To minimise stress on my poor joints I am on the weight loss and then maintenance treadmill. I’m a firm believer in the simple maths approach: if one puts in more than one uses, one gains weight. If one uses more than one eats, hurray!

What I’ve discovered is the other things we can be taking for medical conditions have calories! They add up!

Knowing your Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR) is important. This is how much energy you burn just being alive: keeping your heart pumping, breathing, digesting food, blinking. The actual formula is quite complicated so it is handy that MyDr.com.au has a handy calculator. My BMR is around 1500 depending on the scales on any given day. I’m very jealous of the person on Twitter who has one of around 1200 – she is skinnier than me!

Setting myself a calories IN target of 1200 a day and using a minimum of 1500 OUT just being alive means the scales will gradually tip in my favour. I hope. Swimming a kilometre will earn me either a nice downward movement on the scales OR an ice-cream. Decisions, decisions.

Guilty Pleasure – Magnum – a meal on a stick

I am religiously (some might say overly religiously) recording all my food. For the first time in my life I am actually weighing portions. I figured I’d keep track of all the other “stuff” I am taking (on doctor’s advice).  I scanned the barcode of  my Panadol Osteo and hello, a Panadol Osteo tablet has ten calories according to one source. I tried to substantiate this from another source and found one that suggests 0.3 calories per tablet. That sounds more realistic, but I don’t know for sure. Ten did seem a lot of calories for a tablet, but on the basis it appeared to have some calories I started looking at the other food supplements I’m taking.

• Metamucil – 20 calories per rounded teaspoon
• Yakult – 43 calories per bottle
• Inner Health Plus – 1 calorie
• Red Krill Oil capsule – 10 calories

Don’t know about my Swisse Women’s Ultivite or the Ostelin Vitamin D capsule. I’m hoping no calories!

So if I have a day when I take six Panadol Osteo, the recommended three serves of Metamucil and the other stuff, I could chew through 174 calories before I’ve eaten any actual FOOD! Of course, if the calories per painkiller is only 0.3, I’ve just saved 58 calories! Do antibiotics have any calories, I wonder? These Augmentin Duo are big tablets!

1200 calories is not a lot of food, so I like to get every gram! Losing nearly 200 to “stuff” is a worry! I’m seriously considering allowing myself 1300 calories a day to allow for the calories in the supplements.

If you think ten calories is a lot for a Krill Oil capsule, think about the fact a Magnum Almond ice-cream is 329 calories: a meal on a stick, to be sure (my breakfast is 339 calories by comparison).

I can’t say I feel full after a Yakult, some Metamucil and a Red Krill oil capsule! However they can tip my calorie graph into the red and I hate that! I like it all to be a nice green colour under the line.

I’m sure those Vitamin C VitaGummies I got for the kids have some calories too, but I don’t eat them and the kids burn off calories running around (not that Mr-17-Tomorrow burns off much glued to the xBox).

All these things should have the calorie value on the packet, even if only to confirm there are zero calories. Those of us who are the age of fine wine have a slower metabolism and therefore every damn calorie counts.

If you are being super strict about your calories, watch those things you are ingesting that you don’t think of as food.