Why spare Change and Calories…They All Add Up!

My youngest son, like most toddlers, owns a piggy bank. Every evening he and his Dad are happy to put a backup change out of my dad's pork pockets. In fact, we have had to remove the piglets a few times over the past few months. It really fills up fast. Before the pig, the spare change had just been left lying on the dresser, leaving us with a lot of confusion, and not knowing how much to collect. What do piggy banks have in common with food choices? I honestly wouldn’t have had any information before this past week when I decided to start keeping a food journal. Calories are very similar to a backup change from my husband's pockets, they quickly come together. Unfortunately, before I started writing down all of them, they were exactly like the rubbish in our wardrobe, very difficult to clean, or disassemble. Since having my son two and a half years ago, I have tried many times to release more ‘baby weight’. Although it is difficult to do that every day, I have to laugh at the excuses of ‘baby weight’. Honey, the so-called 'baby weight' was lost when the pile made its first sound of crying in the hospital. What I am packing for twenty pounds a packet of change without a pig to put in ... At the end of the first day of ‘food labels’, I was expecting to find a miraculous solution to what was wrong with me… and guess what? I did. I found that… I eat a lot. Huh? Is that it? Do I eat too much? In fact, it is not the amount, the amount of time anyway, but the choice that is the problem. But come on, I didn't know that one piece of smelly American cheese had seventy calories, and forty-five of them came from fat. Boy, sucking a few of those all day can shoot your whole plan in a weird way. The first day I ate and wrote everything down. Without trying to remember to write down the foods and calories in each portion I ate, I did not change anything. After having to use a calculator to add everything that night, the truth was much harder than all the changes in the world. I really needed to make healthy choices in what I ate each day. The diet journal opened my eyes not only to how my choices prevented weight loss, but how much easier it was to just put snacks in my mouth than to plan my daily diet. I also took another external concept ... the art of exercise. Like pouring pork when it is very full, I put in extra calories every day with the much needed movement. At the end of your day, do you just throw away your spare change in the dresser, or count how much you save? Come on. You can do it. You will be amazed at how fast those nickels… ahem, calories, can add up! Bank those calories in your food journal today.