I counted every calorie for 30 days

I've never been one to track every detail of my life count calories for anguish over my macro nutrient composition as much as I'm dedicated to living a healthy lifestyle and as type-a as I might seem when things are working for me I tend to let them go on autopilot but as I've gotten older it's not as easy to stay in shape as it used to be perhaps it's my metabolism that's slowing down or maybe I'm simply eating too many calories but no matter how much cardio I do I have a dad gut that keeps coming back so for the past thirty days I decided to track every meal and count each calorie for the first time in my life to try to better understand the food I'm eating and to see if tracking alone would change my behavior spoiler alert I did and it was every part write this down and yes I do still have a mustache and no I don't care what you think the calorie as I've learned is the single most important metric we have to determine if we're consuming too much too little or just enough food a calorie measure is energy just as gasoline creates the energy necessary to propel a car forward so to do calories provide the energy needed for digestion physical activity and the basic functions of the human body every second you are alive you are burning calories yes even while you sleep the engine that is your human body is breaking down and making use of them similar to an idling car at a traffic light the number that you burn every day depends upon a number of factors including age high sex the amount of physical activity you get it's important to figure out how many calories are enough for you because unlike the car analogy humans don't tend to stop eating when their tanks are full if we continue to eat excess calories they will be stored as fat in our cells and unless we slow down our intake that fat will never get used which is when you gain weight and there's only one way to lose it through a calorie deficit basically when you burn more calories than you take in great thank you so much you can get there in two ways limit the amount of calories you eat or burn them through exercise and it's far easier to lose weight by restricting calories than by doing more exercise it will take me about ten minutes to eat this delicious 1000 calorie meal what if I wanted to burn and calories met the rent this pace for about an hour hour 15 minutes and I have really bad ankles so if you burn 2,000 calories a day you need to eat 2,000 calories to maintain your weight if you consistently he over that amount you'll gain weight if you consistently eat less than that you'll lose weight and it's just as important to understand what calories won't measure there's a myth of good calories and bad calories as nutrition coach Jordan Siyad explains that's the wrong way to look at it if you look at what a calorie is just the definition of a calorie it's just a unit of measurement that's all it is is a unit of measurement how much energy is in that food right so in the same way a mile is a unit of measurement a mile on pavement is the same as a mile in the forest is the same as a mile on sand it will be harder to walk a mile on the sand and it will be on pavement because of the composition of the mile but it's still the same distance and that's the same with calories if you take calories from pizza and compare it to calories in an apple it doesn't change the fact that it's still a unit of measurement the composition of it the nutrient composition that proteins the carbs the fats that will change and that is what sort of makes foods better or worse for fat loss or more filling or maybe better for muscle growth so in addition to counting calories I'm also interested in tracking nutrients to see how much protein carbs and fats I'm getting each day towards the end of the video I'll consult back with Jordan to see how I did and if my diet is completely out of whack so there are a lot of different apps that you can use to track calories right on your phone I definitely recommend that over actually writing it out by hand mainly because apps like the one that I used my Fitness Pal has over 11 million foods an entire database of foods already plugged in so all you have to do and I my mind was completely blown the first time I used it was simply scan in the barcode and then all of that information that you want from the carbs the proteins the fats even the sugars saturated fat all the nitty-gritty details even the stuff that you don't want at all is going to get plugged right into the system and then you get an amazing bird's-eye view of all the food you're eating in the day so in the beginning it was equally fun and overwhelming as I began to track each meal it took a few days before I started to contextualise how many calories I should be eating with each meal while reading the nutrition label on my peanut butter I almost dropped my spoon out of my mouth there were 95 calories per spoonful at times I've snacked on one jar a week don't judge me I'm not judging the peanut butter I'm judging the moustache then there was National Ice Cream Sandwich day we went out to get buy one get one free ice cream sandwiches and the size of these things were insane the lady behind the counter estimated that the calories were around 1,200 each put it into context I burn around 2400 calories a day so half of my calories would have come from just this one snack and this is when tracking my meal started to change my behavior I didn't want to explode my entire count for the day and eat all that excess fat and sugar I decided to wrap up the rest for another day and spend my calories on foods that would give me a bit more of what my body needs now as I make this delicious peanut butter and jelly sandwich I'd love to tell you about my sponsor Squarespace as you guys know I only worked with sponsors on this channel that have added a lot of value to my life and Squarespace has done just that so two slices of bread comes out to a hundred and eighty calories I've used Squarespace to build every website of mine over the past few years why do I choose Squarespace they have beautiful templates that make it easy to build a clean-looking website in no time it's crazy simple to customize and tweak the content to fit your message peanut butter as we already know contains 190 calories per two tablespoons we're measuring this out as best we can here set up your website collect emails and even send out your campaigns directly from Squarespace speaking of which you guys should go sign up for mine this jelly here has about 30 calories per tablespoon it's about a tablespoon go to Squarespace com to sign up for a free trial then when you're ready to launch go to Squarespace comm slash Maddy Bella to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain and that right there is a 400 calorie snack not bad toast you gotta go toast it if you're not toasting your peanut butter and jelly sandwiches I don't know what else to say hmm I love peanut butter [Music] counting calories became a part of my routine and very quickly it became an obsession I would compulsively check each food each meal that I ate trying to count exactly how many calories were in each it was a very difficult task and as I got better at it the more I did it the more I started to see not food but it was like seeing matrix code it was understanding the source and the fuel behind the food that I was eating I didn't see chips I saw 130 calories per serving I didn't see Cod I saw 120 calories and 27 grams of protein and I wasn't the only one that started to change inadvertently even though my partner Natalie wanted nothing to do with this experiment she started to obsess over calories as she saw me reading each label before each meal she started to take more of an interest into what goes into our food I really like it because I feel like it's deepened my relationship with food and I love food I love planning food I love thinking about food I love reflecting on food I would say 80% of my thoughts daily are dedicated to food in some way shape or form I'm not joking so I feel like calories has helped deepen my relationship with food because it helps me understand how I can plan and moderate and monitor the food that I'm eating you see while it's not accurate to say that there are good calories and bad calories we have a limited amount that we should be eating each day and the nutritional components that comprise those 2,000 dish calories matter it affects our mood our energy and to a large extent how long we live so instead of dousing our salads with 4 tablespoons of olive oil equal to 480 calories we can instead use some restraint and portion out our salad dressing more deliberately in the past I would have simply indulged without thinking but now this was a moment of buffer between my hand and my mouth I had to really think about and process each calorie I was eating instead of mindlessly throwing another handful of popcorn into my mouth or my preferred funnel technique I had to first find out the calories and then portion close to that amount so I think one of the biggest challenges that I've had in terms of counting calories is not everything has a label on it especially good food fresh food apples vegetables the things without packages which is the unprocessed foods that you really want they don't have simply a little button that you can scan some of them do but most of them don't and especially when you go out to eat these days I probably go out to eat two days a week three days most and those times are really difficult to track the exact calories that you're eating how big is the chicken how much butter or oil was used while cooking these are the things that you will never know and you just have to kind of guess if I got within a margin of 10 percent I was pretty happy with that I was okay with getting it wrong a little bit taking a look back after 30 days of counting calories I started to get a much better idea of how much food my body needs to give you some context for the following numbers I'm 31 years old five foot eight and weigh 154 pounds while my total intake varied each day especially when I went on vacation where it peaked at 3,000 329 calories in one day it balanced out in the long run I averaged 2146 calories per day my weight stayed steady so I felt that number was on point but looking at my daily averages for macronutrients I didn't know what to make of it each day I ate an average of 178 grams of carbs 127 grams of protein and 83 grams of fat to help me better understand this info I hopped on a call with Jordan SIA the nutrition expert that you met earlier Jordan what's up man what's going on man how are you good man I'm just gonna pretend like the conversation just started am i a healthy individual or not from your body fat percentage like clearly you have a lot of muscle mass you have a lower body fat so yeah you're you look like a very healthy individual you have to go to a doctor to get really checked out but yeah you look very healthy before the call Jordan asked me about my goals I told him that if anything I wanted to maintain the same weight while gaining strength when I ranked the most important things calories are number one proteins number two especially when we're including strength and body composition so I saw all the way as low as I believe like 80 or 82 might have been the lowest one in terms of protein and then all the way up to like 188 maybe even a little bit more but I would like with you to get a little bit more consistent and rather than having either extreme being closer to about 150 grams on a daily basis having a more consistent higher protein intake number one it's going to be helpful for keeping you full longer and just for general muscle growth and strength is obviously super helpful I also asked him if there was anything I could do to increase my energy levels during the day he suggested that since I have a low body fat percentage I could try experimenting with increasing my daily carb intake the range that I would have UN is somewhere between 250 grams to like almost 290 grams on a daily basis what that means though is we have to then reduce your fast so generally I would have you between 45 grams to 60 grams a day are you saying that I can't have a jar of peanut butter every week anymore Jordan emphasized to me that this advice is crazy specific and just for my circumstance it goes way more into detail than most people need a lot of people weigh over think this stuff to the point where they overthink it where they don't do anything they don't take action they're like well that was way too intense so I'm not gonna do anything at all I think most people literally just writing down what they're eating would be a better step than doing nothing at all is it a complete pain in the ass to count calories yes after 30 days it certainly was a little bit annoying but it was also fun enlightening and if I'm being completely honest a life-changing experience it taught me so much about the food I'm eating every day and it got me to better understand the nutrients that I should be taking in it is something that if you haven't done it already I highly recommend everybody watching this video take the next 30 60 or 90 days to start counting calories to truly understand and to become more intentional with the food we eat every day

Channel: Matt D'Avella

Views: 1,498,972

Rating: 4.911087 out of 5

Keywords: calories, count calories, nutrition, fitness, health, wellness, habits, minimalism, simplicity, diet, weight loss, fat loss, learn, education, simple living, matt davella, Matt D'Avella, calorie counting, counted calories for 30 days

Id: F2btwUXNXh0

Length: 12min 44sec (764 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 17 2019