Someone left the comment that dieting and budgeting work on the same principles. This is one of those things, that when you hear it (or in this case, see it) you think "Brilliant!" and then you think, "Gosh, that's so obvious, how did I overlook that?" I don't know why I never drew parallels before. It makes perfect sense. I do the same things for both, and if I screw up or abuse one or the other, it catches up with me. If I spend 2 dollars here, 5 dollars there and so on, I go broke. Same if I eat a little here, a little there, I gain back weight. And you have to love food and money, they tell the truth, even when you don't. My poor daughter, 20 years old and learning to live on her own, keeps calling me and telling me how the bank screws up her account all the time and she's overdrawing. "Do you check your balance every day? Do you sit down with the statements? Do you write down what you spend?" No, she doesn't, but she says she remembers she didn't spend that much. And I roll my eyes and shake my head, because I know she's not looking closely enough. She's also gaining weight and swears she eats, maybe, 1200 calories a day. Same thing with the money, do you write it down? Do you have a food budget? Of course not. And I hate that I want to take her side because she is my kid and I love her but it drives me crazy that she is dishonest like this. I can only keep repeating myself and hope some day she gets sick of being chubby and broke and realizes it's a day to day counting thing. It's boring, responsible, tedious, but it's what gets the job done. My oldest is 23 and she's pretty good about her finances, I rarely have to scold her and my 17 year old is the best of the lot. That kid keeps track of everything. Some people seem to be more inclined to stop and write things down, figure them out. Depends if you are the patient sort, but even if you aren't inclined by nature to be deliberate and careful, you have to learn how to be. Very few people I know are good at keeping accurate mental track of everything they eat and spend.
And about the question of how many calories did I figure to eat while I was losing weight? Well, I didn't know much about dieting or anything when I started out. I mean, I knew you were suppose to eat three meals a day, and a healthy afternoon snack, I knew the basics, that 3600 calories equals a pound and all that. What I did at first was I didn't try to change what I ate, I just wrote everything down. Everything, every little bite, lick, taste, all that. I couldn't believe how much I was eating in a day just picking all day like that. It was like 3500 calories. Frankly I was surprised I didn't weigh more than I did. But whatever my weight was at that time, say I was 220 pounds, I just added a zero to the end and ate that many calories, so I would have eaten 2200 calories at that weight. Whenever I lost ten pounds, I ate 100 calories less a day. It took me almost 3 years to lose all my weight doing this and I bottomed out at 1500 calories a day (whenever I go lower than that I'm so hungry I could eat a tree) and I've weighed a steady 118 for a year now, so I guess this is what I'm supposed to weigh. I have a food journal still and a money journal and I treat both budgets pretty much the same, although I think I should work harder on being better with the money, which is what I'm doing here, by making myself accountable to this blog.
Today I'm not spending any money. I have 3400 in savings, 170 in checking, and 45 dollars in cash. That's perfect for now.
money and dieting
February 24th, 2008 at 05:42 pm
February 24th, 2008 at 06:01 pm 1203876112
February 24th, 2008 at 08:01 pm 1203883298
February 24th, 2008 at 10:31 pm 1203892298
February 25th, 2008 at 01:44 am 1203903898
Anyway, I have pondered often why it is so simple for me to make more and save more. But the eat less and exercise more is 100 times harder! IT's all kind of the same in the end.
February 25th, 2008 at 01:20 pm 1203945624
February 25th, 2008 at 05:54 pm 1203962046
Sounds a lot like finances to me. You can either cut down on your expenses, earn more money, or do both.
I feel enspired to try what you have done.
March 16th, 2008 at 07:38 pm 1205696301