Calories
yojimbo121
Posts: 32 Member
How much do people include during a day to there calorie intake. Do you write everything down, every spoon of sugar, spread of butter, drop of milk to your tea. Would be interesting to see what people document
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Replies
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I measure (almost exclusively weighing) pretty much everything, excluding lettuce. Everything gets logged. I also create my own meals for frequently made meals, and especially new recipes.4
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I weigh and log every single thing. Much easier for me than deciding on some arbitrary system for what types of food somehow ‘don’t count’.
My body counts it all!3 -
I weigh everything too, I haven't done this in the past and weighing has definitely helped me with weight loss. I also pre plan what I'm eating during the day (actually have started doing this for the week now) so that I know how many calories I have left over to have something I really like each day.2
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Yep, I weigh precisely. I used to estimate it, and discovered when I tried weighing that what I thought was "the same" amount of butter or half and half or sugar could actually vary quite a lot, even though it looked the same to my eyes!
If it has calories, I weigh it. I sometimes skip spices or condiments if they don't have calories, or garnishes like fresh herbs, because the amount I am putting on is not even one calorie. I try to scrape my spoon so I don't have anything leftover not getting weighed (very important for things like peanut butter!)2 -
I just do main ingredients and then leave a bit of calories at the end of the day for 'things I didn't count'
It's vague but logging for me (at the moment) is making me more accountable and making me THINK about what I eat and portion sizes. So I don't have to be bang on.
When I get nearer my goal/if loss slows then I can get stricter3 -
I don't log things that are zero calorie on the label (hot sauce, vinegar, etc) unless I'm eating way more than a typical serving. Milk, sugar, and butter are things that I would always log because I know for myself as soon as I start saying "Oh, it's just a bit of [calorie-dense food]" it's hard to stop.1
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I don't log zero calorie things and my logging of vegetables when addition to meals (ie: the lettuce and tomato on a sandwich). Otherwise I log most things.
I am, however, an outlier in that I don't weigh my food/use a food scale. i fully expect to need to start at some point - like when weight loss slows or stops, if I want to lose more. However, I am still losing fine and I don't know how much more I want to lose anyway (I've met my original 'healthy Bmi' goal).1 -
I measure and log everything. I will weigh higher calorie items like butter or peanut butter, but I do not weigh everything. This is due to mental health reasons and discussions with my therapist because I get obsessive with it and that leads to anxiety and panic attacks over food. No fun. So we go for a balance to keep that from happening. But everything gets logged.1
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Almost everything. Some things like lettuce, celery, and sugar in my coffee, not always. I just use a regular spoon for sugar and the "close enough" for lettuce and celery. Butter off the stick like for toast I guess. I don't weigh bread or bacon or sausage (anymore, that was too far for me.)
When I'm eating out of course some guessing has to happen.
Digital food scale for solids, and a measuring cup or spoon for liquid.
Up to you, though.
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yojimbo121 wrote: »How much do people include during a day to there calorie intake. Do you write everything down, every spoon of sugar, spread of butter, drop of milk to your tea. Would be interesting to see what people document
i legit guesstimate using mfp but
also on how much is in something1 -
When I was actively losing weight...I logged everything (and measured it or weighed it). Now that I'm not in it to lose weight I will say I'm more lax....but I've started doing better because I need to make sure I'm eating ENOUGH. I am definitely getting better at listening to my body though and if I"m hungry I eat and I don't worry about whether that's gonna put me over or not.1
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I include it all.3
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If it goes in my mouth it goes in my food diary.7
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I try to log everything down as much as possible but I dont always feel MFP is very accurate and have to make adjustments to what I'm putting down. Try to eat clean as much as I can but when I do start to eat chocolate and doughnuts I tend to binge alot and then try to make up for it the next day 🤣0
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yojimbo121 wrote: »I try to log everything down as much as possible but I dont always feel MFP is very accurate and have to make adjustments to what I'm putting down. Try to eat clean as much as I can but when I do start to eat chocolate and doughnuts I tend to binge alot and then try to make up for it the next day 🤣
You do have to be picky sometimes about which entries you pick in the database. I've gotten more careful about that as I go on, and it's been helpful. For some things like restaurant meals it's a bit of a guessing game, but that's not something I do very often so in the long run a rough idea for things like that is fine.
Is there a particular reason you're eating "clean?" I mostly try to eat whole, not as processed foods for a lot of reasons, which is what I think most people mean when they say "clean," but I don't shun other foods as occasional treats, as I don't have any health conditions that would make them a bad idea. In my experience, setting aside an entire group of foods as "not clean" or "dirty" makes it harder to be moderate about them. Binging and then restricting a lot the following day could actually make the binging worse.2 -
I'm trying to get in the best shape I've ever been always wanted abs but with the so called bulking and getting bigger muscles they've never come through. But with lock down I just turned the tables instead of trying to get bigger I just tried getting fitter, cut down on eating crap and went clean. So now at 40 I've never looked better 🤣 took long enough0
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I log everything as best I can. Cooking from scratch at home is easy, the challenge is finding accurate database entries (and I usually go by the USDA or the package in my hand), but the further from there I get (chain restaurant, local restaurant, someone else's house), the more I'm guesstimating ingredients and portion sizes, relying on company websites to have up-to-date calorie information (and relying on restaurant employees to be sticking to recipes from corporate, I guess), and not-so-subtly asking people how they made X dish under the guise of "I like to cook and would like to make this at home myself," not "I need to know how much butter you put in this so I can track it, Brenda."5
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