Calories not adding up right..?

jacquelinezng151

Hey everyone!

I'm not too familiar with the whole tracking calories/macros so I'm super confused at what I found today. If you look at my food diary for jan 12th, it looks like I'm eating wayyyy too little (calorie wise) but I feel completely full after each meal... does it really look like I'm eating that little or am I just tracking it wrong? Btw I'm eating fewer calories to begin with cuz I'm trying to loose a couple of pounds.

utahmomof10

It appears your diary is not public. If you can make it public, then people will be able to look at it and try to help.

jacquelinezng151

Haha thanks for letting me know! Just made it public

CafeRacer808

Looking at your diary, it appears that you're using cups (volume) to measure your food. If I'm right about that, that's a very inaccurate way of logging your food and it likely means you're consuming more calories than you think you are. You should be weighing everything you eat, preferably in grams because it's more accurate than ounces. That includes any cooking oils you may use. Other liquids can be measured and logged by volume but anything solid should be weighed.

utahmomof10

You are definitely eating a large volume of foods with a nice variety - heavy on the veggies. It looks good. It makes sense that you are quite full after meals. If I may ask, are you hungry again within a couple of hours? I find that when I'm eating tons of veggies and not enough protein and healthy fats, I feel very full after the meal, but get hungry again pretty quickly. My personal recommendation would be to add more protein and healthy fats. You can do it with as simple a tweak as to eat 2 eggs at breakfast and a larger portion of steak at dinner. It is recommended that a woman get about 0.8 grams of protein per pound of body weight (and women who lift weights should be closer to 1 gram per pound). Your protein level is quite low in my opinion.

Anyway, that's just what I am seeing and would suggest.

maybe1pe

I agree with @utahmomof10 your protein does seem a little low so I would try getting more of that and healthy fats. I would also recommend weighing your food instead of using measuring cups if you don't already weigh it. I can pack a lot of stuff into a cup. But weighing your food might show that you are actually eating more than you think you are. but 950 calories is quite low. if you don't have much to weigh you really shouldn't aim to lose more the .5lbs a week and really should be eating a minimum of 1200 calories.

But I would definitely start with properly weighing your food and see if that changes the numbers at all.

trigden1991

Without weighing your food with a scale, no one has any idea how much you are actually eating.

lemurcat12

You could be eating more than you are logging. For example:

Breakfast: one egg (the estimate is fine, I think); melon (cups are an inaccurate way to measure melon and is it really in balls? how many of those would fit in a cup?); bread -- you shouldn't use a generic entry, use the bread you have, it varies a lot. (I would not find this breakfast particularly filling but people vary a lot on what works for them for breakfast.)

Lunch: egg, fine; greens, fine*; corn -- again, not the most accurate way to measure; carrots, how do you get .15 of a cup, although it probably doesn't make that much difference?; feta - 50 g (good, but why is this in grams, is it actually measured?); dressing, fine (assuming you actually measured it out carefully); onions, fine.

BUT, if you want more calories and more protein, this is a good opportunity. Add some more protein (even another egg). Add more corn. Add nuts or olives or seeds. You can also do a homemade dressing with olive oil or greek yogurt that will be healthful (the Ken's is fine, not slamming it) and have more calories. You could add a bit more cheese or eat cottage cheese or yogurt on the side.

Dinner: similar to lunch, same comments. Other comments -- why are you doing these lite dressings if you are under calories? 3 oz of steak -- how did you measure it? 3 oz cooked is more than 3 oz raw and entries are usually for raw unless they say otherwise (and I'm not sure that this is a good entry, use package or USDA). How are you measuring the sweet potato? That seems like a small amount (50 g?), if it's accurate why not have more?

Apples vary in size a lot, hard to say what a medium one is.

On this day protein is pretty low, but that's largely because calories are so low. Fat is quite low too, and adding a bit more fat/not going for low fat everything is a good way to get the calories up. That said, I don't think this should be such a terribly filling day, so I wonder if your logging is a bit off (tightening it up would help) or you are just super enthusiastic about starting out so that's making you not feel hungry, which happens.

*By "fine" I don't mean the food choice, which I am not commenting on, but that the measurement is unlikely to be off enough to matter given the low calorie of the item or it being pretty easy to estimate.

Francl27

Honestly, some days I'm just not hungry, so it can happen.

But some of your entries are questionable... most slices of whole wheat bread are closer to 120 calories than 70, for example. And 50g of feta is 170 calories or something... not 23.

Your steak entry - is it cooked, raw? That can be 100 calories off easily.

So yeah, you probably ate more than you think. It's not really a huge deal as long as you're aware of it and you're still losing.