It seems like every processed food item has a 100 calorie package version out on the market these days. I saw Doritos, Oreos, and every major chocolate bar touting 100 calories on the front side of their respective packages while standing in line at the supermarket last week. Ah… isn’t that sweet. They’re doing the portion control for me in an effort to help me eat less. Sure, I’ve got room for you guys in my shopping cart. Hop right in…

[The staple of low calorie snacking... popcorn. Put your hand-up if you can taste the difference between plain unsalted or unsweetened popcorn and styrofoam? That's why it's usually loaded with large amounts of additives!]

I thought smaller portion size was good? What gives?

When mindless eating takes over, yes absolutely, these packages are a great idea. Forcing a person to take the additional action of getting up and opening a new pack to continue snacking is powerful and works a hell of lot better then putting on the mental brakes in front of an already opened 450 gram bag of chips. But according to some research, such awareness doesn’t necessarily prevent overeating. (more…)

Usually the words “Food Taboos” or “Food Fears” make people quite squeamish and uncomfortable. Perhaps it invokes religious images of animals being slaughtered or maybe it reminds you of the second challenge on the TV show Fear Factor when each contestant had to ingest a batch full of live insects? Joe Rogan, you sick bastard!

[Forget food fears, how about a giant spider descending on a city near you! Just kidding, it's a sculpture making stops in various places around the world by French sculptor Louise Bourgeois]

Unfortunately, being afraid to eat is all too common in those struggling on their own fat loss journey. I can remember grabbing a bagel from the breakfast bar at a conference and receiving this snide remark from a female in line:

“Oh my god, how can you eat that bagel? I’m too afraid to eat one!“

“Hi my name is Mike, and you must be Debbie? Debbie Downer?“

[FYI: I have a personal rule about knowing at least a person's first name before I criticize them and their actions.]

Should I have eaten that bagel? Probably not since it’s full of unrefined carbs and low on fiber but being afraid of food really caught me off guard. Did this bagel fall on the floor? Was this bagel laced with poison?

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Looking at the food court in a local shopping mall today I thought about these two questions:

How many people have calories on their mind?

Do any of them count calories?

I’m gonna go out on the proverbial limb here and say probably none of them.

Harsh? Maybe. But I too was once a frequent visitor of the common food courts eating fattening foods and feeling my clothes getting tighter by the fry. So chalk this up to experience.

After several failed attempts at losing weight, I finally took some responsibility and found an unlikely weapon against fat-> The PENCIL!

[I used to yawn or skip right over any talk about goal setting. But after giving it a go in my fat loss journey, I'm using it everywhere now!]

Keeping a Food Journal

In the beginning, I tried keeping a food journal but it never lasted more than a few days at a time. It was time consuming and an inconvenient exercise to calculate all of those calories ingested over the course of a day. In the end, calories were either forgotten or grossly under-estimated.
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Don’t be fooled by all the fat loss and muscle building experts out there proclaiming the death of calorie counting. Chances are they all started with some form of calorie counting and are obviously more experienced now and don’t need to follow the practice religiously.

Fellow fitness blogger Rafi Bar-Lev from The Fitness Adviser was kind enough to explain the basics of this time-tested method and outline the long term benefits.

Benefits of Counting Calories: Fat Loss and Beyond- Guest Post by Rafi Bar-Lev

Your coworker makes a comment to you about your weight.

Generally, you’d just brush it off, but this isn’t the first person to say something and you’re aware that it really is a problem. You decide that starting today, you’re going to go on a diet and start losing weight.

There’s only one problem. You don’t have the faintest idea where to start?
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