Eating an extra couple hundred calories should never be a big deal, but it certainly feels that way to many out there.
When you’re counting calories, it’s easy to overthink things. If you want to eat 2000 calories but end up at 2200 calories, it’s easy to stress about it.
There are a lot of layers to why you shouldn’t stress about a few hundred extra calories, but let’s tackle it at face value. Let’s pretend you ate a donut today and it put you over your goal by 200 calories, which bums you out. Before anyone yells at me that donuts are more than 200 calories, a glazed Krispy Kreme donut is 200 calories. Look it up.
Now on the flip side, let’s say you hit your 2000 calorie goal perfectly. But it was also a crazy day at work which had you moving around a ton, leading to an extra 4000 steps. We’ll estimate and say that burned about 200 extra calories for the day.
Just as easily as you went over your goal by 200 calories one day, you were under your goal by 200 calories another day. One situation stressed you out, and the other you probably didn’t even realize.
What’s the point here?
Don’t stress about hitting your calories perfectly. Perfection in nutrition doesn’t exist.
There are SO many factors at play that affect how many calories you are burning. On any given day, you may very well burn a few hundred calories more or less.
So don’t stress if you eat a few hundred calories more or less.
It will all balance out, I promise.
