Being obsessive over food labels and calories?

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JiminsJamsXo
JiminsJamsXo Posts: 13 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
I’m not sure if obsessive is the right word for this so correct me if I’m wrong.
It’s my second day of trying to eat better and I don’t know if this is just because I’m new but I’m overly obsessed with how many calories is in what and whether or not something has a label. If it doesn’t have a label, I won’t eat it.
My mom tried to prep some lunches for me (it was mostly seasoned vegetables) and I had a tiny panic attack because none of it has a label so there’s no way to know how many calories it contains exactly. I have this weird worry that if I don’t count every single calorie that I consume, I won’t lose any weight. Is this normal?

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  • JiminsJamsXo
    JiminsJamsXo Posts: 13 Member
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    shadow2soul wrote: »
    I think you might be over thinking things here.

    Vegetables even though they don’t have a label do have standard nutrition information that easily available. All you would have needed to know was the vegetables and if any oil or butter was used to cook them. That information alone can get you a rough estimate on the nutrition information.

    I do have a really bad habit of overthinking things >_> Thank you for the reply though! 🥰😊
  • JiminsJamsXo
    JiminsJamsXo Posts: 13 Member
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    Cahgetsfit wrote: »
    it's easy to get a bit obsessed when you start off on this journey and using MFP.

    But try not to let it get in the way of things and do not panic about it!!

    don't worry if something doens't have a label. vegetables - weigh the vegetable and use the USDA entry.

    the important thing is the weighing the food - the calories may or may not be 100% correct anyway.

    Also, sometimes we can't weigh stuff because we go out - so choose an entry in the database that is more or less what you ate - like for example, when i have work functions and they give us sandwiches, I choose the 7-11 sandwich options in the database and hope it's roughly the same! Like I'll search "ham and cheese sandwich 7-11" and whatever it gives me is a rough guesstimate.

    Consistency is the key. and not freaking out :)

    Ohhh I see! Thank you for your help 😊💝

  • Cahgetsfit
    Cahgetsfit Posts: 1,912 Member
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    Good luck with your journey!
  • 1BlueAurora
    1BlueAurora Posts: 439 Member
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    I think you're not obsessing, exactly, but just trying to learn a lot of info in two days. Buy yourself a food scale and weigh your food. Use the MFP database - there's a search function and it'll give you the calorie estimate. For instance, a boiled egg is about 75 calories. A big ol' serving of vegetables will be on the low side, so you could enter either the measured amount (1 cup of carrots) or the weight (4 ounces of carrots). Really, don't worry about this. Eat the food!! There's no reason to end up with a loss of energy or losing your hair from undereating. Make sure you're eating no less than the calorie goal MFP gives you when you sign in, log your intake, and be on your way.
  • RelCanonical
    RelCanonical Posts: 3,882 Member
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    I can understand the feeling of being obsessive over it, especially at the beginning. It's a lot to learn. The advice I can offer on that is that it's okay to not be perfect at it, especially since it'll never be perfect even after you've learned the bulk of it. Even things with labels get overfilled and rounded down. I would honestly trust the vegetables and eggs and whatnot more because they're not a recipe, so you can use the usda database to get a good idea of what their calories are.
  • puffbrat
    puffbrat Posts: 2,806 Member
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    As others have said, it is easy to get to that point of obsessing, especially in the beginning. As you do this longer, you will become more familiar with what a serving size looks like and guesstimating calories for at least simple things like seasoned vegetables. Weighing your food is the best method, you can still guesstimate based on volume and find reasonable entries in the database. If an entry in the database feels wrong to you (calories too high or low), question it and look at other entries for that item or do a Google search.
  • cwolfman13
    cwolfman13 Posts: 41,874 Member
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    Don't let perfect be the enemy of good or good enough. None of this is some kind of exact science. It's a lot of estimation...you're never going to be able to count every exact calorie unless you send every single thing you eat into a lab.
  • kshama2001
    kshama2001 Posts: 27,966 Member
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    Most of what I eat does not have a label :)

    I have a food scale and the USDA database.

    Unfortunately, the "verified" green check marks in the MFP database are used for both user-created entries and admin-created entries that MFP pulled from the USDA database. To find admin entries for whole foods, I get the syntax from the USDA database and paste that into MFP.
  • MikePTY
    MikePTY Posts: 3,814 Member
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    With the exception of getting everything you eat measured for you in a lab, there's no way to know exactly how many calories are in everything we are eating. In fact, the FDA permits food labeling to be off by as much as 20%. So that label that says 200 calories could have as little as 160 or as much as 240. In fact, eating simple whole foods that don't have labels but standard nutritional values and weighing them (meats, seafood, fruits, vegetables, etc) is at least as accurate if not more than using food with nutritional labels. Even your calorie goal is just and estimate. It's based on an approximate energy expenditure for someone with your stats and lifestyle, while individually you could be burning more or less.

    We all just try to do the best we can in this approximation game. But your calorie goal automatically has some leeway in it. Even if maybe you are eating a bit more than you think, you will still be at a deficit and losing weight, albeit a bit slower than your target. The best thing to do is just give it some time to see if what you are doing is working for you, and then when you have enough results to draw a conclusion, make adjustments as needed. Almost nobody gets this exactly right from day one.

    I've been able to lose almost 25 pounds and I eat a lunch delivered for me daily from a woman who has a lunch delivery service. There are no calorie or serving size information. I estimate, sometimes with the help of a food scale, sometimes not, my calories based on whats in the lunches. I do this for other meals I have at restaurants with no information. Even though this is nowhere close to an exact method, it has worked well for me so far. That doesn't mean the same will automatically work for you, but just try to do the best your situation allows you to, and go from there. Above all out, don't let it stress you out. You are here, and you are trying, and so you've already got a big part of the formula for success accomplished.

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