Most of the time I don’t pay much attention to what I eat on a given day. Sometimes at the end of the day, I’ll have forgotten what I had for breakfast that morning. But when your health requires you to give more thought and attention to your diet, you’ll likely discover that your eating habits aren’t as good as you assumed. Perhaps you’re not getting enough of a certain food group or nutrient, or you’re eating too little or too many calories. When you really think about it, it is difficult as hell to actually eat well. 

I never thought I would need to count calories. And honestly for most of my life I believed it was a bad habit. When thinking of someone who counts their calorie intake, I always pictured people with eating disorders or body dysmorphia and gym rats trying to bulk up to the size of 1980 Arnold Schwarzenegger. So I thought it was unhealthy to count calories because that means you’re paying too much attention to how your body looks rather than whether your body is actually healthy or loving your body as it is. The problem with this mindset is that paying attention to your body and how you’re taking care of it is important. It can be equally as damaging to completely disregard what you’re eating as it is to obsess over it. 

Because of recent life events, my relationship with food dramatically changed. Over the past couple years I started unintentionally losing weight, slowly at first then rapidly. When I first went just two pounds below my normal weight, I worried and consulted my doctor, but she said I seem fine and it’s probably just how my body is. But then I started losing more and more pounds. When I found myself over 10 pounds below my normal weight, I went into full panic mode. 

So what is it that one is supposed to do in this situation? Talk to the doctor, work with a dietician, eat more, exercise regularly but not too strenuously, get enough sleep, drink plenty of water, and decrease stress. Well I at least did one of those things: talk to my doctor. Unfortunately there wasn’t much of an explanation from any of the doctors I saw, and I saw a lot of them. They ran tests, which came back fine, so they would refer me to another specialist who ran more tests that also came back normal and so round and round I went.

Months passed and I still did not gain any weight. I actually lost a little bit more. When I first started panicking about this, I took all these glass jars we saved and filled them with almonds and scattered the jars throughout the house. If it’s in front of me, I’ll eat it, or so I thought. I even started using protein powder in my shakes and bought high calorie drinks. But I still wasn’t gaining any weight.

The frustration with this situation ignited the engine within me that pushed me to really take this seriously. When I buckled down, I found that it was easier to count calories when I write it down on paper and carry that paper with me, rather than trying to track everything in an app. It’s important that we find what works for us individually because we are all different. As I began to regularly count my calories, I found out that my intake wasn’t actually as high as I thought it was. I spoke with my doctor who gave me a threshold of what amount of calories I should be striving for every day. I was slowly able to build up an appetite to make that happen. 

I went so long without eating much, so my body wasn’t used to it. But when I slowly started introducing more food in and making sure I ate it all, I was able to reach that goal after just one week. I’ve been trying to keep up with it and introduce even a little more. I need to make sure I’m getting enough to gain weight, not just maintain it. I noticed I did start weighing just a little bit more. It’s not where I started and not a drastic increase, but it is something. 

The way to make it easy to count calories is to portion all your food. It actually doesn’t take much to do this. The nutrition label will show the calories per serving, the serving size, and how many servings are in the container. Rather than just pouring out some cereal into a bowl, measure it to make sure you’re getting that ⅔ cup or whatever the serving size is. Eventually you’ll be able to “eyeball” it, which is my preferred method for all kinds of cooking. After measuring out one serving, if you don’t think it’s enough, double it. If it’s too much, only take half. This makes it easy to count the calories because it’s simple math, multiply by two or divide by two. It only takes a second to look at the label, dish out how much you’re going to take, and do the math if needed to write down an accurate count of calories. 

I found that having a quantitative goal helped a lot in actually getting me to count my calories for the entire day, every day. Instead of saying “I need to increase my calorie intake,” try “I need to eat a minimum of 2000 calories a day.” This helps when I’m so close to that threshold that I try to eat one more thing quickly so I can make my goal for the day. Going above the goal limit is even better. The higher over the goal number I go, the better I feel about myself.

We need to make sure we’re in the right mindset with these things. If all we do is beat ourselves up and yell at ourselves to do something, we’ll be miserable and more likely to not do it because it will feel like a drag. Positive reinforcement is key for habit change. Congratulate yourself when you accomplish something even if it’s something very small. The better you feel, the more motivated you will be to keep going and improve. 

I’m not at my old weight yet, honestly not even close, but I’m feeling pretty good about myself and confident that I will get there one step at a time. At first, I was failing to gain weight because I stressed myself out, beat myself up, and found the tasks very daunting. How I changed this is by meditating to reduce stress, finding a personalized way to make the task easier for me, setting a quantitative goal, and congratulating myself for every improvement I make. This made the whole process seem less daunting and actually achievable. In order to change your habits, you must first change your mindset. Make sure you’re stress free and love yourself as you are. Just because you want to make an improvement, doesn’t mean you can’t love yourself until that improvement is there. In fact, striving to improve something can come out of love for that something. You love your body, so you want it to be healthy. And you will do the work to make sure you keep your body healthy.