Diet shortcut - Measure one thing only: The Pareto Principle

Rewards of weighing less are good looks, better health, knees that stop hurting, and more.  But, having to measure all those calories is off-putting.  Eliminating all  my favorite food from the menu is unappealing.

Plan B will work for many of us.  It's the famous Pareto principle:  You get about 80% of the benefits from 20% of the effort in ust about everything you ever try.  This works for diet.

Say you gain 10 lbs a year and start to look like a blimp and have lower energy.
The math is simple:  One pound of weight gain is just about exactly 3500 calories eaten and stored.
Ten pounds a year translates to eating 100 calories a day too much. 
(The math:  3500 calories x 10 lbs in a year divided by 365 days in a year = 95.9)
CUTTING ONE HUNDRED CALORIES A DAY FROM MY DIET WILL STOP THE BLOAT AND CHANGE MY WEIGHT BY 10 POUNDS A YEAR.
Nothing else has to be counted.  No special foods have to be eaten.

Where is the low hanging fruit to pluck?
It will be one high-calorie treatsie per day.  Maybe two.
Here are a couple examples:

I'd have a few cups of coffee every day with whipping cream and sugar.  My fix was to just have the one cup a day with the works and the rest black, or even just with milk and half the sugar.  The black coffee is zero by itself.  The enriched cup was over 80 calories per shot.

Making supper, I got in the habit of taking a tiny sip of Drambuie every so often.  Drinking alcohol is like drinking fat.  It's high energy.  I weighed the bottle before and after dinner prep and discovered

about 120 calories were sneaking into my diet in those repeated sips.  My fix was to cut the Drambuie and if I want a ddrink, I'll sip a couple ounces of red wine while preparing supper.  The wine has almost one fifth the calorie energy of the Drambuie.

Bacon with liquid fat

Another huge fix is choosing when to use butter or bacon fat in preparing a meal.  Drained bacon has less than half the fat of a couple uncooked slices.  The left over bacon fat usually goes into frying the eggs or the hash browns.  If you decide to fry the egg on a no-stick pan or with a tiny dab of butter, you are ahead about 100 calories each time.   The same goes with frying mushrooms.  I always loved butter-fried mushrooms but can hardly tell the difference from mushrooms fried in a good no stick pan with liberal salting on top.  And the mushrooms have more shape and character.

Bacon that is drained

One or two low hanging fruit fixes, made a habit, can change your weight 10 lbs per year.  No other action or counting needed.  Thank you Pareto.

https://metanoodle.blogspot.com/2019/08/diet-shortcut-measure-one-thing-only.html

https://metanoodle.blogspot.com/2019/08/calorie-cheat-sheet-for-your-diet.html

https://metanoodle.blogspot.com/2019/08/why-does-my-weight-go-up-and-down-when.html

https://metanoodle.blogspot.com/2016/01/losing-weight-successfully-you-manage.html