How I choose what to eat: My "calorie per gram" method to make calorie maths easier
I want to share the method that I use to decide whether a food is worth eating or not. I struggle with doing calorie maths in my head, so I came up with this system. Please note: I still weigh and log all my food, this isn't intended to replace that.
Simply, I think about food in calories per gram. For example, Greek yoghurt is approx 1 cal per gram.
On a calorie budget of 1500 cals per day, I like to think of it as 15 units of 100g portions. I try to maximise the amount of food I can fit into each unit. I therefore consider anything that's 1 calorie per gram or less to be the ideal food, in terms of being easy to calculate and easy to fit into my budget.
Vegetables are close to 0 cal per gram (rounding down), so I can eat almost an unlimited amount because I'll feel full before I hit my calorie limit.
Pasta is approx 4 cal per gram (380 cals for 100g) meaning it would take up 4 out of my 15 units just for a small portion, so it's not worth it.
On the other hand, potatoes are only around 1 calorie per gram, meaning I could have four times the amount of potato as pasta. This makes it super easy for me to make a healthy choice between potatoes and pasta, and I don't need to remember "100g* of pasta is 380 calories but 100g* of potato is 87 calories". I just remember pasta = 4 and potatoes = 1.
It also helps compare similar foods. For example kidney beans = 3 calories per gram whereas butter beans = 1 calorie per gram.
Chicken and turkey is around 2 calories per gram, beef and pork are closer to 3 calories per gram.
This makes it super easy to compare food, when I'm not sure what to choose. It's especially useful in a restaurant or at a friend's house when I can't just whip out my scales and start weighing everything.
I usually round up or down to the nearest whole number, which evens itself out over the day.
I assume this is a similar system to what WeightWatchers uses to assign points to different types of food, but my system is more transparent because nothing is obfuscated behind some convoluted points system, it's just simple calorie maths.
I hope this helps someone else, and I'd love to hear your system if you have a different one!
*100g = 3.5 oz
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