Calorie Counting: Calculating Your Dieting Budget – Part 2

It has always amazed me that some of the most disciplined and creative people I know, when it comes to finances and saving money, can still have as difficult a time losing weight as anyone. After all, they are very similar. Both require sustained, incremental efforts, both are the results of not spending more than you should, and both require a certain amount of self-restraint and impulse control.

If you’re good at handling your finances, but are still struggling with your weight, the good news is these skills are perfectly transferable.

Since you’ve already calculated the amount of calories you have to spend (see Calorie Counting: Calculating Your Dieting Budget – Part 1), we can move right on to applying that. First, we need to measure the cost of the various items. It can be very hard to estimate the number of calories in the foods we eat.

People Underestimate Calories

In fact, when people are asked to roughly estimate the caloric content in a large meal, one set of studies showed that people underestimated calories by 23 to 38%! If you want to make sure you’re not exceeding your daily calorie budget, you need to have a better idea than that about what you’re eating.

Conveniently, doing this 7-day food journal exercise helps you get a more accurate idea of that. Chances are that a large percentage of what you eat regularly will show up over the course of these 7 days and you will have a much better idea of the caloric “cost” of many of your regular items.

You may find yourself surprised by how high or low some of your regulars are in calories. You don’t need to memorize these numbers, but after collecting and tallying a week’s worth of food, you now have a ballpark idea of what these foods are worth.

Use a Financial Model of Weight Loss to Balance Your Checkbook and The Scales!

Use a Financial Model of Weight Loss to Balance Your Checkbook and The Scales!

Armed with this information, you can begin to change the amounts you eat so that you begin eating less calories than you’re burning. If you wanted to save $35.00 a week, you would have to spend $5.00 less each day than you earn. In order to lose a pound a week (3,500 calories), you will need to be burning 500 calories more than you are taking in every day.

An easy way to keep track of this while keeping the financial model in mind (without going so far as to write out every last calorie) is to pick up a pack of “fake” money. Any play money will do but having play money with different denominations (10, 50, 100) will work best. You can usually pick packs of play money up at dollar stores, toy stores, or, if you have an old board game that no one uses, you can commandeer its bankroll.

Get yourself an old wallet, a couple of envelopes, a couple of jars, whatever will work for you. Count out an amount of play dollars equivalent to the daily calorie budget that you calculated yesterday. Then use one envelope or jar to hold what’s left to spend for the day, and another to hold the amount you’ve spent.

Spend Wisely

Since you now have an idea of what your most common foods cost you in terms of calories, when you eat, simply move approximately the same amount of dollars from your “to spend” envelope, jar, or pile, to the “spent” pile when you eat. Try to “spend wisely” so that you will have $500 left in the jar at the end of the day.

If you have any play money left in the “to spend” jar, even if you don’t have a full $500, you will have lost a little weight that day. Just like with saving money, if you do that for enough days, it really adds up.

So if you’re good at finances, but having a little trouble with weight loss, use what you know you’re good at to help get you through what you’re having trouble with. Use a financial model of weight loss and before you know it, both your checkbook and the scales will be perfectly balanced.