How much are you really eating? Probably more than you think. Here's how to judge for yourself.
Runners thrive on numbers--distance covered, time clocked, pace per mile And we're usually pretty good at calculating those accurately. But one area where most runners could use a little help with math is in figuring out how many calories we eat and how many we burn during our workouts. In fact, those five extra pounds that many runners drag around are proof-positive that many of us have trouble with simple addition and subtraction. We typically think we're eating fewer and burning more calories than we really are.
"In general, people will underestimate the calories in a typical meal by about 20 percent," says Brian Wansink, Ph.D., director of the Cornell Food and Brand Lab at Cornell University and author of *Mindless Eating* (Bantam Books, 2006). "But after a tough workout, you might underestimate how much you're eating by as much as 50 percent." His research group studied people training for a marathon and monitored them as they carbo-loaded in the lead-up to race day. The researchers found that on average the runners would guess that they had 1,500 calories on their plates when they actually had about 3,500 calories.
An extra 2,000 calories? That's almost a day's worth of food. Why are we so far off the mark? Turns out there are several factors, including our inability to accurately size up portions, external cues that cause us to overeat, and difficulties gauging our daily calorie budget. And any one of these factors--or some combination of them--can be enough to thwart our best efforts to drop extra pounds or maintain a goal weight. That said, losing a few pounds isn't rocket science. You simply need to take in fewer calories than you burn on most days of the week. With a few key strategies, you can accurately tally the number of calories you eat and burn daily. Learning how to size up your plate and your workouts will help you downsize your waistline.