Weighty Issues

Back in June, I was lamenting my expanding waistline. Fortunately, the six pounds I'd gained over my 'acceptable limit of chubbiness' have evaporated thanks to the rigors of baby wrangling - but I'm still packing some porkiness I'd rather not have.

To be honest, I'd pretty much abandoned my quest to return to the weight I was in my early twenties. Back then, I was subsisting on a diet of dry martinis and cocktail peanuts and walking five miles a day through the streets of Paris or New York.

Now I'm a 'grown up' - this means I can afford to eat on a regular basis and my work life consists of extended periods sitting on my rump. That equals a surplus of calories and a deficit in exercise and nothing short of a drastic lifestyle change is likely to change that.

That is, until I discovered this website: Calorie Count Plus.

It's a free website that lets you sign up and keep track of the two most important things in a weight-loss regimen - the amount of calories you eat as compared to the amount of calories you expend. It's got a neat little database so you can 'point and click' at brand name food and quickly calculate your daily intake.

Not only that - it also calculates how nutritious your diet is (and I was gratified to find out I scored a 'B' which wasn't too bad for a vegetable-phobe.) I know it says 'alcohol intake 0%' but I think that's because the ethanol contained within the two beers I drank with dinner didn't equal a percentage point. Either that or the 'smart' database thinks Heinekin is non-alcoholic.

This all sounds pretty clever and flashy, but doesn't actually help you lose weight... Except it does. By looking at the instant analysis, I see that I consumed 2,977 calories and burnt 2,909 today. That gives me a daily surplus of 66 (which equates to gaining about a pound every fifty days.)

By looking at the foods I consumed, it's easy to spot what I need to remove to turn that surplus into a deficit. If I skipped those delicious Oreo cookies I had for elevenses and ditched the late-night glasses of chocolate milk, I'd save 665 calories and THAT translates to losing a pound in just five days.

I think the benefit of cataloging your consumption - and working out how many calories you consume - makes it much easier to snip off the bits and pieces that might make all the difference to losing weight or not.

Will it start me on the track to becoming a slimmer, trimmer Roly?

Only time will tell!