pull out book, flip through pages, look up numbers, write numbers down in notebook, and calculate remaining calories (remember that as an English teacher, I officially don’t math).  It became even more fun if the book didn’t have the restaurant or the meal listed; then I was stuck looking up individual ingredients and amalgamating meals from separate and obscure counts.

Back then, if you were counting calories, everybody KNEW, because before (or sometimes after) you ate, out came the ubiquitous book and its accouterments, and the laborious process of calorie counting commenced.

No wonder I couldn’t manage to stick to it for more than a few weeks.  It was such an ORDEAL.  The bright side to this is that to this day I have a pretty accurate knowledge of the calories in a breadth of food (off the top of my head, an apple is about 80 calories; a McDonald’s Big Mac is 560).

Fast forward to the invention of the iPhone and the app, and a calorie-counting revolution was born.  Gone was the bundled book-notebook-calculator; they were replaced by helpful apps such as  Myfitnesspal, Fooducate, and Noom, which houses infinite databases of the calorie counts of the world.  No longer is counting calories such an obvious affair; while entering your stats into the app, you look just like any other phone-checking, game-playing, text-messaging person you see.  It’s much less of a production.

Why, then, did I a year ago go from calorie-counting maven to a staunch advocate for meal planning?

Calorie Counting

When I was counting calories, a calorie was a calorie was a calorie.  It didn’t matter to me if those calories were from a grilled chicken salad, a Whopper, or a brownie sundae.  If it fit into my daily calorie allowance, I ate it.  Okay, let’s be honest, here:  I ate it even if it didn’t fit into my calorie allowance.

Calorie counting was good for me because I learned a firm understanding of the energy values of food (which is pretty much the definition of a calorie).  Even though I no longer count calories, I still have that knowledge base, and I feel like that is helpful to me to this day.  I liked the freedom calorie counting afforded me; I knew if I was going to have a decadent meal for dinner that the rest of my day needed to be very light (sometimes TOO light).  Also, I had an accurate record of what I was eating, and if I wasn’t losing or maintaining my weight, I knew why.

The downside of calorie counting was that even if I didn’t have to lug around the book and the calculator anymore, I still had to take the time to log my meals and snacks into the app, which, let’s just be honest here, is a huge pain in the butt.  It takes time, whether you have calorie counts memorized or not.  Sometimes, as you are pulling up to a drive-thru window, your app won’t load and you are starving but you just don’t know what the best choice is, so you order the Super Mumbo Jumbo Burger, fries, and a diet soda.

Well, that was a bad idea.

Not only that, because it is so tedious, calorie counting is difficult to maintain for an extended period of time.  Who wants to count EVERYTHING they eat for the rest of their lives?  Not me.

And be honest, it only partially worked.  Sure, I lost weight because I was restricting my calories, but I paid absolutely no attention to the quality of my food or how what I ate affected my energy, my body, or my moods.  Back then, my answer to a sugar crash was MORE SUGAR.  That is very different from the way I fuel my body now.

Becoming a Convert

In 2014 when I joined a Beachbody Challenge Group, my coach wanted me to make a meal plan.  What?!  You want me to plan out what I am going to eat for every meal and snack for the next week?  That is crazy!  Where is the freedom?  Where is the flexibility?

“Nah,” I thought.  “I’ll just count my calories.”

But then all of the other challengers were posting their meal plans… it seemed like they were getting to eat A LOT of food; nowhere on any meal plan did I see that someone was eating half a serving of cereal for breakfast to conserve calories.  And then there was a cheat meal, where they got to eat anything they wanted, no counting necessary.

Fine.

So I made my meal plan.  I thought that eating the same things over and over would be dumb and boring, so I mixed up the snacks every other day.  I found exciting new recipes to try.  That first meal plan was INCREDIBLY complicated.  It took me nearly TWO HOURS to create it.  Then I went to the grocery store and spent a small fortune on my wide variety of foods and elaborate recipes.  When Sunday came and it was time to prep meals and snacks for the week, I prepped EVERYTHING.  It took HOURS.  I packaged, divvied, dolloped, cut, and sliced.

It was exhausting.

If I hadn’t gotten the kind of payoff I did for my efforts, I may have never made a meal plan or prepped food again.  That week, not ever, NOT ONCE, did I have to worry about what I was going to eat.  I already knew.  It was magneted to the fridge.  In the mornings, I didn’t have to wonder what to pack for lunch or snacks, because it was already done.  I threw it in my lunch bag and left.  It literally took all of twenty-five seconds.

And then I started losing weight.

I didn’t feel deprived, because A, I was eating ALL DAY LONG, and B, I was fuelling my body with healthy, satisfying food.  REAL FOOD.  It was a lot of work, but I was hooked.

Over time, I streamlined the process of meal planning and prep.  I started making intentional leftovers at dinner to have for lunch the next day.  I ate the same three snacks, every day, and I limited the items that needed to be chopped to one and the foods that needed to be portioned into containers to one, also; that alone DRASTICALLY cut down on my prep time. I stopped making meals so complicated; if my husband or I couldn’t whip it up on a weeknight in 20-30 minutes, it wasn’t happening.  I found go-to meals that worked for us.  I kept it simple.

Now, I can crank out a meal plan AND a grocery list in 15 minutes.  My husband and I can do the grocery shopping for the week at Aldi for around $75.  Meal planning saves me time AND money.  When I’m starving or in a rush, I don’t have to think about what I’m going to eat because I’m already prepared.  And do you know what else?  I get my cheat meal once a week, where I eat anything my little heart desires.  Most of the time it falls on date night, and it usually involves dessert.

	Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday	Saturday	Sunday
Meal Plan for 2.2
Workout
Breakfast	Shakeology, almond milk, and frozen fruit	Shakeology, almond milk, and frozen fruit	Shakeology, almond milk, and frozen fruit	Shakeology, almond milk, and frozen fruit	Shakeology, almond milk, and frozen fruit	Shakeology, almond milk, and frozen fruit	Shakeology, almond milk, and frozen fruit
Snack	Mini peppers and hummus	Mini peppers and hummus	Mini peppers and hummus	Mini peppers and hummus	Mini peppers and hummus	Mini peppers and hummus	Mini peppers and hummus
Lunch	Leftover minestrone  and salad	Leftover Chicken marsala, pasta, and mixed veggies	Pita Pizzas and salad	Tilapia, baked sweet potato, and broccoli	Turkey Tacos and salad	leftovers	leftovers
Snack	Pineapple and cottage cheese	Pineapple and cottage cheese	Pineapple and cottage cheese	Pineapple and cottage cheese	Pineapple and cottage cheese	Pineapple and cottage cheese	Pineapple and cottage cheese
Dinner	Chicken marsala, pasta, and mixed veggies	Pita Pizzas and salad	Tilapia, baked sweet potato, and broccoli	Turkey Tacos and salad	Lobster tails, roasted potatoes, and salad	leftovers	Clam chowder
Snack	Celery and almonds	Celery and almonds	Celery and almonds	Celery and almonds	Celery and almonds	Celery and almonds	Celery and almonds

Initially, meal planning takes more time.  There is a learning curve, but the return on investment for your time is FAR greater than it is for counting calories.  You feel so much better, because you are taking the time to pre-plan quality food to put into your body BEFORE you are famished or temptation strikes.

If you would like to learn more about meal planning and REAL strategies for losing (and maintaining!) your weight, fill out the application to be considered for a spot in my challenge group.

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