A 540-calorie Big Mac? NY chains post calorie info (AP)

AP - Customers at big fast-food chains in New York City are finally facing the facts about their meal choices. And for some, the truth may be hard to swallow - like 1,130 calories for buy pure l-ornithine hydrochloride supplement Big Mac, medium fries and a medium soda.

It is very well known that in order to lose weight, you must burn more calories than you consume. So how many calories do you consume each day? How do you know how many? Do you simply guesstimate? If so, then that is simply not adequate. When you take the first step to lose weight, you must get a handle on your eating, period. It is impossible for most people to keep track of all this in their head. Therefore you must have a journal of what you eat. One of the earliest things I did was create an Excel spreadsheet that I used to track what I ate on a daily basis. Why would I do this? First, I needed to get an idea of how much I was eating currently. Without knowing, I had no basis to cut calories. But once I started, I learned quickly how much I ate. I had always thought I was doing an okay job, but seeing the daily caloric values, I was shocked how much calories I consumed each day. On the flipside, I was able to see where I could cut back without adversely affecting my health.

Now that you decided to keep a log, how do you go about doing it? I know of people who use a notebook, and they write down what they ate and kept track that way. Others bought software that has huge databases of all foods - including meals from popular restaurants. You simply select what you ate, and the program calculates not only your calories, some programs even provide you nutritional information as well. There are web-based tools that do the same. I simply decided to use a spreadsheet.

Using the food labels, I would enter what I ate, how much calories it contained, and since I wanted to track protein, I entered the grams of protein contained. Using Excel's auto sum feature, I would total the amount of calories and protein. Whenever I ate at a restaurant, I used http://www.dietfacts.com/ It contains entrees for many, many restaurants. In the, rare, cases I could not find the restaurant, I used this rule of thumb to estimate my calories.

Carbohydrates and proteins have 4 calories per gram; fats have nine calories per gram. I simply made rough estimates and since this situation did not happen enough, I was not overly concerned. Once I started tracking, I discovered this was an excellent accountability tool. Because I was very strict about putting everything I ate, I always had the log in the back of my mind. I would hesitate to sneak, because I had to place it in my log and see the daily caloric intake rise.

I did allow myself once a week to enjoy my favorite foods - I called it my "free day", a day I did not track what I ate. You know, in spite of eating very liberally on my free day, and I mean extremely liberally, I still ended up losing six pounds a week. Because I ramped my water consumption to about 96 to 120 ounces a day, it clearly was not water weight I was losing. As time progressed, I used this log to also track my weight, and eventually I would track my waist size, body fat composition, my basal metabolic rate, and my estimated calories I burned from my physical training.

Tracking what I eat was instrumental in my weight loss, and my spreadsheet remains a valuable tool to this day. Take control over your weight - begin by taking control of your eating. You will be surprised and pleased by the outcome!

A runaway weight loss success story. Lost over 80 pounds in four months (36 of those pounds in just six weeks)- went from 240 to 160, kept all of it off for nearly a year, so far. I am sharing with others my research that led to my success so they too may control their weight.

Because I monitored so carefully how much I ate, I lost 80 pounds in four months, and 36 of those pounds in just six weeks. Find out more about my successful story at: http://www.squidoo.com/fromobesetoathletic/