About 3 years ago I lost nearly 25 pounds by watching my calories. In the past 6-9 months, I’ve still tried to watch what I eat somewhat, but I haven’t actually counted calories. We’ve had a few stressful life events that caused us to put healthy eating on the back burner. I’ve gained about 10 pounds back from the lowest weight I maintained – or about 13 pounds back from the lowest weight I ever saw on the scale. It’s not that much, but I am only 5’1″ so 10 pounds is rather visible on me compared to someone of more average height. Most of the weight has come back in my belly and chest which leaves me feeling uncomfortable in a lot of the tops that I used to enjoy wearing. Ryan and I have both decided that the next time we go grocery shopping, we will be more strict with what we buy and we will really hit calorie counting hard. I feel ready to go back to it.

I thought I would share my three favorite resources while calorie counting.

MyFitnessPal – this makes it so much easier to track calories without writing it out every single time. I love being able to record my meals once and then as long as I make it exactly the same and in the same position I can just add it without breaking down every single ingredient.

SkinnyTaste – this is actually new to me, but we recently tried the pickle brined tenders and fell in love. I’ve heard people rave about this blog for a long time on calorie counting sites. Since having such a great experience with the first recipe we tried, we’ll definitely be going back to try more.

The subReddit /r/1200isplenty. This is a community of people who are eating low calorie. Many of them are on a 1200 calorie diet which is exactly what I go on. At 5’1″, I only need about 1450 or 1500 to maintain so cutting to 1200 is actually pretty minor. However, others may be on 1,500 or 1,600 plans but still hang around to share low-calorie recipes and ideas.

I hope to update in a few months sharing how much I’ve lost! For the record, as of today my scale is bouncing around at about 126-127 pounds. The ultimate goal is to maintain at about 115-117.