New to counting calories

When I started doing this almost 2 weeks ago, I learned that lesson the hard way too! Now, I go to the computer and log my food in first. When the calories, fat, protein, carbs, etc pop up, I adjust if need be and THEN make my food. It makes it a lot easier to do. Guessing doesn't work - I really had no idea how much I ate before I started doing this. Get a food scale, if you don't already have one, and log your food in first. And hang in there....it'll get easier! :flowerforyou:

I think alot is trial and error to start with, and after time you learn what you can have and what you cant have, I also find now when im shopping I will look at the calorie content to get an idea of things.

Now I have a rough idea of things, even after less that 2 weeks. I think as long as you stop snacking on rubbish, and eat fairly sensible portions etc, you cant really go wrong.

The first time I counted calories was the 28th December with this app. I downloaded it in the evening, filled all the details in and where I wanted to be.... then started to complete what I had ate that day... my target is 1960 calories a day, and I had used 3800 that day alone, and i hadnt ate that much (in my opinion!!)......

A good example of learning the hard way is last night, we had homemade Taco's for tea, which arent bad.... until I had some onion and garlic dip with it..... added the meal to my diary after I had ate and the dip alone was 335 calories!!!!! The taco's and mince meat were only 341 calories!!! So going forward, I wont be happing dip again!!!

In my opinion its best to learn once the hardway, and not do it again, than repeatidly make the same mistakes over and over again and do nothing about it!!!

Its all a learning process :-P

Good luck anyway!!

I find the app is a great way to decide what to eat for dinner -- there is a lot of "changing my mind" when I find out that small amount of food is a lot more calories than what I had planned. We're going out tonight to do a little shopping so we'll be grabbing food from a food court (never ideal but if I wait until we get home, I'll be so hungry I'll eat too much) so I tried around a half dozen possible choices until I came up with something I'd want to eat within my range.

The other benefit to that is that you start to plan your meals around what you have in the house and that saves on grocery bills. Last night I made baked penne with a 3rd of a box of whole wheat penne, some tomato sauce, some veggies that would have gotten tossed soon if we didn't eat them and a bit of shredded cheese and it was delicious and well under the calories of just frying up some hamburger and having that with the penne & tomato sauce instead.