There are supposed to be serving sizes???

I was recently reading an article in a magazine that said that the most common saboteur to losing weight when you've recently begun a new exercise program is consuming too many calories. I have never in my life counted a single calorie so I had absolutely no idea what my caloric intake should be. I went online and found several websites that agreed that for my height, weight goal, and level of activity my caloric intake should be about 1800 calories a day as long I do one hour of high impact of aerobics. I'm only supposed to have a startling low 1400 calories on days I don't exercise (yeah, right!). I decided to add up the calories I was eating each day for about 3-4 days to see what I was actually consuming.

That was certainly an eye opener!

All this time I was supposed to be using 2 scoops of my whey protein powder so I'd only ever been getting half the protein I thought I was consuming, but using 2 scoops rocketed the calories in my smoothie up to 340! I had always assumed that a fruit smoothie had, maybe, 100 calories at the most. Not so. I did pretty good at lunch, eating only 430 calories. I thought I did great for a snack as I only had a Starbucks Grande-size chai tea latte made with soy: well my friends, that little number cost me 260 calories! Ididn't even get to chew! Then I had 2 of my daughter's gummy vitamins (15 calories), then a piece of gum (5 calories). I was already at 1,050 calories and as far as I was concerned I hadn't really eaten anything! By limiting the dressing on my salad to 2 tsp. I was able to keep dinner to only 680 calories, but let me tell you, I could have eaten a lot more.

Portion control. Serving sizes. Moderation. Let's just say that I ran through 1,730 calories like it was nothing and honestly couldn't find anything in the house I wanted to eat for my remaining 70 calories. Not that I didn't want to eat, mind you, just nothing with only 70 calories.

I am either going to have to ramp up my exercise or buy bigger clothes because this calorie counting is for the birds.