Yeah... I used to count calories...

So when I say that I "used" to count calories, I mean I did like yesterday.  And the day before that, and the day before that... for as long as I can remember.  They have controlled my life-- for good and bad.

Thinking back to when the madness all began, I first learned about calories in an undergraduate nutrition class.  Before that, I had never really thought about them, or obsessed about them (every hour of the day), or thought they were my best friend or hated them.  I mean don't get me wrong, I was a healthy eater up to that point.  I ate low-fat diet based on the food guide pyramid and I was a swimmer in high school, so calories weren't my problem... until they were.  Thinking back (about 12 years ago), I can remember that it was a class assignment to keep track of how many calories we ate for three days in a row.  So that meant reading every nutrition label, looking up food items with no label in a book, and measuring out every morsel of food that went into my mouth... and writing it down... and adding it all up at the end of the day.  I'm sure those three days came and went for most of those students in the late 90's. But no, not me... they stuck to me (the calories) like a bunch of leeches. Rude.  Why couldn't I have just done the assignment and then just went back to eating my normal, sensible meals as I had done for the rest of my life.  It's not like I was overweight.  I'm actually quite petite.  I guess its the mentality that most teenage girls and women adopt: "If small is good, smaller is better!"  I learned that I could manipulate the numbers in my favor to get more lean... which actually backfired on me because then calories were all I could think about.  I've managed to stay about the same healthy weight as that semester in which I took the class (mind you 2 kids later)... but so much stress over what to eat, what not to eat, which restaurant would have a low-cal option... I think I'm ready to be done with all of that.  And blog about it- I mean I gotta have something to talk about besides how cute my kids are. So here I go... will I be able to make it even a day (or 5 min) without being the human calculator and stressing about how many calories I have left to eat? Or stop freaking out when at the end of the day I "ate too many calories".  I'm calling myself a former Calorie-Counting-queen because counting calories was so yesterday.