Title: "To Count or Not To Count: The Chronicles of Calorie Counting” It’s 2022 and if you’re not counting every calorie that is entering into that sacred temple of yours (read: your body), let me break it to you darling, you’re living in the prehistoric age! Being in the "enlightened" era, how can you possibly get away without having the absolute scientifically accurate data on the number of calories you are consuming, burning, dreaming about, or even eyeballing at? With your sole purpose in life being to rack up every tidbit of information on food, we are going to provide the best advice on how to go deeper down the rabbit hole of calorie-counting. 1. **Calorie Converter:** As a start, transform your mind into a human-to-food calorie converter. Who needs fun and frivolous stuff like art, neuroscience or social interaction when you can convert every sight into a calorie count? See your child’s crayon? 10 calories. Watch a bird fly by? That's a solid 50 at least. The goal here is to turn everything you observe into a mystical calorie number, whether it makes sense or not. 2. **Calorie-centric Conversations:** Secondly, shape your conversation skills so that calories invade every discussion. Meeting a cousin after years? Discuss how many calories are lodged in the steak they’ve been gobbling. Better yet, judge whoever’s not calorie-counting! Sharing the misery is half the fun, after all. 3. **Move-over Mozart:** Did you know music can be turned into a calorie-centric obsession too? Forget Bach and Beethoven, write songs and sonnets on calories—how they desert you, betray you, return back only to desert you again. Such is the tragic love story of man and calories. 4. **The Modern Scale Straitjacket:** Be eager to befriend your scale. You and your scale should be so close that you spend more time with it than your family. Let the scale be the first one to wish you good morning and the last one to say goodnight. Your life should be a perpetual state of before and after weighing. 5. **Embrace the Exhaustion:** Lastly, the constant state of fear, anxiety, and exhaustion that comes with this journey is totally normal! So say goodbye to any sense of spontaneity, fun, or enjoyment because who needs that when you can count calories? Well, there you have it—a slightly over-the-top, tongue-in-chearguide about the satirical leanings of calorie-counting. If there's just one thing you walk away with (preferably a brisk walk for 20 minutes to burn off 90 calories), it's this: we need to say ta-ta to the guilt and obsession attached to calorie-counting and learn to enjoy life a little. Be mindful, but not obsessive. Run over for fun, not because you devoured that extra slice of pizza. Crave a brownie? Why not? After all, as the saying goes, "All you need is love"…and maybe a brownie now and then.