The Donut Scale
So I'm looking around the web trying to figure out how many calories per day I need to eat less than to lose weight.
You'd think we'd have a pretty good idea of this by now, but I guess it's different for everyone.
I've found estimates that differ by over 1000 calories. That's 5 Tim Hortons Maple Dip Donuts difference, per day, between what one site estimates I can eat and what another one estimates.
And they're all wrong.
I've tracked what I eat and how many calories are in it fairly carefully at various times in my life, just to estimate this for myself, and it's around 800 calories lower than the lowest estimate (or 4 donuts lower).
I use donuts as a unit of measure because, well, I like donuts, and they're a prety easy metric to think in terms of. A Maple Dip Donut is 210 calories. The reason I use a Maple Dip as an estimate is that according to the Tim Hortons Nutritional Information chart, it's the lowest calorie donut Tim Hortons sells (tied with the other dip donuts).
A Starbucks Grande White Chocolate Frappucino is 3 donuts by this scale, a large movie theater popcorn is 8 donuts, and a Big Mac is 2.5 donuts.
I realize there's a lot more to eating healthy than counting calories.. but when it comes to weight, calories matter. It takes 42 baby carrots to equal 1 donut.