Walking the Walk: Counting calories

Welcome to Walking the Walk, a feature that takes a deeper look at commonly shared diet and fitness advice. Every other week, I'll choose one piece of advice and practice it for seven days. Then I'll report back on what I discovered about making it work in real life and how it affected my own personal fitness -- and how it ultimately can affect your own efforts.

Part of my incentive for Walking the Walk is to better my personal health, and that includes weight loss. I'm already on the road, but I've got plenty of work to do. Being at home all day -- I'm a work-from-home mom -- makes it a little harder for me. I've got 24-hour access to my refrigerator, and it's easy to find myself grazing when I'm not really hungry.

Counting calories might seem old-fashioned, but balancing calories in/calories out is key to maintaining or losing weight. Limiting calories is only one half of the equation, of course; exercise is essential too. This week, I'll count calories every day, recording them in a notebook on my kitchen counter.

Here's the disclaimer: I plan on doing a doctor-approved 1500 calories a day, which works for me at my weight and current activity level. This should get me to my goal weight, losing 1-2 pounds a week. Your mileage may vary. So if you decide to count calories at home, be sure to see some of the basic calculators in the Making it Work For You section of this post to determine how many calories you should be eating every day.