Whether your goal is to lose weight, maintain your weight, or “bulk up,” eating the right number of calories is important to reach your goals.
I have done a previous post about how many calories you should be eating depending on your goal (click here if you want to read that), but in this article, I am going to discuss how to actually track your calories and things to be weary of.
Do You Need To Track Calories?
Before I get into the heart of this article, I want to address the question of whether or not you even need to track your calories.
The short answer is no. The longer answer is you likely should for a period of time.
If I’m being honest, I’m actually not a big fan of tracking calories as a long term “sustainable approach” to the way we eat food (even if it’s for weight loss) because I think tracking calories can significantly take the focus off “eating for health.”
If you are constantly tracking your calories, then the number one goal of nutrition then becomes “I need to stay within my calorie limit” as opposed to “I should fuel my body with the foods that will promote health and longevity.”
With that said, there is a lot of value in tracking your calories for a short period of time (i.e. 30-60 days) for multiple reasons.
For one, research shows that people consistently underreport how many calories they believe they are eating.
Secondly, you will learn about your eating habits throughout the process, not only in regard to how much you are eating, but you will also become more conscious in terms of the types of foods you tend to eat, portion sizes, and how many calories are actually in certain foods. If choose to do this, once you get a better sense of how much you are actually eating and once you have a good understanding of how many calories are in different foods/meals, you no longer need to track your caloric intake if you choose not to.
Last but not least, if you track your calories for 30-60 days and hit your caloric target, you will likely lose a few pounds (if weight loss is your goal), which can kick start your weight loss journey and provide you with the motivation to keep going.
So in short, while I don’t believe you should track calories for the rest of your life because it can take away from eating as a way to optimize health, I think it has several benefits as a place to start.
When Should You Not Track Calories?
For some people, tracking calories can actually be more damaging than helpful. This is mainly for individuals who have a poor relationship with food or a binge eating disorder.
Instead of meticulously tracking calories, it is far more helpful to first establish a better relationship with food before beginning to think about tracking your calories.
How Do You Track Calories?
At this point, if you have never done this before, you are probably wondering how you should go about tracking your calories.
While there are many ways you can track the number of calories you eat, I suggest using a simple free app like My Fitness Pal. This is an easy to use app where you input the foods you eat and it tracks your daily caloric intake for you. And if you’re working with me with either in person personal training or online coaching, I am able to review your daily food logs.
Setting Up The App (do these steps now!)
Step 1: Download My Fitness Pal on the App store and create an account using a username that has your name (that way, I can identify you)
Step 2: Friend me on MyFitnessPal: click on “more” – “friends” – “+” – “email or MyFitnessPal Username” – Type in “irisefitness” – add your full name – click submit (only do this if you are working with me in-person or online)
Step 3: Allow me access to view your account: click on “more” “settings” “diary sharing” “friends only
Step 4: Make sure your current bodyweight is up to date. If you’re working with me in person, we’ll update it every week or two. If you’re working with me online, update it each week.
Step 5: Enter your personalized calorie target: “More” – “Goals” – “Calorie, Carbs, Protein, and Fat Goals” – “calories” – enter the calorie target I personally gave you
How Do You Track Your Nutrition? (skip if you already know how)
Step 1: Enter your food: “blue x” – “food” – search for the food or use one of the given options (scan barcode, my meals, my recipes, my foods, frequent
Step 2: Click on the drop down that best describes your food. Then input serving size, number of servings, then click the check mark to complete.
How To Look At Total Calories, Protein, Carbs, Fats, and Other Nutrients
On the home screen of the app, you’ll see an equation: goal – food + exercise = remaining.
At the end of the day, if your goal is weight loss, you’ll want to have your food be equal to or less than your goal.
NOTE: Do NOT factor in the exercise that My Fitness Pal gives you. That is why I am having you just compare your food intake to your goal (not factoring in exercise). This is because the calorie goal I have given you already factors it in. This isn’t to say exercise isn’t important – it is and the more you exercise, the more calories you’ll burn, but don’t factor it into the equation.
If you are curious about proteins, carbs, fats, and other nutrients, click on “diary” – scroll down to “nutrition” at the bottom and then “nutrients” at the top.
From here, you can see how much protein, carbs, fats, and other nutrients you are eating.
My Fitness Pal Hacks To Make Your Life Easier
1. Utilize “Meals” if there are meals you eat frequently
Click on “my meals” then “create a meal” or “copy previous meal.” If there are meals you eat frequently (For example, I eat the same breakfast, oatmeal, most mornings), then create a meal and that way anytime you go to enter it into the app, all you do is click on my meals and then enter it. From there, each time you enter it, you can make any changes to the meal after you have inputted it (if it differs from the meal you initially created).
2. Copy Meals From Previous Days
If you inputted a meal a previous day and you are eating it again today, you can copy it over from the previous day. To do that, click on “diary” – “today” – switch days to find the meal – click the 3 dots next to the meal – and then copy it over to today and whichever meal you’d like it to go to. It will then appear in your food log for today.
Common Questions
Which meal should I choose if My Fitness Pal has a bunch of options?
As you can see in the image below, if you type in lentil soup, there’s a bunch of different options. In this case, you have two options:
Option 1: Choose one of the higher calorie options and enter that as your meal (I say choose one of the higher calorie options because chances are, if it’s a guess like this, it’s not going to be too accurate and seeing as we, as humans, underestimate how much we eat, it’s best to air on the side of caution.
Option 2: Break down the meal into it’s different ingredients and then choose the option that seems best. For example, in the case of lentil soup, maybe the key ingredients are lentils, rice, potatoes, vegetables, vegetable stock, tomato sauce, olive oil. You would add up the calories of the ingredients in the entire soup, and then divide by how many servings you had. If you figured out there were about 2000 calories in the whole pot of soup, and you had one 5th of the soup, you would have eaten 400 calories of lentil soup. Yes, this is more time consuming, but more accurate. As far as tracking this goes, you wouldn’t need to input all the ingredients. Instead, you’d choose an option for lentil soup and put in 400 calories worth.
How Should I Enter A Meal If It Has A Million Ingredients?
As I talked about above, if a meal has a bunch of ingredients, it’s best to break it down into the different ingredients that actually have some calories to them.
For example, let’s say you’re having lentil soup with lentils, rice, mixed vegetables, and oil as the main foods containing calories. If you put 2 cups of lentils in the recipe and it made 8 servings, each 1/8th serving contains .25 cups of lentils. So put .25 cups of lentils into My Fitness Pal. Do the same simple calculation with the rice, vegetables, and oil (and then maybe add 100 extra calories for things you didn’t input, like tomato sauce, etc. that contains very few calories.
When inputting vegetables into My Fitness Pal for any meal, DO NOT sit there and individually track each type of vegetable – that would be way too cumbersome.
If you have a meal that has a bunch of vegetables (onions, garlic, carrots, peas, broccoli, peppers, etc.), simply look up “mixed vegetables” and enter in the amount you think you had.
This isn’t about being perfect.
But note, always air on the side of overestimating the number of calories you’re eating because as humans, we tend to underestimate the amount we eat.
Should I Measure Out All My Food?
What I like to say is be more diligent at the beginning, and then become less strict as time goes on. If you don’t have experience tracking food, I recommend trying to be very consistent for at least several weeks.
So if you have cereal, put it in a measuring cup and then poor it in your bowl. You’ll be amazed at how little cereal there is in one serving. Look at the serving size (it’s often around 1 cup for cereal), so poor 1 cup of cereal into a measuring cup and then poor it in your bowl. Then repeat until you get how much cereal you want, and track it. After you do this a couple times, you’ll no longer need to measure it out because you’ll know how many cups are in your typical bowl.
Use this same philosophy with all your food.
While this process might seem tedious right now, I promise once you do it a few times, it gets much easier and more straightforward. The app also stores your most recent foods meaning once you input them once, if you eat the same breakfast, for example, the next day, it is super easy to track it because all the food you ate the previous day is right there.
How Do I Measure Something Like Pasta?
Simply look at the servings per container, estimate the number of servings you had (by comparing it to how much you made), and then enter that amount. For example, oftentimes, there’s 8 two ounce servings of pasta in a box. Each serving contains about 190 calories. So if you made 1 box and ate about one fourth, you would have eaten 2 servings. Aka, 380 calories of pasta. Scan the box and plug it into My Fitness Pal.
Things To Look Out For
Keep in mind that when you are tracking your food, at least for the beginning, you need to track everything you eat and drink that contains calories.
The butter on your toast, the oil/butter in/on your food, the handful of nuts you eat right out of the bag, the milk and sugar you put in your coffee, the alcohol you drink.
The oil on your food is the biggest one. Each tablespoon of olive oil has 120 calories and needs to be accounted for!
These foods/drinks are often overlooked, but it all adds up and needs to be counted.
In general, if your goal is weight loss, I would air on the side of over estimating how much you are currently eating because like I said earlier, research shows people consistently underestimate how much they think they are eating.
So if you used oil when cooking, which is very calorically dense, then make sure you actually input the amount you think you had (and overestimate it to ensure proper tracking). I like to add 0.5 – 1 tbsp worth of calories of oil if food is prepared with oil.
Final Thoughts
Again, while this process seems tedious right now, I promise if you do this for 30 days, you will benefit from the process and not only will you become much more conscious of your eating habits, but you will be right on your way to achieving your goals, whether that is to lose weight, maintain your weight, or “bulk up.”
If you do this for 30 days, you’ll likely know about how much you should be eating each day to continue seeing progress. So be very consistent for those first 30 days and then you can choose whether you continue tracking, tone it back to “every once in a while just to check in,” or stop all together.
I hope you learned something new! If you have any questions, feel free to drop a comment below or follow me on Facebook for more daily content about fitness and nutrition. My Facebook is: https://www.facebook.com/devin.mcnamara.77.
Lastly, if weight loss is your goal and you haven’t read my article on my top 10 tips to lose weight, be sure to check that out here.