Apparently my logging sucks (and I don't know how to fix it)

jelleigh
jelleigh Posts: 743 Member
edited November 21 in Health and Weight Loss
So Im a data nerd and I love MFP for being able to log and track my meals. For the last year I have been trying hard to accurately log my meals. The challenge is that I had no scale, and more of the issue is that I live in a country where everyone essentially eats out at road side stalls for 75% of the time and you have no idea what they are really cooking with. But I was doing my best and making progress so hey - a win! In this last year I've lost 25 lbs. I just passed my 365 day mark and decided to crunch some numbers. I very quickly realized that, in a year of tracking with a 1 lb per week loss goal, I lost roughly half that. Which means (if my math is right) that my daily tracking was off by 250 calories , or roughly 11% of my total intake.

So why do I not know how to fix it? Well obviously I need a scale and need to weigh everything. Ok I have a scale now which will help me in 25% of my meals but I can't really alter the eating out thing. (Oh and there is no such thing as known nutritional values here and there is a language barrier so I can't even really ask much ). So... I seem to be tracking wrongly but fairly consistently wrongly (if that makes sense? ). So can I just lower my goal to X% less (my error margin) and continue to guesstimate my entries? Wouldn't that achieve the same thing? - or said a different way - if I'm aiming for 1500 but accidentally am eating 2000, why not aim for 1000 and accidentally eat 1500 ? (Fake numbers just for illustration)

Replies

  • kommodevaran
    kommodevaran Posts: 17,890 Member
    Losing weight is just about eating less than you burn; you can do that without counting calories. Counting calories is just a tool to keep track, and it's based on accurately weighing and tracking food intake. When you can't do that, it won't be a good tool. Why don't you just eat, say, 75% of each meal you buy?
  • rheddmobile
    rheddmobile Posts: 6,840 Member
    Yes, you can lower your goal by 250 calories and if your tracking is consistent with itself, you should lose the expected amount of weight. It doesn't really matter whether you know how much food weighs in grams if you know how it affects you. Or you could eat roughly 90% of what you have been eating out, and assume that you were estimating wrongly.

    On the other hand, you may decide you feel comfortable with your current rate of loss.
  • TavistockToad
    TavistockToad Posts: 35,719 Member
    Just eat slightly less than you used to eat to increase the deficit.
  • misnomer1
    misnomer1 Posts: 646 Member
    edited August 2017
    I would suggest you weigh your home food, and add 10% to the roadside food (on top of what you used to calculate before) while keeping your goals same.
  • RichJames90
    RichJames90 Posts: 7 Member
    It's good that you've now got a scale for food at home, it's an essential item in my opinion!

    As for eating out, I have this problem occasionally as I travel a lot for work and a lot of places don't provide nutritional info (and some that do are rather dubious in my opinion). To counter this I make a judgement based on my best guess on the ingredients and then I add 25% on top to allow for extra sneaky calories that have been added (oils, sauces and the like).
  • PAV8888
    PAV8888 Posts: 14,260 Member
    Is there any reason why you can't accept the excellent progress you've been making... and continue at it exactly as you have been doing?

    In any case... you could consider lowering your intake by another 250 Cal or you could consider lower your intake by 125 and increasing your activity by 125... and seeing how your rate of loss changes.

    Personally... I see nothing wrong with 0.5lbs a week, or 25lbs a year. To the contrary it is a very useful tool in helping you figure out how you will be able to eat in the future...

  • jelleigh
    jelleigh Posts: 743 Member
    PAV8888 wrote: »
    Is there any reason why you can't accept the excellent progress you've been making... and continue at it exactly as you have been doing?

    No there's nothing wrong with losing 25 lbs at all! It's just that I have another 50 to lose and it seems a horrible inefficiency of time to spend 2 years waiting to feel like a healthy version of me that I once was, all because I'm making some measurement mistakes? I don't feel hard done by to eat less and I'm still eating foods I like. I just know that if I have the calories "left" in a day, then I can easily justify using them. So I'd rather be accurate in my tracking (not to mention that literally every post here is continuously emphasizing it) and lose as expected.
  • PAV8888
    PAV8888 Posts: 14,260 Member
    You don't know where the measurement mistake is.

    While indeed it is most likely that you're under estimating your out of house food intake.

    You could also be overestimating your activity.

    Or it might be that instead of tracking in the middle of the BMR pack you're an outlier towards the bottom of the pack (perhaps because of some adaptation over time) and your whole equation should be shifted down to better reflect reality.

    So you have a couple of options and they both can work.

    One option is to increase your accuracy and try to figure out where you've been counting wrong.

    Another option is to continue consistently counting like you've been counting so far.

    Knowing that you've achieved results that are approximately 250 calories less good than you were hoping for, you can therefore increase your deficit by another 250 calories well keeping everything else constant.

    In either case, if you ever find yourself cursing how difficult things have become... you may want to remember that some progress is always better than no progress. and that the easier you make things for you... the more likely you are to do them!

  • jelleigh
    jelleigh Posts: 743 Member
    True @PAV8888 . Although I should probably clarify that I lost 25 lbs this year but it's been no where near consistent and most of it had happened early on in the year. Previously I had myself set to sedentary and didn't count any activity unless it was quite notable. And then I would only eat 50% back. I just got a fitbit this month and have been averaging 13000 steps daily (and it's giving me a huge calorie allowance for that which, again, I'm not eating - or only dipping into slightly ) and I think that the combo of starting to overestimate my intake and moving more is starting some weight loss again. Im having trouble knowing exactky where I'm at because my scale I was using all along is packed Into storage while I move , but I should get that back next week and I should be able to see what these last three weeks have actually done.

    Thanks for the input everyone. I really want to try to get things as tight as possible because I know how easy it is to lie to ourselves and end up accidentally sabatoging .
  • PAV8888
    PAV8888 Posts: 14,260 Member
    you may also want to consider a trending weight application especially if engaged in slow weight loss and having "inconsistent" results. Natural water weight fluctuations are faster than weight fluctuations due to changes in fat level... which is what we want. Using something like trendweight.com (automatically connected to your fitbit account for weight-ins) or happy scale for iphone or libra for android may prove quite helpful to you.
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