By Jan Jackson –
Both Fuji apples, the one in the lead photo is 151 calories and this one is only 86. If you are counting calories, it pays to weigh your food.
When you’ve seen as many years go by as One Pan Annie has, you know a lot about counting calories. She claims she’s been counting calories forever, but she hasn’t. Counting calories didn’t even become popular until around the turn of the 20th century and even One Pan Annie isn’t THAT old.
Calories, which are simply a measure of energy normally used to measure the energy content of foods and beverages, are defined in science as the amount of energy required to raise the temperature of 1 kilogram of water by 1 degree Celsius. When one Pan Annie talks about calories however, it isn’t about science.
One Pan Annie on Calories
“I remember the old dieting days of counting calories,” One Pan Annie says. “What a drag. I said to myself, ‘Self, you aren’t going to count calories ever again!!!’ But 30-years later, I’m doing it. It’s just that now, I only sort of do it and here’s my sort-of-do-it advice.
How to do it
If you are eating real food like you should be (fresh vegetables, fresh fruit and fresh meat), and you need to lose or maintain your weight, you just about have to buy a food scale in order to count the calories. I weigh my food and then look on the Internet to see how many calories it has. Once you’ve done it a few times, you get so you don’t have to do it all the time. The few minutes it takes has helped me lose 75-pounds in the last two years.
By the numbers
The Internet alone can’t really help you, unless you know how much your fresh food weighs. For example, when you search for the number of calories in an apple it will say 95 calories. But the apple I just ate, weighed 11.3 ounces and was 151 calories while the one in the little photo only had 85.
How about a pork chop? Looking it up tells you it is somewhere between 180 to 500 calories. I weighed mine and it had 360 calories.
I’ve looked up how many calories in a chicken thigh and the 200 calories it said wasn’t even close to the 456 calories in the one I ate.
Even though you don’t have to obsess over calories today as much as we did in the old days, if you do need need to know how many, get a little kitchen scale and use it. Click on the “show now” button below to buy the one I use.
Bon Appetit
Eating out away from your food scale? Try these tips from www.healthline.com :
* 1 serving of rice or pasta (1/2 a cup); a computer mouse or rounded handful.
* 1 serving of meat (3oz); a deck of cards.
* 1 serving of fish (3oz); a check book. * 1 serving of cheese (1.4 oz); a lipstick or the size of your thumb.
* 1 serving of fresh fruit (1/2 cup); a tennis ball.
* 1 serving of green leafy vegetables )1 cup); a baseball.
* 1 serving of vegetables (1/2 cup); a computer mouse.
* 1 teaspoon of olive oil; 1 fingertip
* 2 tablespoons of peanut butter; a pin pong ball.
