I Ate How Many Calories?

For the last couple of years I've taken over the task of weekly menu planning and grocery shopping. In theory this should allow me to better control the food that enters the house and what/how meals are prepared. In theory I should be able to control the family calorie intake to some degree.

Theory works better than practice. Last night I planned baby-back ribs and ate 4 - 2 rib sections; 8 ribs in all. After eating I added up what I ate and posted it to TWYE. Since I'm just starting there, I wanted to see how good their crowd-sourced calorie counts were. So I did a little estimating on 8 ribs - gack over 1000 calories when the BBQ sauce was included!. That put me over the 2500 mark for the day.

It also got me thinking about how I've been going about this meal planning process. I make out a menu, shop, make, eat and only then calculate the calories. Seems backwards now that I think about it.

So starting today I'll "pre-plan" my calorie intake as much as possible. If I don't know how many calories something has in it, I'll find out before I plan/make/eat it. I don't want to be a slave to calorie counting but I do need to have some idea of how much something has in it before I eat it. Especially if I'm going to eat something with a lot of calories in it. That way I can do some creative planning on how to eat for the day.