Calories logging tips or how heatlhy food consumption is like helathy financial behaviour

whitej1234

TL;DR - How do you eyeball calorie intake of a meal in the long run?
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I repeatedly try to log calories (on this app and other tools) but miserably fail every time, mostly I think because I can't correctly "eyeball" the food I eat.

At the times I try to be meticulous and search for each ingredient and be very precise I find it too time consuming and I end up developing an unhealthy relationship with food (e.g. checking the app all the time, logging and thinking about every spoon of yogurt), and find it sustainable for a few weeks (weighing everything before) but then it just takes too much from my life and feels unsustainable in the long run.

I am trying to parallel it to budgeting, in which I consider myself quit good, and I realize that I am good with money budgeting because I have a hunch that something is too expensive, or should not be purchased now. I have this "inner feeling" that something is affordable or not given my budget, without logging in to my bank account or financial app and checking my status. I think a lot of it comes because the "cost" is a number that is right in-front of me,. I know how much I make I know how much something previously costed to me and I can evaluate if the particular item is worth it or not in general terms without summing this months expenses.

How do I achieve that in food? How do I just get a hunch for the "cost" in calories or nutrients without logging in somewhere and starting to search for an hour. It doesn't need to be very precise (lets say up to 50-100 cal range), but we all know that we can easily be off by 500 cal without logging in. I mean I can't figure out if the meal in-front of me is 300 cal, 500 cal or 1000 cal because a simple extra spoon of oil or a bit of sauce that is mayo based instead of yogurt can get you from "yes that salad looks like a good idea" into "for that I could have eaten a steak!", in no time.

So what are your tricks to make calorie counting sustainable in the long run without turning this into the center of your life?

AwesomeSquirrel

Weigh and look things up carefully, then observe how that food looks on your regular plate/cup/bowl. Eventually you start recognising the amount of space it takes up in your dishes. Trickier once you go somewhere else though 😊

Many people have a set list of basics/meals, logging diligently over time you learn your go-tos eventually. I’m a pretty adventurous cook but honestly there are maybe 25 proper meals in my regular rotation, 3 breakfasts (and I eat one of those 6 days per week) and 5 reoccurring snacks. Those together probably account for 95% of my food intake over time.

Getting a feel for whether a new item is expensive in terms of calories I’ve heard the suggestion that 100-150 kcal for 100g can be viewed as cheap/volume friendly food.

missysippy930

Food scale and USDA calorie site, for best accuracy. I use the best estimate when dining out and calorie counts aren’t available. A lot of restaurants do provide calorie counts. Pre planning meals daily. Once you’re used to using a food scale, it becomes second nature, and really doesn’t take much time. Soon it becomes a daily routine, like personal hygiene.

whitej1234

AwesomeSquirrel wrote: »

Weigh and look things up carefully, then observe how that food looks on your regular plate/cup/bowl. Eventually you start recognising the amount of space it takes up in your dishes. Trickier once you go somewhere else though 😊

Many people have a set list of basics/meals, logging diligently over time you learn your go-tos eventually. I’m a pretty adventurous cook but honestly there are maybe 25 proper meals in my regular rotation, 3 breakfasts (and I eat one of those 6 days per week) and 5 reoccurring snacks. Those together probably account for 95% of my food intake over time.

Getting a feel for whether a new item is expensive in terms of calories I’ve heard the suggestion that 100-150 kcal for 100g can be viewed as cheap/volume friendly food.

Thank you for understanding exactly what I mean... The last tip looks like a good rule of thumb. Thanks!

whitej1234

missysippy930 wrote: »

Food scale and USDA calorie site, for best accuracy. I use the best estimate when dining out and calorie counts aren’t available. A lot of restaurants do provide calorie counts. Pre planning meals daily. Once you’re used to using a food scale, it becomes second nature, and really doesn’t take much time. Soon it becomes a daily routine, like personal hygiene.

I get your point, and solute you for being able to sustain this for long. Realy! I just can't get into this routine, since so many things can get you off it. Was aiming for something different after failing to get into this routine many times before.

How do you "I use the best estimate when dining out and calorie counts aren’t available"? I used to just give a really high number (assuming I don't eat out too often and don't under eat because of it as a result). But if you had to "best estimate" what is your thought process?

NovusDies

whitej1234 wrote: »

missysippy930 wrote: »

Food scale and USDA calorie site, for best accuracy. I use the best estimate when dining out and calorie counts aren’t available. A lot of restaurants do provide calorie counts. Pre planning meals daily. Once you’re used to using a food scale, it becomes second nature, and really doesn’t take much time. Soon it becomes a daily routine, like personal hygiene.

I get your point, and solute you for being able to sustain this for long. Realy! I just can't get into this routine, since so many things can get you off it. Was aiming for something different after failing to get into this routine many times before.

How do you "I use the best estimate when dining out and calorie counts aren’t available"? I used to just give a really high number (assuming I don't eat out too often and don't under eat because of it as a result). But if you had to "best estimate" what is your thought process?

If most of my logging is accurate I do not have to worry about the occasional estimate as much. All calorie counting is based on averages and CO is originally an estimate and eventually an average so there is a margin of error. We do as much as we can to ensure progress with the hopes of it being the RoL target but progress is progress.

In other words I am trying to lose 1 pound per week. If I log as carefully as I can all week and my CO remains predictable and I eat a 1680 calorie restaurant meal but only log 1400 calories I will lose .92 pounds instead of 1 pound. That is good progress. It could easily be that the next week I will log a restaurant meal too high and lose 1.08 pounds. Weight loss for me has been 2.5 years and over 250 pounds. Rarely a week has gone by without at least one restaurant meal in it. Even if the nutrition information is posted online or on the menu that is no guarantee it is correct.

fstrickl

I love a good metaphor or similie - and others have given some good advice but I’m going to roll with the budget aspect (Lol, it won’t be perfect):

Veggies and fruit are pennies and nickels (cause you need a lot to add up to a dollar or your calorie goal). Pick them up and fill your pockets with them and you’ll be able to eat a lot without getting a lot of calories but you’ll end up with loads of nutrients and plenty of fibre.

Whole wheat and unrefined grains are maybe more like dimes (lol I just realized maybe you’re from a place where these coins aren’t used, dimes = 10 cents). They’ll bring you up to a full dollar relatively quickly, but they do have important nutrients in them.

Protein is tricky - I’d say beans and legumes are quarters. You can eat a good amount without lots of calories and feel pretty full. Chicken and fish may fall into this category as well. Red meat is maybe a loonie (now you know where I’m from)?

And because Canada has a twoonie I’m going to say healthy fats (nuts etc) are twoonies. Usually higher calorie, dense foods, decent nutrients but add up fast. No need to not collect twoonies in your piggy bank but just don’t put as many twoonies as you would nickels in your bank.

Junk food and highly processed food is Monopoly money. Fun to play with everyone now and then and comes in excessively high forms ($500 bills yo!) but it’s devoid of any real value and nutrients. Proceed with extreme caution. Don’t collect Monopoly money.

kimondo666

try weighting your food. You get skill at good guess at about 80% accuracy when you weighed enough single food, but it works only for less ingredient food. The worst to get are compound ones like stew or alike.

nanastaci2020

Have you considered prelogging? And then editing as needed? I often think of foods in terms of worth. Will I enjoy it enough to warrant spending the calories?

ALZ14

The first few weeks are more time and labor intensive, but then the app remembers your entries and they tend to come up at the top as you start to type them in. Also use the bar code scanner feature, that can save time.

chocolate_owl

I'm on team "weigh things until you're a pro at eyeballing 4 ounces of chicken," but that's a bit of a long game, and I'm not sure if you're getting discouraged before you reach that point. Maybe thinking of calories in different terms might be better for you?

Noom uses a green/yellow/red system that's entirely based on calorie density (i.e. veg is green, meat is yellow, nuts and oil are red). Weight Watchers points are a hybrid between calories and nutritional value. Both of these programs have free trials, so you could see if their system is less stressful for you and get a handle on how to "value" foods.

ahoy_m8

First, kudos for being aware of your strengths and figuring out how to apply your strengths to new situations. Very wise of you!

Totally understand about the guesstimating. The kitchen scale may sound like more work, but believe me, you won't believe how easy and freeing it is until you do it. You like eating spoonfuls of yogurt (or peanut butter or ice cream or anything else) right out of the container? No worries. Put the container on the scale. Tare. Eat what you want. Put container back on scale. Log the number. It saves clean up time (no messy measuring spoons or cups). Your baking will improve. It is soooo much easier that guessing (and being wrong and gaining weight).

Cash flow a great analogy. You know what you normally spend as a baseline (rent, groceries, insurance, etc). Likewise, you can have a few regular breakfast meals and lunch meals you rotate through and know the calorie "cost". I have greater variety at dinner, but I still try to compose my dinner meal to be ~400 cal (~600 for DH). Those calorie baselines let you know immediately if a food option is an extra. You can totally make extras fit, but you will know it's an extra. Like with cash flow, sometimes there are surprises. E.g. I ordered a salad at lunch thinking it was a lighter option, but once I accounted for the really generous cheese and pesto, it turned out to be a calorie bomb. Eh. It happens.

Identify your favorite regular meals as your baselines, and you will very quickly develop a caloric awareness similar to your financial awareness. You absolutely have what you need to succeed at this.

whitej1234

Great points everyone! I will try to implement. So interesting, and some of you got me rolling on the floor with laughter (Ahm @fstrickl ). Read all in detail, promise. Thanks!

AnnPT77

Very often, those who have good financial intuition have developed that gradually, by osmosis, over many years. (I'm someone who's very close to never needed a home budget, just did one for a few months the first time I got a mortgage, and for me everything's turned out fine, though I'm not even remotely close to wealthy in developed-world terms). My parents were *amazing* models, and I made it a point to learn along the way about things they never taught me (mortgages, investments). Some people don't have those advantages, and struggle with finances. They can develop the skills and even the intuition, but it's really, really hard to do that, later in life when already in a money crisis.

Eating and food aren't different. People who have that intuition develop it over many years, a drop at a time: Parents who were good models, a recognition of how important nutrition is, willingness to spend time to learn more about less familiar aspects. (My parents were good nutrition models, but my dad had a physical job so stayed slim despite eating amply, and my mom was obese.) I don't have good intuition for food, although it's been improving a lot since I started calorie counting 5 years ago at age 59. It can be hard to develop that intuition late in life, too, when already obese. (Don't I know it! )

I think of it (bear with me) a little like fingers and toes. They have remarkably similar musculature and skeletal structure. I can do lots of things with my fingers, complicated things, because I've trained them by using them since I was a baby. I can't even move each toe independently. 😆 People who were born without hands can use their toes pretty much as adeptly as I can use my fingers. I could learn to do that, but it would take a lot of effort, time and patience.

Same deal for eating, in a way.

Logging with MFP now takes me at most 10-15 minutes daily, which to me is a small price to pay for being at a healthy weight after 3 decades previously of obesity and its bad health and life-quality consequences. It was a learning process, though - time-consuming and annoying at first.

It's not just the act of logging, either, not just learning how to weigh foods efficiently without major extra fiddling while cooking, or how to efficiently use the meals and recipes features in MFP. It's also learning how to plan a day, how to plan ahead for restaurant meals (like checking the menu online and choosing in advance), how to fit in surprises/unknowns like eating at a potluck or someone else's house. Along the way, subtler skills develop automagically, like eyeballing food quantities, and guessing calories in foods someone else made. (I've even gotten better at mental arithmetic, and remember numbers.)

Some of those skills can be game-ified, for better progress. For example, when I put the peanut butter jar on the scale to dip out a blob, I guess the grams before I look at the negative number on the scale that tells me how many grams it really was. I'm getting really good at this game, for my common foods. (But still weighing the peanut butter, so no portion creep, since the only extra effort is reading/noting that number - mere seconds.)

Really long-term (I'm in year 4+ of maintenance), I do find that some more significant intuitions are developing. Some of this is by practice or habit, but I suspect some by physiology (rebalanced hunger/appetite hormones and that sort of thing). I feel full with less food than I used to. It's automatic to me to have a quick little protein snack if I'm feeling pretty hungry and a meal isn't coming up soon. I'm used to buying the calorie-efficient tasty things, and not buying the less helpful ones very often (some don't even taste that great anymore, frankly). Various things have gotten easier, more automatic.

Others have had some great ideas about how you can approximate some intuitive skills, more quickly, to get around the barriers you're encountering. That's excellent.

I'm not saying you need to log, count, or anything else you don't personally want to do, or that you personally find difficult or taxing. There are different many paths to a goal, including the goal of healthy weight. Taking advantage of our own individual preferences, strengths, and limitations, to get a personalized path, is a huge part of success IMO. It's not a time to "follow someone else's religion" about how to do it.

I just wanted to point out another parallel between food and finance: There are habits, skills and knowledge involved that take time to develop, whether we develop them consciously by study/practice, or by osmosis from things around us. If we didn't get those habits, skills, and knowledge starting early in life and building gradually, it's going to be an *investment* to develop them . . . it's just that it's an investment of time, effort, and discipline, rather than an investment of dollars.

Dogmom1978

So here’s the thing. You wouldn’t be here trying to lose weight if you were capable of judging how many calories something is by looking at it.

Yes, weighing and measuring takes time. Yes sometimes it’s even annoying. But what’s worse? Dying of a heart attack at a young age because I’m morbidly obese???

Only you can decide to make the effort to lose weight. Only you can decide that you need to weigh and measure and stop making excuses. Not trying to be overly harsh, but trying to find a loophole around weighing and measuring will just keep you perpetuating the same cycle.

Best of luck!

moonangel12

Honestly, I am NOT a routine person. I’m awful with schedules. Somehow MFP became a part of everyday life and here I am a year later and 30 lbs down! Whoop whoop! The first few weeks were laborious and frustrating... I slogged through and now logging is relatively quick and easy and I have learned a LOT about food estimating. It’s like any new skill, it takes time and effort to learn but once you do you can run off of muscle memory a bit more.

I use the term “body budget” quite often because it is like keeping a household budget! I do prelog if I know what’s ahead, especially for restaurants. I look up menus at home and weigh my options, then log what I am likely to order to see what the “damage” is (a favorite splurge meal at a local BBQ place is around 1000 calories... brisket, fries, slaw... YUM. a heavy hitter, but I can enjoy it guilt free knowing I planned ahead for it).

whitej1234

Wow you guys are awesome, thank you all for taking the time to share you experiences in detail, means a lot!

Just to clarify, I am not looking into cutting corners. I am a numbers person, I love to log learn and study things. I just came to realize this might be playing against me, since in other areas in life where I succeed to achieve my goals, I am not meticulously logging. And when I do, it leads to unhealthy places.
I mean if we continue with analogies, sorry for the side story, I took on a gardening hobby this summer (thank you Corona!), and realized that at first I was checking up on things a few times a day sitting there and staring at the seeds not sprouting for 5-7 days, despite all efforts. This is very discouraging making you drop it all. On the other hand going on a few days intense work where I barely had time to water the poor things and then discover that it all bloomed like hell while I focused on other aspects of my life (but still checking up daily and doing what needs to be done) is a great sense of achievement, without the burden. The number of days I had to wait for an effect is the same, but it was much easier to be patient when I was focused on something else.

What I am trying to say is that as we all heard before it's the consistency and patients are the key. It is much easier to be patient when you go on with your life without thinking twice about every food choice you make. And a daily routine is easier to sustain then logging every step and making decisions all the time. But I agree, maybe the way to get to those habits goes through over-supervision at first. I just never manage to get there in my previous attempts

Your suggestions on how to get to those habits are great! Thank you

Dogmom1978

Of course it’s easier to not think about food choices, but the overweight crowd will STAY overweight if we do that.

What I have found helpful to not think about food choices is boring and might not be your thing.

I have one of two breakfasts. One of two possible lunches. Dinner is usually one of like four options. Same snacks and one of three potential desserts.

kshama2001

whitej1234 wrote: »

Wow you guys are awesome, thank you all for taking the time to share you experiences in detail, means a lot!

Just to clarify, I am not looking into cutting corners. I am a numbers person, I love to log learn and study things. I just came to realize this might be playing against me, since in other areas in life where I succeed to achieve my goals, I am not meticulously logging. And when I do, it leads to unhealthy places.
I mean if we continue with analogies, sorry for the side story, I took on a gardening hobby this summer (thank you Corona!), and realized that at first I was checking up on things a few times a day sitting there and staring at the seeds not sprouting for 5-7 days, despite all efforts. This is very discouraging making you drop it all. On the other hand going on a few days intense work where I barely had time to water the poor things and then discover that it all bloomed like hell while I focused on other aspects of my life (but still checking up daily and doing what needs to be done) is a great sense of achievement, without the burden. The number of days I had to wait for an effect is the same, but it was much easier to be patient when I was focused on something else.

What I am trying to say is that as we all heard before it's the consistency and patients are the key. It is much easier to be patient when you go on with your life without thinking twice about every food choice you make. And a daily routine is easier to sustain then logging every step and making decisions all the time. But I agree, maybe the way to get to those habits goes through over-supervision at first. I just never manage to get there in my previous attempts

Your suggestions on how to get to those habits are great! Thank you

Come join the Garden Thread! https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10708195/garden-thread

whitej1234

kshama2001 wrote: »

Come join the Garden Thread! https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10708195/garden-thread

You guys are serious professionals!