Make counting calories easier
Today I want to give you some simple tips to make counting calories easier. I’d love you to read the whole article but if you don’t here are the main takeaways.
Set ranges when tracking and focus on calories and protein
Eat similar foods from day to day
Counting calories isn’t supposed to be done forever
Certain foods don’t need strict tracking
Barcodes make things easy
Tracking isn’t 100% accurate
Have a few ‘back up’ meals for when life happens
Be moderate with eating out and takeaways
Why track if it isn’t 100% accurate?
I know you want the simple tips to make counting calories easier but first of all I want to keep it real with you. Counting calories isn’t completely accurate and it’s not for everyone. If you’ve had an eating disorder before I would recommend you seek help from a specialist and this article isn’t aimed at you.
Why is tracking not completely accurate?
The FDA allows up to 20% inaccuracies with calories on packaging so 150kcals really means 130-180kcals.You don’t actually absorb all the calories you eat.
You don’t absorb all the calories from all foods. For example you only absorb about 68% of the calories from almonds. Cool huh? Highly processed foods you will tend to absorb most of calories in these foods. The fibre and protein content of a food affects the amount of calories we absorb.
Cooking food usually means you absorb more calories.
Even our own gut bacteria can increase or decrease the calories we absorb.
It has been shown in research that people are pretty bad at tracking calories. They paid people to track and they made mistakes. Even dieticians made errors when tracking their calories in one study.
So what’s the bloody point then Ed?
Scroll down.
I’ve never knew how many calories were in nuts and nut butters until I started tracking. Having a portion of almonds (which I enjoy) saved in myfitnesspal app was a simple tip to make counting calories easier.
Tracking calories for a while creates awareness,makes you slow down and educates you about what you eat and the energy in it
“Most of us massively underestimate how much we eat and overestimate how much we move each day”
I remember my mates face at Uni when he realised how many calories were in a cheese toastie. He was gutted! Once you track, you discover the foods that you enjoy that you can eat a lot of for not many calories. These foods make losing or maintaining weight ten times easier. You also learn which foods have a lot of calories for not much food (aka calorie dense). For me foods like red peppers, apples, cucumbers, frozen blueberries, chicken and low fat Greek yoghurt were foods that fitted really well into my diet to lose weight or maintain because I really like them, they’re filling, they nutritious and fairly low in calories. Biscuits, bread, pasta and dark chocolate I had to be moderate with as I tend to overeat them.
Awareness often precedes change and so once you have the knowledge of how much energy is in a food you can make much wiser decisions. For example, I’m not really into pastry that much (which is high in calories and fat) and so you’ll never catch me buying a quiche (however apple pie is amazing!). Not because quiche is inherently bad like supporting Birmingham city (football joke). But it’s high in calories and to be honest I’d rather eat some pizza than a quiche. And being able to enjoy your diet like this whilst knowing the calorie content etc helps you to adhere to your diet which is THE most important thing.
When you track and you type in to your tracker 1 x hobnob it’s a lot slower than just dipping one in your tea and eating it. When you’re mindless about it it’s easy to eat 5 biscuits (over 400kcals). When you pause you tend to enjoy it more and it makes you less likely to eat 5 or 6. The pause helps you to be more present and think about IF you really want another. We get the most enjoyment usually from the 1-2 pieces of chocolate not the whole bar.
Once you understand calorie contents in foods you can make wiser decisions on portion sizes. I only eat high calorie foods that I really enjoy like pizza. You can keep you crappy quiche.
plan and Eat similar foods from day to day
Most of us eat similar breakfasts and lunches. A really simple tip to make counting calories easier is to figure out 1-2 breakfasts and lunches you really enjoy and 4-5 dinners. Weigh, measure and enter them into MFP (myfitnesspal) in the ‘create meal’ section. From there onwards you can easily find them (meals) and just press enter when you have them and it enters all the details. So it saves you having to weigh and measure each time. You could even freeze these meals to make it even easier. This leads well onto the next simple tip to make counting calories easier.
Barcodes make life easy and don’t worry about tracking greens
Packaged foods get a bad rap but one of things that’s good about them is they make counting calories way easier. I would love everyone to make their own food but I totally understand that life is busy and sometimes pre packaged meals make things simple when you don’t have much time. The cool thing about packaged foods is that they’re super easy to count. You just scan the barcode with your phone and it will enter the calories into your tracker.
Another simple tip to make counting calories easier is to not bother tracking green veg and even non starchy veg if you want. You should track sauces and oils but actual spinach and broccoli etc are so low in calories that unless you’re a competing body builder most people can get away with not tracking them.
Have some fall back meals always at hand
Make sure you always have the ingredients and a few simple “go to” meals that fit your calorie intake and your goal. Or have some simple dishes you can whip up fast for when you arrive home tired or you’re stressed etc. I always have some tinned fish, eggs and Greek yoghurt in the fridge for those times when life happens and I just need something filling that is nutritious and enjoyable.
Having high protein meals/ingredients that you know the calories of and you can make in 10mins when you’re tired is a simple tip to make counting calories easier.
Be moderate with eating out and takeaways if possible
Whilst I am all about “livin’ life to the fullest” while still losing fat, being moderate with eating out/takeaways is a solid and simple tip to make counting calories easier. At restaurants one of the ways they make things taste delicious is by coating them in butter, olive oil and posh stuff like goose fat. That’s why restaurant meals can be way higher in calories than you realise. A lot of traditional restaurants don’t reveal how many calories are in their meals and the truth is you just don’t know how they’re cooking it. You can still eat out but be aware and try not to do it super frequently while you’re trying to track calories.
Final thoughts
When it comes to tracking calories people often say that you “can’t do that forever” and I agree. Counting calories isn’t supposed to be done forever. It’s a tool for people to do for a short while and as they learn and become more aware they can then transition away from it with the knowledge that they can utilize for the rest of their life. So my tip is if you haven’t tried it before give it a solid 30 days and then if you don’t want to continue you can stop but I’m 99% sure you will have learnt something useful from it.
Hasta pronto
Edwin
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