Just how specific does calorie counting need to be?
March 13, 2016 5:29 PM   Subscribe

For the 2,112th time, I have started tracking calories in a food journal and I have some questions about accuracy.

In the past, I have used WeightWatchers, Loseit!, and most recently MyFoodDiary.com. I am determined to not fail this time around, but I need help with one of the obstacles that so often trips me:

1. I sign up for a food tracking app. Yay for 4ster!
2. I install the app. So far so good!
3. I start entering what I eat. Hmmmmm
4. I start wondering if I have accurately entered the amount I ate. Oh no.
5. I give up. Boo.

To be clear, I am not freaking our over whether or not I just ate a large or a medium apple. What I do struggle with is when my wife prepares a casserole with 25 ingredients in it. When this happens, I go directly to step 4 above.

I am expecting the answer to be that inaccurate tracking is better than the anarchic dietary free-for-all I normally live within, but I am looking for guidance as to how to deal with perfect being the enemy of the good.

Thanks, as always, for your help.
posted by 4ster to Health & Fitness (21 answers total) 7 users marked this as a favorite
 
My strategy is to always round up. Always. If It could be a medium apple or it could be a large apple, it's a large apple. Then when I eat the unknowable casserole, I give it my best guess, figure I probably made up for it somewhere else, and forget about it.

Ultimately it's the results that count, and in a few weeks my scale will give me a definitive answer about whether or not my reported numbers have been in the ballpark.
posted by mammoth at 5:42 PM on March 13, 2016 [7 favorites]


First of all, sometimes you'll overcount and sometimes you'll undercount. As long as you're trying your best to be honest, it will more or less even out. Two strategies I've used for the particular situation you mentioned is: using a tool where you put in the recipe and tell it what portion of the recipe you ate (I don't have a particular suggestion, because it's been a while. I know this is pretty labor intensive) or just putting in a comparable commercial product (your wife made a meat lasagna so you search for "Olive Garden Meat Lasagna" or "Stoffers Meat Lasagna" or whatever.... I think this tends to overestimate calories, which, fine!)
posted by i_am_a_fiesta at 5:42 PM on March 13, 2016 [3 favorites]


The thing I've always found helpful is an electronic kitchen scale that you can easily reset - note down the weights of the different ingredients, divide them by how much you had (probably half) and enter them. Assessing the calorific value of food is notoriously vague anyway.

I have, in the past, asked my wife to make a note of the weights of the ingredients she's put into a meal (I do most of the cooking, so I usually do it), and it's an annoying chore, but not a particularly great one, if the notebook and pen's just sitting there.

This depends on doing things the European way (by weight) rather than the American way (by Cups, which I've never really understood), but it's effective. The main thing is to have a reliable empirical tag for a portion so that you can see what's happening from day to day, and weight is better than dimensions.
posted by Grangousier at 5:43 PM on March 13, 2016 [8 favorites]


I think it depends on why you are tracking.

When I was tracking calories, it was to lose weight. I was interested in a 500 calorie deficit, but I was okay as long as there was some deficit. This meant that I usually had a 500 calorie range that I could "go over" and still be okay.

I usually rounded up. But sometimes that was too much, and I would undereat (feel lightheaded, etc). So I took a more middle path way of estimating.

Two things that I found helpful:

1. I always reduced or ignored the calories burned by exercise. Most calculators will include your regular base metabolism when calculating calories burned by exercise. So if you do exercise a lot (which is healthy) and then eat back the calories, you may be eating back more than you exercised.

2. I started with about a month of eating very simple foods. This meant salads, pastas, etc with few ingredients so I could figure out exactly how much I ate. After that, I could usually get a good estimate of what a 500 calorie meal looks/feels like. Especially if I feel stuffed/bloated in the morning after a large dinner, then I know I probably ate somewhere between 800-1200 calories. (This is just me. Obviously, it would be different for you.) At that point, it's easier to just estimate.
posted by ethidda at 5:45 PM on March 13, 2016 [3 favorites]


I round up. I weigh things. When I make recipes I actually use the app's (I use My FitnessPal) recipe builder so I have a decent idea of how many calories are in what I am eating. I did a lot like what ethidda describes: eating things that have few ingredients so I could more accurately gauge the calories. Over time I got a better idea of how much was in what things so I would know "OK a yogurt with granola and some maple syrup is basically X calories" and do it that way. It's slow going at first, maybe you can work with your wife to try to build some recipes that you can keep track of.
posted by jessamyn at 5:52 PM on March 13, 2016 [4 favorites]


It was a tough month of getting all my standard recipes entered into MyFitnessPal, but it is super nice to be able to just click "1.5 servings sausage-sprout-gnocchi" and be done, every time we make it, and I take leftovers for lunch the next day. When there's a dish that isn't part of our usual repertoire, I just pick a similar-sounding restaurant or frozen meal that's pre-entered, maybe look at a couple of different brands or portion sizes until it makes sense with what I'd expect.
posted by aimedwander at 5:59 PM on March 13, 2016 [7 favorites]


when we had to go through a drastic dietary change because of a medical diagnosis we ate things with very few ingredients to start with, meals that had more than 4 ingredients were turned into a recipe, and sometimes i just entered blank calories purposefully higher than my estimates so i wouldn't use it as a way to "cheat." memorizing a few things (how many calories are in a tbls of olive oil, how many in half an avocado, how many carbs in a medium apple, etc) made the counting up in my head easier.
posted by nadawi at 6:04 PM on March 13, 2016


Calories are a pretty poor way of measuring the amount of energy that makes it into our systems, so I would not stress too much about high levels of accuracy. If you can find roughly similar recipes online to the complicated casseroles that include calorie estimates, I would just use that and not stress over the perfectness.
posted by Candleman at 6:15 PM on March 13, 2016 [2 favorites]


I don't think it's the accuracy that matters- it's the process of counting. It makes some people more mindful of what they are eating. Buy cute dessert plates with your wife and use them as dinner plates (because they are smaller), only getting one serving. And then eat slowly, asking her about her day. After that, ask her if she would go for a walk with you and let you clean up the kitchen after the walk. You'll start to lose weight in no time, because after that much attention, she's going to want to make love to you, and sex burns calories.
posted by myselfasme at 6:24 PM on March 13, 2016 [3 favorites]


All of the above is great advice. After I started cooking by weight for the convenience of calorie counting I realized that the Europeans have been right all along and am absolutely loathe to cook recipes by volume ever again. A good electronic kitchen scale that tares easily and displays negative weights is incredibly valuable -- this one has served me well for years.

As far as the 'fudge factor' goes, I am definitely a 'perfect is the enemy of the good' type and it has helped me to establish 'rules' about what to do when I suspect my numbers are inaccurate. For example, I never track salad greens. I just don't. I know they're good for me but needing to weigh them out is enough of an obstacle that I might not eat them. If I go out to eat at a restaurant that doesn't provide calorie counts -- or where I suspect the calorie counts are low -- I log a full tablespoon of oil on top of my best guess. When I use an oil based cooking spray, I log 1 gram of oil. 1 gram of oil is only 7 calories, which you might argue is a waste of time (especially since I already admit to ignoring salad green calories which may easily be 4-5x that), but they can add up on a day where I cook a lot on the stove and the most important thing is that I have a consistent method of dealing with this bit of uncertainty.

Finally, after about ~50 days of consistency and the accompany results, the obsession with accuracy will abate a little bit. You'll see that even if your weight spikes a bit after a restaurant meal, which might make you think "omg! I totally miscounted that!", 9 times out of 10 you'll be back on track within a few days (and it was probably a combo of miscounting and water retention from sodium).
posted by telegraph at 6:29 PM on March 13, 2016 [1 favorite]


I use MyFitnessPal and it has a function that allows you to enter the ingredients for recipes and then you are able to add a serving of the recipe as a food item. It also has a barcode scanner which makes it really easy to enter the exact food you're eating without having to read the label and enter every number in manually or guess based on similar foods. Personally, I would recommend using MyFitnessPal and if your wife is making lasagna, enter the ingredients into a recipe as she's making it or ask her not to throw away the boxes/cans until you can enter the foods. I love the barcode scanner. Things like vegetables, it's fine to guess because they don't have a lot of calories anyway. But I personally do weigh everything on a kitchen food scale.

As for accuracy, I don't think food labels in and of themselves are even super accurate, and then on top of it, if you're guessing on a prepared food item, it's even harder. I think tracking what you eat will force you to pay attention and avoid high-calorie foods, which is half the battle. With calorie tracking, it's plain to see that a slice of pizza, which isn't all that filling but is maybe hundreds of calories, really pales in comparison to something that really fills you up but is half the calories, like a broth-based soup, for instance. You really start to identify which foods help you reach your goals and which are just bad for you.

Your whole question and predicament really boils down to letting the perfect be the enemy of the good. Don't do that. Doing something is better than nothing.
posted by AppleTurnover at 7:11 PM on March 13, 2016 [4 favorites]


Seconding the recommendations to:

1) Create recipes within LoseIt. Frex, the veggie-lentil soup I made Friday from a bunch of ingredients made 16 cups total, so that was 16 servings at about 125 calories each. I packaged the soup in pint and quart mason jars, so it's easy to judge serving volume by eye without using a measuring cup.
2) NEVER track your exercises as exercise and then choose to eat those estimated extra calories. Instead, add exercise as a Note to each day.

I would also recommend double-checking the foods you choose from the built-in lists. They are sometime woefully incomplete, listing calories but no fat or fiber, for example. Create your own custom food (via the Me section) from reputable online sources if you can't find a good listing in the app.
posted by maudlin at 7:16 PM on March 13, 2016 [1 favorite]


Most important thing I've found: Don't subtract exercise calories. Food counting is inaccurate but exercise is almost always overcounted. Unless you're running a marathon or something, the amount of calories a workout offsets is basically within the margin of error of zero.
posted by mmoncur at 7:54 PM on March 13, 2016 [1 favorite]


I too round up my guesses. I google what a 4 ounce steak looks like, or whatever..there's a ton of image results for different portion sizes of food. I also check the weight on the can or box and roughly guess what portion of that. After a while, you get an idea of how much of things you're eating and to be honest, a lot of people tend to eat the same stuff over and over, so it gets more automatic as you go. I've been on Loseit for 4 months an I'm surprised to see that my daily weight reading is erratic but sticking to the projected trajectory quite closely. Without the app, I'd have gotten discouraged, or gotten too zealous. It's nice to have a touchstone, even if the estimates aren't perfectly exact.
posted by bonobothegreat at 8:01 PM on March 13, 2016


when eating prepared food, just guess a little a count the high calorie items and worry less about how probably 20 of the ingredients are garlic/cumin/onion, etc. ask her about how much carb/fat/meat went into the whole thing a divide by the portion you ate and call it 600 calories or whatever.

Alternately, find a similar recipe online and use the serving calorie count for that.

Also, try toget your wife on board with the calorie counting and simple food meal planning.
posted by vunder at 8:26 PM on March 13, 2016


You're probably not going to like this answer, but I believe if you're serious about tracking your intake, you're going to have to make different food choices, that allow you to be accurate.

In the case of the casserole, if you want to eat that, it's annoyingly complex to truly track. You'd have to weigh and measure each ingredient and then figure out what percentage of the whole you ate. Depending on what app you use, you might be able to save a preset recipe so it's not as much work next time (but then your wife would have to make it *exactly* the same way next time).

What ends up being more doable long-term is eating more simply. Instead of mixtures of 25 ingredients, just eat one protein, one starch, and one or a few veggies. It's so much easier to log, that you may actually have a chance of maintaining your logging long-term.
posted by mysterious_stranger at 9:09 PM on March 13, 2016 [2 favorites]


I used to have to painstakingly measure and list ingredients for my own recipes when I used MyFitnessPal. It was quite agonising but really the only way to be sure.
posted by turbid dahlia at 9:50 PM on March 13, 2016


Oh, and the other thing, that's just popped into my mind, is that when I'm doing the food-measuring thing, what's important is not so much an accurate total of all the calories I've consumed, but being able to account to myself what and how much I have. Otherwise everything becomes vague and gaps appear and I fill them with biscuits. So I commit myself to note down everything, even things that come to 2 calories.
posted by Grangousier at 1:44 AM on March 14, 2016


There was a great MeTa on this a couple months ago. My takeaway from that was that the calorie is an inherently imprecise tool. It was oddly liberating and helped me relax a bit about the whole thing and just do my best.

Focus on the stuff that matters most. You don't have to weigh your salad greens, but you should weigh the cheese and nuts that go in. Don't ask your wife to weigh and measure everything that goes into the casserole, just ask her to measure the amount of oil, which is easy to overdo if she free-pours and hard for you to gauge when you're just looking at the finished dish. When you log the casserole, again don't worry about low-energy-density ingredients like veggies or spices--just log the big stuff like the starch, dairy, meat, and oil.
posted by mama casserole at 6:53 AM on March 14, 2016 [4 favorites]


There have been plenty of answers about how to input recipes, but if you're using MyFitnessPal, I wanted to highlight a new(ish?) feature they've added. If you're using a recipe found on a website, you can paste the link into the app, and it will give you a proposed list of ingredients it thinks you may have used. You can then double check them and tweak serving sizes. I thought it was magic when I discovered that feature.
posted by bluloo at 8:28 AM on March 14, 2016 [3 favorites]


It's funny. In threads like this where people are asking for more accurate ways to measure calories, the gist is that there's no perfect way to do it and in the end it's not that important anyway. But go create another thread next week and state: "I've been counting every single calorie for 2 months and I'm not losing any weight." I GUARANTEE that within the first 3 comments, someone will declare that you are not counting accurately and therefore it's all your fault, you fat slob.

My point is: you can't win. Losing weight is not an exact science. Some things work for one person and the exact opposite works for another person. It might even be the same person, in different phases of their weight loss journey.

I think the answer might be that you have to think along several different pathways in order to lose weight. If you concentrate on calories and it doesn't work, you get to feel justified that you tried, but in the end you still need to lose weight.

So, do all the other tricks - set goals not related to calories(walk X minutes per day, eat 2 veg with every meal), add active things you enjoy to your life, eat real food prepared in a delicious way, etc. Make the journey more holistic than just calorie counting and see how that works out.
posted by CathyG at 10:02 AM on March 14, 2016 [2 favorites]


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