Tracking anxiety

Fidgetbrain
Fidgetbrain Posts: 188 Member
in Food and Nutrition
Really struggling with accurately tracking calories, I still live with my parents who don’t like me to make my own food so I’m stuck eating homemade meals trying to gauge portion size by eye bc they don’t rly measure anything except rice/pasta. Recently saw a tiktok video of some smug fitness influencer telling a girl her 1300 cal fde video was actually 2k calories and I’m afraid I’m wildly miscalculating mine too. Should I be leaving a buffer of like 300kcals for tracking errors? My goal is quite low so if I do that and I don’t actually underestimate it’ll be pretty bad too 😔 I’ve been consistently gaining weight every year until like last summer and I don’t want to find myself back on that continuous upward trajectory

Replies

  • ehju0901
    ehju0901 Posts: 353 Member
    I'd definitely try to pitch it as you want to learn how to cook. There are definitely recipes that can help you eat the way you want, while also being tasty and satisfying for the rest of your family.

    For example, I made a mixture of canned chicken, taco seasoning, black beans, salsa and corn (I meant to add a couple bell peppers but I forgot). You could eat it as a burrito bowl, but you could provide taco shells, cheese, sour cream, etc. for the rest of the family to "spruce it up" with items that are not wanted in your diet.
  • springlering62
    springlering62 Posts: 7,413 Member
    ehju0901 wrote: »
    I'd definitely try to pitch it as you want to learn how to cook. There are definitely recipes that can help you eat the way you want, while also being tasty and satisfying for the rest of your family.

    For example, I made a mixture of canned chicken, taco seasoning, black beans, salsa and corn (I meant to add a couple bell peppers but I forgot). You could eat it as a burrito bowl, but you could provide taco shells, cheese, sour cream, etc. for the rest of the family to "spruce it up" with items that are not wanted in your diet.

    And you can “accidentally” make extra for controlled leftovers.
  • goal06082021
    goal06082021 Posts: 2,130 Member
    Getting out of your parents' house is the best long-term solution, I hope you'll be able to make that happen for yourself sooner rather than later.
  • PAPYRUS3
    PAPYRUS3 Posts: 13,259 Member
    As mentioned in other comments, I too would suggest getting involved in the creation of family meals - suggest making meals for the family and/or help make the meals.

    I too would have a sit down discussion with your family to express your concerns/goals and how they might be able to support you. Hopefully, they will totally want to support you and be proud of you for wanting to take care of your health. You never know, maybe they will want to join you and it'll become a family 'thing'!

    For meals that you aren't in 'control' over, just make the best choices you can.

    Good luck to you!
  • amusedmonkey
    amusedmonkey Posts: 10,330 Member
    I eat quite a few meals with my family, and I usually estimate them. Don't be afraid to ask how much of this or that went into preparing a dish. It can help you estimate. Basically, what I did is this:
    1. Weigh any foods that can be tracked directly (rice, bread, chicken breast...etc.)
    2. When I first started, I hovered around whoever was preparing a dish and weighed the ingredients I could weigh (like potatoes) and watched how much of a measured ingredient they added (like how many cups of lentils), eyeballed any fat with a slight over-estimation, then weighed the entire pot when it was done. I created these meals in my database and it made logging them later easier: all I had to do was weigh my portion of the finished food. I wasn't afraid of getting a little bit annoying, but if they looked too annoyed, I just weighed my portion, estimated the percentage of each ingredient, and created a guessed meal based on that.
    3. After a while I had a good collection of commonly served meals, but sometimes someone would feel like cooking something new. If they were going by a recipe, I would ask them for the link. Otherwise, I would just log something similar from the database.

    I'm sure not all the meals I created were accurately counted, some may even have been off by a significant amount, but accuracy was not my goal there. What I was trying to achieve is consistency. If you're off by a consistent margin, it's easier to adjust your calorie budget later based on your weight loss. No need to add an arbitrary buffer (you'll risk undereating). Just track the best you can, and see how your weight does later. If you're losing weight consistently slower than you planned, then you can adjust your calorie budget by a known amount.
  • vanmep
    vanmep Posts: 406 Member
    I don’t know your situation but I can tell you that if one of my kids had offered to make dinner once a week or something I would have jumped up and down for joy!

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