i want to be honest about my food intake but...

Log everything, nothing must be left unlogged LOL, but seriously the closer you keep track of your morsels the easier losing weight will be. It is a good habit to form and pretty soon you will do it without thinking! ~Corina

pardon my ignorance, but what does that stand for?

quoted for truth.

or quails fear trespassing.

could be either here.

Quit F-ing Talking. till someone told me other wise, then I didn't appreciate it as much.
I'll stick w/mine. Funnier.

if you really want this to work to its fullest potential...YES.

be accountable for EVERYTHING you take in.

everything.







srsly...everything.

But not everything I take in has calories...

Depends on what you are trying to accomplish. If your logging is off by the same amount in proportion to your overall intake (IOW what you log is always like 85% of your calories) then you can still find a consistent intake and keep a consistent deficit. But ignoring things like condiments (which can add up quickly) can throw you off. And if you find you are eating at your goal and never losing then you need to either adjust your goal appropriately or start logging more accurately.

I am so anal about recording every little bit! It's almost insane...

some veg and fruit are quit high in calories compared to what you think they may be.
and if you want to track you're over all intake like fat,carbs and vitamin etc then you will have to log them to see if you're getting the levels you want.

I saw a study once that showed that people who logged their food ate less, even if they weren't on a diet. While I don't know how true that study is, it works for me. Sometimes I don't eat something because I don't feel like logging it. The rule for me is "If you eat it, you log it". Pain in the butt - I hate it - but that is the point for me.

At this point (almost a year and a half of logging), I'm pretty good at eyeballing portions, and I also know a lot of calorie info by heart. So if I make an omelet with bell peppers, onions, spinach & mushrooms, I might just enter one of the veggies but over-enter the amount so that the calories match what they would have been if I'd entered each one separately. If I'm feeling REALLY lazy, I'll just quick-add cals. But again, I've done this for long enough that I'm pretty darn accurate.

I log in everything, except herbs and spices. AIN'T NO BODY GOT TIME FOR DAT :laugh: :huh:

THIS! I refuse to put in a "dash" of garlic powder, or any spice/herb for that matter.

I don't log everything but if I wasn't losing weight or inches over an extended period of time then I would start. Part of that is me being lazy/not interested, part of that is liking having not pulled out all the stops all at once. Like, I like knowing I have something else I can start to do if I get stuck.

In my defense, however, I don't log all of my exercise all of the time either, and mark myself as sedentary. That 15 minute walk I took when I'd normally have driven to the store goes unlogged as well, so I can nibble off of my boyfriends plate without freaking out.

I'm a fan of creating "recipes" of things I use often that are small. Like, if I put onion, tomato, spinach, mustard, etc... on a sandwich, or turkey burger then I have that as a recipe for "Sammich Veggies". Little things like that have helped me log *more*, but I don't log spices, or if my coffee has no sweetener or creamer and is just black, I don't log it. So far so good.