Here's a practical idea for how to do some counting, but not of calories, that helped get me to some of my starting weight loss goals without having to think about it too much.

If you want to try what I tried, and what worked for me to shed more than 70 pounds, it might be helpful to read up on primal/paleo/caveman diets, or on South Beach, or on Atkins. None of that's required, though, and I'll tell you what you need below.

There are three values you need to know: 0, 1, and 10. Pretend there are no numbers in between for now.

As you go about your day making food choices, "score" mentally in the following way:

• Meat, fish, eggs, milk, cream, natural fats (butter, olive oil, coconut oil), cheeses, seeds, nuts, berries, and vegetables are easy. Almost irrespective of quantity, they count as a zero.
• Sugar free drinks -- coffee (black or with cream), iced tea, water (with lemon? Sure!), and similar -- count as a zero.
• If your personal cosmology allows it, a single glass of wine a day counts as a zero. Drinks with artificial sweeteners and zero calories also count as a zero.
• Small amounts of sweet things count a little bit more. That might include a piece of fruit, a couple teaspoons of honey in your tea or on your yogurt, or a small amount of dark chocolate. They count as a one.
• Beans -- anyone else love Mexican food? -- count as a one. A lot of breading on your fried meats or fried cheeses (Yum!) count as a one, too.
• A serving of just about everything else -- processed foods, starchy foods like bread, rice and potatoes, desserts made with sugar or flour, drinks made with sugar like soda or juice drinks or fancy coffee drinks -- counts as a 10. It's not cheating. It just counts more.

The scoring is super simple, and you can do it a couple ways to count up how you do each day. I like to keep a running tally in my head throughout the day. If you're doing well, it provides some positive reinforcement, but if you're not doing quite as well as you'd like, it gives you an implied goal for your next set of food choices. (The day isn't a wash. Just keep trying!) The real power comes from looking (proudly) at yourself in the mirror each night as you brush your teeth and thinking about your score. Here's an example:

• If you eat bacon and eggs, and drink black coffee for breakfast, as I tend to do quite a few days, this becomes very easy. Zero.
• If you eat out for lunch, as I occasionally do, and get the typical restaurant salad with some meat, cheese, boiled eggs, veggies, and a dressing like a vinaigrette, and skip the accompanying croutons or roll, again, that's another zero. (Make it easy on yourself and get an unsweetened iced tea or water with lemon.)
• A snack after getting home might consist of some walnuts (zero!) and a piece of fruit (one!).
• A dinner of a nice steak, some veggies, and a glass of wine counts as a zero again! Some berries with some whipped heavy cream -- maybe with a tiny bit of honey and some vanilla -- and you're still at zero. Maybe you splurged and had a square or two of dark chocolate. Maybe that's a one, or a couple ones.

How did you do?

Bacon+eggs+coffee = 0
Salad + Iced Tea = 0
Nuts + Fruit = 1
Steak + Veggies + Wine = 0
Dessert = 0
2nd Dessert = 1

That's a 2 for the whole day. But I said we only had to worry about 0, 1, and 10, right? If you're the kind of person who likes to do rounding, 2 is close enough to 0 that today basically didn't count against you in any way, and probably helped you lose some weight.

Here's is the hard part, which isn't really very hard. Decide "how high" you're allowed to go based on how aggressively you want to lose weight.

• If you have a good metabolism, exercise a reasonable amount, or just want to maintain your current weight, it might be okay to get as high as 10 every day. That might actually mean dessert every day, or it might mean a few small treats throughout the day.
• If you're trying to safely drop a lot of weight, but quickly, maybe you don't want to exceed a single 10 day for an entire week, or maybe you want to save that 10 for day later on during the weekend when you know you'll be having a nice dinner out and will want to share (or not) a dessert.
• If you're recovering from a binge of some kind -- say, you had your own dessert and shared someone else's! -- maybe you want to get back on the horse and stay below 10 until you get some validation from your bathroom scale.
• If your high school reunion/wedding/modeling gig is coming up, do what you have to do. Good luck.

Only make it a numbers game if it's fun for you.

(Did you figure out that this is where I got the idea for the name for my blog? Good show!)