I made a thing

Saddened that I couldn't find any existing Chris "Boomer" Berman WHOOP notification sounds for my phone, so I made one.  What is this world coming to when you can't get crazy sounds from TV sports personalities without having to make it yourself?  Come on guys.

Chris "Boomer" Berman  - Whoop (MP3) or (WAV)

Now hurry up and index this, google.  There are many others just like me anxiously awaiting this file.  FEAR NOT, BROTHERS.

Count Calories, Save Money

Every few months or so I reflect on my poor diet and lack of exercise and get serious for approximately one week where I'm super diligent about keeping track of what I eat.  Not unlike personal finance, to "do better" you have to first get a clear picture of what you're doing, whether it be calories you're inhaling or money you're spending.  Without that knowledge your brain isn't going to make the solid connection of "boy that's a lot of money on x" or "thanks to the burger king for lunch, I'm not allowed to eat the next three days".

There are a million different ways to diet and if you look at me you'll know any diet advice I hand out should be  mostly ignored, but I tend to go for the simple approach.  If I want to shed some pounds I'm going to ignore my fat/protein/carb split and just do some old fashion calorie counting.  To oversimplify and ignore some exceptions, if it's high in calories it's probably not that great for you.  It's probably sugary, processed, fatty, fried, or all of the above.

Where'd all them calories get to

Just like being frugal with your money, you're first going to need to know where you're "spending" your calories.  Once you're dreams of eating 3 bags of cheetos a day are shattered, you're going to get a good idea of what your problems areas are and what needs cut from your gluttonous routine.  This is going to be difficult if you don't have easy access to a computer/smart phone, but I track my food consumption/exercise with the website (and smartphone app) Fat Secret.

Make that food your bitch

Here is the part where you're going to need to start planning ahead, what meals are safe for your diet, and if you're like me, what will produce ample left-overs to take for lunches.  I will admit, I hate trying to plan ahead, but it does really take the guesswork out of "what's for lunch/dinner?"  Congratulations, you're now practicing portion control as well.  Popular diet plans (Jenny Craig, Weight Watchers, Nutrisystem) simplify the calorie counting and portion control for you, but it's accomplishing the same thing.

Sweet, sweet financial reward

Finally, saving some money up in hurr.  You're now eating less, and planning ahead to make sure you're going to stay within your limits.  When you go to the grocery store you'll avoid impulse/snack purchases, and the aforementioned planning will give you a smaller shopping list with much less waste.  That's all well and good, but the biggest saving of eating less and planning more is you're going to eat out less because it typically carries a heavy caloric cost and most daily diets has no room for junk/fast food.  Bam.  Money saved.  In the 3dollarbicycle household, most of the reason where we go out to eat is because we're too lazy to figure out what we want to have for dinner.

Simple, boring, ????, profit!

While extremely boring, I will eat the same breakfast every day during the work week.  I'm lazy enough that I'm fine with the lack of creativity for trade off of a filling, easy breakfast that I don't need to prepare ahead of time.  I take coffee in from home, have some instant oatmeal and a sweet and salty granola bar thing.  Coffee always fills me up pretty good and the two spread out "snacks" carry me to lunch without much dramatic grumbling from my stomach.  Some argue a large breakfast, but at least this leaves me with a bunch of carlories left for the day.

Caveats

I try and head-off arguments and flaws in my logic ahead of time.  I'm not saying "eating healthy" and "counting calories" are necessarily the same thing.  You can very easily spend a lot of money on fancy organic foods that I don't know how to pronounce and in the end not save any money.  What I try to do is  stick to what I would consider "normal food" for me and just eat less of it.

Random dieting tips not necessarily tied to financial benefit

While most of these are pretty common sense, I thought I'd throw these out there that I've found are true for me

• Drink water.  It's calorie free and good for you.  "What about those zero calorie sodas, etc?"  I have no idea, but I assume they're still not good for you.
• Don't starve yourself.  If you think you're going to drop 20 lbs in two weeks by eating 500 calories a day, you're doing it wrong.  I'm told you're body needs to keep it's metabolism going and if you're starving yourself your body will slow your metabolism down to conserve calories, yes even if you're a fatty fat fat.
• Avoid eating late at night.  This could be just me, or that I weigh myself in the mornings, but if I stop my eating hours before I fall asleep I think the food gets processed quicker.  Also I get indigestion fairly often and dieting and not eating close to bed time has all but eliminated my nightly feast of tums.
• Rome (your fat ass) was not built in a day.  It's actually kind of discouraging to learn that one bad day of eating isn't going to make or break your diet, it's consistently eating more calories than you need that makes you gain weight.
• Find a sort of exercise that you enjoy.  If you're exercising, you can eat more calories!  Beware  however, that the calories actually burnt are far less than it feels, so 5 Big Macs are not a reward for a 3 mile walk.