Have you ever found yourself debating whether or not to buy “just one” bag of chips? Or grab a little candy bar for the road? Consider this: What if the nutritional labels on your favorite foods spelled out exactly the amount of activity you would have to engage in to burn those calories? It might change your shopping and snacking habits.

We all know we’re supposed to reduce our calorie intake and increase our physical activity to lose weight—so why is it that, as a country, we’re still getting fatter? Maybe it’s because we have no idea what a calorie really represents. Despite the ubiquitous promotion of weight-loss campaigns and diets, the concept of a calorie remains somewhat nebulous. What if the Food and Drug Administration required restaurants and food manufacturers to put an “exercise equivalent” on menus and food labels? Instead of calories, the labels would tell us how long we’d have to exercise to burn off what we were about to eat.

Just think about the implications. Knowing that we have to walk for fourteen hours, roughly forty-three miles, in order to burn off one pound of fat would certainly increase the likelihood of our skipping dessert. After all, it’s much easier to imagine passing up a day of overeating ice cream, chips, and fried chicken than it is to see oneself walking forty-three miles. That’s why I decided to write this book. The idea is to learn the costs of what you’re eating. My goal is not to sit here and tell you which foods you should or shouldn’t be eating. Of course some carbohydrates (such as whole grains, fruits, and vegetables) and some fats (such as unsaturated as opposed to saturated) are better than others. And yes, eating protein can you help control cravings and keep you feeling full. But in the end, long-term weight control is about energy regulation or how many calories you consume as opposed to how many you burn.

Sometimes I’m asked what my diet philosophy is—low carb, low fat, diet or no diet, glycemic index, or calorie counting. The answer is that my philosophy doesn’t matter much, because it’s really about what works for each individual behaviorally. What are you willing to do for the rest of your life? This book can help you make better choices. So whether you’re on a low- or a high-carb diet, this book can help you recognize the better calorie deals—or Calorie Bargains. It will also help you see those that are worse—or Calorie Rip-Offs. But again, these are a matter of individual preference. You might look at a big, fat, juicy steak and say, “Wow, this is really worth the ten hours of walking it will take to burn it off,” while someone else might say, “Forget it. The chicken breast will fi ll me up just as well.”

Read on and use this book as a fun and entertaining reference that can make you much more aware of the costs and benefits of the foods you eat. And the next time you’re faced with a box of Double Stuf Oreos, you’ll have a real-life, quantifiable basis for deciding whether or not to stuff one more cookie down your throat. You may think that this kind of information will “ruin” the pleasure you take in eating, but it’s quite the contrary. Although knowing the “true value” of your food choices may be uncomfortable at first, choosing your personal Calorie Bargains will actually change the way you feel about food and make what you do eat more, not less, enjoyable.

Think of it this way: What if you went to a foreign country and walked into a furniture store. You love what you see, but everything is priced in a foreign currency— “dowleys.” The price tag on the couch you adore reads 5 million dowleys—what does that mean? What is the price of the couch?

You really don’t have any idea, do you? It could be $500, or could be $5,000, or even $15,000. Now you might be able to guess that based on the quality it is within a certain range, but that would be a pretty wide range. If you found out the couch was only $500, you’d be excited and you’d definitely buy it. But if, on the other hand, it was $15,000 and out of your budget, you would probably pass it up because it just wasn’t affordable.

To a certain degree, that’s what it’s like when you’re trying to understand what a calorie means. And once you can relate to a calorie on your own terms, you’ll acquire a certain level of clarity about your own eating and activity habits. That’s not to say that all of a sudden you’re going to magically lose weight, but you will develop a certain level of consciousness and intuitiveness that will help you control your weight.

The COUNT DOWN method is effective because the information is simple and accessible. You can start by looking for a few specific foods, and I guarantee that you will immediately want to know more. Just how much yoga does it take to burn fifteen potato chips (about an ounce)? And how long do you need to swim if you drink a can of Coke? The statistics are not only tools that will help you to improve your health; they’re also fun, surprising, and interesting in their presentation.

COUNT DOWN provides the fast, accessible, simple information that I know you’re hungry for. It cuts through the jargon of rigid diet prescriptions and pedantic health instructions and lets you see for yourself just how much damage nibbling and snacking can do when you choose calorie-packed foods. It will also alert you to the benefits of activity. You will quickly be able to see the differences in energy needed to do yoga versus walking or running. And it vividly illustrates the fact that you need calories to keep moving.

How COUNT DOWN Works

The last thing I want you to do is sit there and start counting every calorie you’ve eaten for the day and then calculate how many hours of walking, biking, running, or swimming you would have to do to burn them off. Wow! That would be a huge mistake, because I’ll show you how to figure out your basic calorie budget—the number of calories you can eat each day without gaining weight. The problem begins when you go over your budget and begin to stockpile energy, which then turns into fat.

Once you’ve calculated your daily calorie budget, I will teach you how to use exercise equivalents to help you lose weight—forever. How can I make such a claim? The idea behind COUNT DOWN is to first get you thinking about what you are eating, because being a conscious eater is half the battle. Then, once you become more aware of the costs and benefits of eating, you will learn about making substitutions—the right ones. You will notice that things start to click—you will have an “aha” moment when you realize, finally, what weight control is all about. But don’t be too hard on yourself for not getting it sooner. More than likely, you were never really taught the value of a calorie in the first place.