How Is Your (Calorie) Bank Balance?

Counting calories but find you’re rapidly running out before the day is through? Try this simple method to improve your mindset and help you stay on track…

Imagine you wake up today with £2,000 and you have to spend it before the day is over. What would you spend it on? Impulsively, at 8am you might dash out and purchase that Prada bag you’ve been eye-ing up for the last month. That’s cool. But hang on. You buy the bag and realise there is no money left for… well anything useful to put inside the bag, like a sandwich or a bottle of water or something you actually need to survive. It is now 8.30am and you realise you have a very lonnnnng day ahead of you.

(Hopefully) you’re a pretty responsible adult and aren’t in the habit of spending money you don’t have, because, we all know that when we dip into our overdraft or use a credit card, we are going to have to pay that money back - with interest! But, because you didn’t pre-plan your expenditure you are now looking at having to do exactly that; borrow money that will have to be repaid later. You may even have to take on extra work to get out of debt!

Well, I’m afraid to say, mathematically speaking, the case is entirely the same with calories. Maybe you woke up this morning with 2,000 calories in your allowance, you have to use them, but you also have to use them wisely and make them last the day. So get out your calculator, graph paper and blow the cobwebs off the GCSE math knocking around inside your brain because it’s time to budget plan!

You can make it simple; try dividing your total allowance by 4. That gives you 500 to ‘spend’ for breakfast, lunch and dinner, respectively. Then you’ll have 500 remaining for snacks. Now you’ve only got 500 to spend at a time you’re going to shop around and get the best value you can and try to get the most for your ‘money’. Just like the responsible adult you were raised to be! With your 500 leftover for snacks, you might be just as sensible and select a few small things, or, you might go buy... a designer bag… maybe a more affordable one, from Ted Baker perhaps. It’s OK, so long as you don’t get into debt.

If you do end up in debt, repayment can take a long time (can I get an ‘amen!’?). When we over consume calories we can end up carrying extra weight around in the same way we carry the burden of financial debt. To speed up the repayment process you’re probably going to have to work extra hours to get yourself back in ‘the green’. It is said a 1 hour intense spin class can burn up to 850 calories… and nobody wants to do two and a half of those to pay off a Prada bag that’s going to be ‘so last season’ by the end of the week.

I hope this analogy brought a little fun, and food for thought to your day.

Thanks for reading,

Tamar