Here’s an interesting truth about my personal psychology: I meet my goals more quickly when I measure my progress.
- When I lost 40 pounds in 1997, I did so because I counted calories.
- When I biked 2000 miles in 1998, I did so because I logged my progress in an increasingly elaborate spreadsheet.
- When I paid off my debt, I did so because I tracked every penny I spent.
Although record-keeping helps to motivate me, I still view it as a sort of a crutch. I’m not sure why. Still, I’ve decided that it’s a crutch I need to use. I’m trying to get back in the swing of using FitDay.
The problem is, I’m finding it difficult to actually get into the flow of things. When I spend money, I generally have a receipt, which makes tracking my financial affairs much easier. But when I eat, nobody gives me a receipt for the calories.
I find that I can keep good records at FitDay for a couple of days, but then somehow I lose my focus. I forget to enter a breakfast, and then a lunch, and then I’m off track again. Or I “cheat”. I eat a cookie, but don’t enter it into the database, thus invalidating the whole point of recording data.
Obviously, this is a behavioral issue. At my money blog, I often write about circumventing personal finance problems through the use of “money hacks” — little mind-games and tricks that you can play on yourself to force the desired outcome.
I guess what I’m looking for here are some suggestions of “fitness hacks” that I can use to make sure I record my data. I’m sure that many of you count calories, too. How do you make sure that you get the information recorded completely and in a timely manner? Do you carry a piece of paper with you? Do you force yourself to log the information immediately after a meal? Are there iPhone-friendly apps for doing this sort of thing?
{ 47 comments… read them below or add one }
You could try sparkpeople.com. It’s a free site that has a nutrition tracker and a fitness tracker. They also award points for using the site’s tools, which give you a little trophy which gets bigger as you accumulate more points. For an apple-polishing star collector like me, it’s a nice way to get a little pat on the back for doing what I should.
You mentioned iphone apps, so I’m going to assume you have an iphone. I haven’t had the chance to play with one yet, but I’m sure it has some sort of note-taking ability. Why not just create a simple text file in which you jot down the details of what you ate? For example: oatmeal, peach, 1 tsp brown sugar. You can actually get it into FitDay later. The important thing is to write it down when you eat it so you don’t lose track of stuff.
As far as cheating and not writing stuff down, make yourself write down what you are going to eat BEFORE you actually eat it. Include quantities (e.g. “2 cookies” instead of just “cookies”). If you are tempted to eat more after you have finished what you wrote down, make yourself write down the extras before you have seconds. You may find that just the thought of getting out the iphone and writing it down makes you think twice about having seconds, and if not, then at least you have that recorded.
Hi JD, I’ve been following your blog for a while but don’t think I’ve commented till now.
I find that I can’t bring myself to really track my calories (or even what I eat everyday) in writing. And I do the cheating thing too! It’s ridiculous because the only person seeing that I’ve eaten a cookie or whatever is me, but I still won’t write it down.
So what I’ve taken to doing instead is keeping a rough count of my calorie intake going in my head every day. I estimate the calories in my food to the nearest 50 or 100 calories, using the nutritional info on the packages and a bit of guesswork. I’m aware that my method isn’t the most reliable, so I also lowball my target calorie intake, with the assumption that I’m almost certainly miscounting and underestimating sometimes. The benefit of this method is that I keep a running count going on all day so I can adjust my later-part-of-day eating accordingly, which is when I’m most apt to eat unhealthy things anyway. And at the end of the day, if I’m within my target range then I just forget about it, but if I’m over then I’ll remember that and try to compensate a little the next day.
I don’t bother keeping track of carbs/proteins/fats/etc, I just generally make an effort to eat fiber and protein (which I definitely don’t eat enough of either) at every meal and try not to go overboard with saturated fats (I’m a huge lover of cheese so this one is hard). The only specific thing that I keep track of other than calories is fruits & vegetables – I aim for the UK recommendation (that’s where I live) of 5 a day (only 1 of which can be from smoothies/juice).
It’s not the most scientific or rigorous method but the good thing is that it’s easy to do and it works!
I second Sparkpeople.com (yay Debi). That is what I have been using, and it is free. (No affiliation). Their nutrition tracker allows you to copy a meal from one day to the next. If you are the type that eats the same thing for breakfast every day, like me, this is really helpful. Then again, if you eat the same thing all of the time, you eventually just get to know how many calories it has, which tends to discourage me from actually logging it.
Although I can see the value in keeping track of things, I’ve never been able to count calories. My general philosophy has always been if it’s healthy food, eat more, if it isn’t, eat less. Still, if there’s an Iphone App for calories, I might use it. I’ll have to check this out.
- Dave
This doesn’t exactly address your question, but I have a hard time sticking with record-keeping as well. What I did was to track absolutely everything on sparkpeople.com for a little over two weeks, right after I ate or exercised. It was enough time to learn what it felt like to eat a certain amount of certain types of calories, as well as how big portion sizes should be. After that, I went on what I’d learned and checked in from time to time to make sure I wasn’t doing any “calorie drift” or whatever you want to call it.
I found it much more sustainable in the long term, although an important part of it was building in the expectation that I’d fall off the wagon here or there (beeerrr…precious beeeerrr) but get right back on immediately thereafter.
I should say I was less concerned about losing weight than getting fit for a 10k, and I ate more (usually protein) when I was hungry simply because my body was telling me I needed more. I did end up shaving about 5 lbs off my already-slim frame over four months.
Tried MyNetDiary online for 3 months, but chucked it due to the painful interface. Ditto a few other freebies.
After discarding (PC app$) Weight Wizard (a pain to use day-to-day, no right click, etc) and Fit Assistant (another PIA, no help file– write the developer when Qs arise), I finally settled on FitDay. B/c everything about this app is pure joy, and it handles anything and everything (Food/Activity journals, diary, mood, weight and more)– yet intuitively and easily– I’m faithful to it. I can even easily customize certain exercises, such as Wii Boxing, Running, etc.
For notes while I’m out and about with the iPhone, freebie “Lose It!” prompted me to boot paid Lean Me Pro and others.
Note: I started this personal hunt back in August. By the time the New Year rolled in, FitDay had emerged as a look-forward-to-it daily habit. I can’t recommend it highly enough. Shame they don’t offer a trial — I could have saved myself a LOT of grief (and $$) by tapping it first.
I’ll echo the others who commented on sparkpeople’s “award points” as incentive to log in. I’m not sure why the points mattered to me, since you don’t actually *get* anything for them. Point of pride, I guess.
Something that works well for me is giving myself personal incentive rewards. “If I log my food every day this week, I can rent three movies instead of one”, or something else that I’d probably do anyway, only now it’s more valuable because it’s a Reward for Doing Good.
This is all so much about mind games, isn’t it?
Cammy wrote: This is all so much about mind games, isnÂ’t it?
Yes. Yes, it is.
Thanks, everyone, for your suggestions so far. I might have to give SparkPeople another try. I didn’t care for it when I used it before. But for now I’m going to try to get into the habit of FitDay.
I love the suggestion of writing food down before I eat it. Nice. That may be a keeper.
@PG
Holy cats!!!!!
The iPhone app “Lose It!” that you recommend is awesome. (Well, after five minutes of using it, it seems awesome.) This may be the tool I’ve been looking for.
I am a firm believer in tracking progress. Whether it be for weight loss or running, I keep tight tabs on it. I schedule it out and write down very short, short, medium, and long term goals. I never would have lost 130 lbs if I did not do this. I got in the habit just with practice and the understanding that without it I would probably not make it to goal.
http://run4change.wordpress.com
I use gyminee.com to track workouts and calories. I’m not sure if they have an iPhone app, but the iPhone mobile site works really well. I found that it really helps to use the mobile site to track calories right after I eat…or else I tend not to do it. Using a little notebook also helps as well. If you’re going to track calories, you need to track them all. Even if you just write down what you eat, without tracking calories, it can help you not cheat. But it really comes down to making yourself write down everything!
I’ve been off and on weight watchers for quite some time now, but one of the key principles for those folks is that people who write down everything they eat lose a lot more weight than those who don’t. I will likely not get the statistics right, but I believe our WW meeting “leader” stated that people typically underestimate the calories they consume each day by 800-1000 calories, which is huge. Writing these things down (with all known ingredients is so essential to capturing all the calories). Very hard to do at a restaurant, but if you’re making something at home it’s quite easy.
For me, I’ve purchased a WW 3 month journal, and I try to record all the items I’m planning on eating for the day into the journal, along with their respective Weight Watchers points value:
Cappuccino (3 points)
1 Cup Cereal w/skim milk (4 points)
Snack (0 points)
etc
Once I actually eat these things, I will put a check mark to the left, so I know that I actually ate them. At the end of the day, I can just go add up the points and ensure I stayed within my daily allowance.
i did about two weeks of fit day input — enough to find out that I get a lot more salt than I thought — but stopped because so many of the things I eat I either make myself or are vegetarian choices that aren’t on their lists, so I had to input the whole recipe or back of the box, and it was taking so much time that it didn’t seem to have enough value.
But, I suspect the reason food tracking works isn’t because you suddenly see that x has y calories but that if you commit to writing everything down you start making different choices — which is why writing down before one eats instead of after is the better choice. I think that if we all always ate with other people, the same thing might happen — I know it’s a lot easier not to have a second or third helping of something if my very thin husband is sitting there quite content with his first serving. Actually, a lot of what I’ve been doing is making it more difficult to eat — putting the crackers and chips on an inconvienent shelf has had a very positive effect.
I admit that I have a lot of the same problems. I use CalorieKing, but I have trouble being consistent with it. Sometimes, I just get in the groove and do it for a few months, but I will inevitably stop again.
I’ve found, though, that I can maintain my weight and lose small amounts of weight without tracking calories. I end up threatening myself with tracking calories if I don’t behave. If I want something that I really shouldn’t be eating, I repeat to myself, “Look, you don’t want to start journaling again, do you? If you don’t want to journal, then you need to behave so that you can prove that you don’t have to!!”
I used to be bad at tracking calories because the process was so time consuming. Then I started using The Daily Plate on Livestrong.com. Their food database is user supported so every food I’ve searched on is in there. It is so quick to enter foods that I’ve kept up on it every day for several months.
http://bitsmack.com
There is a Livestrong (The Daily Plate) app for the iPhone. It lets you record foods that you’ve eaten and also lets you search their food database. The other day I was standing in Panera staring at a scone, only to look in up in the app and find that it has 600 calories – no thanks. The Daily Plate has a pretty simple interface for entering your own recipes, which I like too (though, not on the phone, of course).
LiveStrong (The Daily Plate) also has an iPhone app that will allow entry of your data and then syncs to your account on the website. It’s current big limitation is it doesn’t synch data from the website to the iPhone app.
I’ve been getting into the habit of recording my calories lately. The first thing I did was use google calendars to send me a reminder email twice a day (morning and night) to record my calories and then add my totals to a simple spreadsheet I put together. In the morning, this helps me make decisions that will make it easy to record everything– I choose clothes with pockets (so I always have a pen and mini-notebook or scratch paper with me) and start a dated list first thing, since I find that keeping track over the course of the day keeps me on track and my overall calorie counts much lower. The evening reminder is helpful because it gets me in the habit of finishing my list for the whole day, evaluating my food choices, and recording them in my spreadsheet. Over the course of about 2 weeks, recording my food has become a habit enough that I’ve cut back my google reminders to just once a day (at night). At first, my focus was just remembering to write down everything I ate regardless of the number of calories; since that has become habit, I’ve been able to go on and evaluate my food choices and identify ways to eat more healthfully based on my present eating patterns.
Oh yeah, and I also set up a google calendars reminder to weigh myself every Monday and record that in my spreadsheet as well. Very helpful stuff.
I think when we track we focus on how many calories things really have and that has been a great help for me. Cookies for 3 million calories or an apple for 75 or so. Hmm.
I use a spiral notebook. For each page, I write down the my weight and the food and drinks I consumed along with the calories for the day. It’s one day per page, so each page has a date; my weight in the morning; what I ate and drank for breakfast, lunch, and dinner; and my weight before I go to bed. So that I don’t forget, I had the notebook on my desk. The pages were written in advance for each week with entries for date, weight(AM), breakfast, lunch, dinner, weight(PM). I then committed myself to write down the entries for the day. Having the pages with the blank entries staring up at me everyday helped me to keep track. Also, I’m basically lazy so this method prevented me from grabbing a cookie or a donut; I didn’t want to jot it down, so I didn’t have that cookie or that donut! It saved me from consuming a lot of unwanted calories and probably saved me some money too. In just over a year I managed to lose 40 pounds by doing this. I’ve been struggling with my weight since my teens (I’m in my 40s now) and this was the only method that I was able stick with and helped me lose weight with very little effort.
Right now you seem kind of skeptical that recording this info will help you and are therefore really willing to commit to it, even though it has helped you achieve other goals, and other readers have told you how much it has helped them. It’s a pain in the ass, but for me, progress is it’s own reward — I’m not sure for which reason it works, but when I write down everything I eat, I have success losing weight — period.
I think you should take a page from Steve Pavlina’s book and commit to 30 days of writing down EVERYTHING you eat, plus the calorie content. If it hasn’t helped you at the end of 30 days, you can give it up and not feel any guilt about it. If you’ve made progress, you won’t need any tricks to help you to remember.
Oops, I meant in that first sentence that you were unwilling to commit to recording what you eat since you don’t seem to think it will work for you.
In the vein of “mindhacks”, rather than trying to get better at tracking I decided to reduce the number of things that needed to be tracked. What worked for me is to standardize on a breakfast or two, a lunch or two and a couple of snacks that I eat almost every day. I know how many calories those are so I don’t bother to track them. Then I just track the non-standard things: dinner, “bonus” snacks, beer, etc.
Additionally, there is a school of thought (e.g. Dr. Mehmet Oz) that eliminating variety in your diet actually helps with weight loss. Eating the same thing every day may sound boring, but I got used to it pretty quickly. If I get bored, then I switch to something else until I get bored with that. I dropped 60 lbs in a year so I think it definitely helps.
You might be trying to tackle two things at once without realizing it. You want to get into the habit of eating healthier. But first, you’ll have to get into the habit of tracking calories because this is the method you’ve chosen to help you achieve the healthy eating part. Why not focus primarily on counting calories for the first month? Eat 4000 calories? Great! During the first month, consider it a victory if you count the 4000 calories. After all, that would be a lot of work. Then, once you’re in the habit of counting calories, you can focus on the primary goal: eating less food.
A simple tool I’ve used for establishing this kind of habit (well- known by many) is a calendar. Not on my computer, but on my wall. I mark an X with a sharpie any day that I do something active. I strive for at least 3 days a week. Why not use a calendar to mark every day that you successfully count calories? And realize that missing a day or two wouldn’t be failure as long as you end up establishing the habit that you want.
I recently discovered Fitday, and while I like the web program, I’m in the same boat as you – I’m not consistent with it. It’s easy for me to enter my breakfast, lunch, and snacks because a) I eat pretty much the same thing for all of those meals, and b) I can enter the data right from my desk at work. The problem for me is that I fail to enter my evening meal, or anything else on the weekends.
I’ve tried keeping a food log, a spreadsheet, and a text file on my Palm. For some reason, when I get home from work, I don’t remember to use them.
I know that people who document their eating do better. My wife does Weight Watchers, and I read her stuff and have started following their “Core Plan.” The WW plans don’t count calories, they have some kind of point value based on fat, sugar, carbs, etc., and one is allowed to eat so many points.
I find it easier to figure out the point value of something and just keep an eye on those during the day. That’s why I eat pretty much the same things for lunch and snacks – it’s easier to track, and I dont’ mind the monotony. Essentially, I’m doing what Brian, above, recommends.
I tried fit day and sparkpeople. I liked sparkpeople the best but being a busy mom I was never able to get to my computer to feed the food in that I had eaten so I would scribble it on a pad in the kitchen until I had time to run it upstairs to the computer.
That was so redundant! I searched around and finally found a fit for me. I bought one of those huge desk calenders where you rip a page off at the end of each month? I put it on the counter next to the phone and all those gadgest right smack in the corner of my kitchen. When I pop a grape in my mouth I just scribble it down on that calender date. I round to the nearest 50 and call it good.
This method is so handy because that calender is always there with huge gaping boxes waiting to be written on. Its right where I make the meals and right beside the fridge. This is by far the best way I have found to keep myself on track!
I lost 41 pounds this past year! Im an old lady so weight loss is slower than the younguns but I’m okay with that.
I guess the question I’d ask is: am I prepared to count calories for the rest of my life? Because losing the pounds is only the tip of the iceberg in this game; the bigger and longer challenge is maintaining that weight loss going forward.
I think for most people it’s a lot easier to stay in the habit of tracking your finances (precisely because of the receipts, statements, etc.) than it is to maintain the habit of tracking calories. It seems a lot more time-intensive to me to track everything you eat and its calories or point values, and a lot harder to maintain this habit for decades into the future.
I suppose after six months or a year of tracking you can develop a “calorie sense” of the items you eat and have a rough idea of how many calories you consumed in a day and whether you crossed over your self-imposed limit, without having to actually tally everything up. That seems more sustainable to me than actually continuing to count calories for the rest of your life.
My diet is an experiment of my own devising; I don’t know yet whether it will work or not, but basically I’m just eating my normal diet (which is varied and healthy, and tends to be light on red meat and fats) and reducing portion size, plus cutting out the high-fat sweet snacks that I’ve gotten into the habit of eating between meals. The other big element is that, thanks to the Beck Diet Solution, I’m very quickly learning the difference between true hunger and perceived hunger. I’m listening more closely to my body and so far successfully fighting urges to eat when I’m not really hungry but just bored or eating out of habit. That’s a big step for me, and because I burn off about 650 calories a day in exercise I’m already seeing results after one week, which of course motivates me to continue on.
We just started using livestrong to track our food/exercise. One reason DH loves it is that there is an iphone app for it (he’s iphone crazy!) so that’s good for him. I’m pretty much at the computer most afternoons so I enter my data then.
One of my big things is treat day. I do my long run Fridays, so Friday night is treat night. I don’t go CRAZY but I have things I’d been holding off on all week, or we go out (like tomorrow night we will be yay) and I’ll order without fear of going over my allowance for the day.
If writing down the calories as you go is a problem, but you can budget a block of time once a day or once a week to write them down, why not use that iPhone to take pictures of the food you’re going to eat, just before you eat it?
And if you decide not to eat the whole thing, take another picture of what’s left over.
It’s a little potentially awkward when dining out, but I expect friends will understand if you say it’s for your blog.
I’ll be interested to see what you end up doing — I’ve not had much success in sticking with calorie counting, myself.
I’ve tried to read all of the above. Lots of good stuff I have never heard of before and an old favorite sparkpeople. It does do a good job of tracking if you have the time to input. I do not eat the same thing day in and out so it takes a lot of input before you get your favorites built up. So I drift back and forth onto the site. StickK.com is an interesting site for changing habits. It has the added benefit, if you want, to put your money where your intentions are.
As part of my Fitness new Years Resolutions I have started doing a couple of things that may help you:
1. In my bathroom I have a monthly calendar taped right above my bathroom scale. This calendar has a pen attached to it. Every morning before I hope into the shower I weigh my self & write down that number. Every evening when I change into my PJs I write down what exercise I’ve gotten in that day. It may be something as small as a 10 minute stroll with the dog or a more substantial 3 miles on the treadmill.
2. Since my cell phone has a camera I have started taking a photo of everything I’m about to eat. At the end of the day I look back at those photos & make notes in a little notebook Food Diary that I created. More than the actual number of calories consumed I have started writing down how hungry I was before I ate my meal or snack & how full I was when I finished.
Its early days yet but here’s hoping the scale shows progress….
Good luck to you all on your health goals for the year.
i had a hard time keeping track of calories until recently. i just decided to quit whining about how hard it was and do it (not a very good mind hack). i keep a notebook by my desk and write down everything that i eat. then i record it in sparkpeople at the end of the day. i also meet with a dietician once or twice a month, so i bring the notebook with me to our appointments.
plus i put together a weekly menu so i’ve already planned to eat, with the calories already calculated out. hands down, this has been the best thing for me. i don’t have to think about what to eat or how many calories it is when i’m hungry. i just look at the menu and know.
as far as little sweets or whatever that you don’t record, i tell myself that i’m doing this for me, and lying about 50 calories now will keep me from being healthy in the long run.
i <3 sparkpeople and physicsdiet too.
I started using myfitnesspal.com and I have lost 4 pounds since Jan 1. It’s FREE and very easy to use. It’s also very motivating.
When I’m in calorie-tracking mode (which I do for around a week every couple of months or so), I find that having pads of paper in the kitchen and in my purse/backpack are very helpful. I’m not a huge fan of immediately entering everything into a tech gadget, as that means that I have to said gadget on hand. But there’s always paper and pens around. If I’m cooking, I track according to individual ingredient, and then break up the total calorie count of the entire dish according to portion size. One particularly good pencil-and-paper tracking system is a simple daily calender broken up into fields for the three main daily meals and snacks. There is enough space on an 8.5 x 11″ piece of paper for three to five days. Keep one on the fridge, and one folded up in your backpack/purse/pocket/whatever.
At the end of the day, I enter in all the info into a calorie-tracking website. Right now, I use The Daily Plate. With calorie tracking websites, the actual caloric information can be off, so I to gather as much info on calorie content from the Nutrition Info labels (when eating food from a package). Otherwise, the calorie info is usually close enough, or I can easily figure out if it is way out of wack.
When I’m not in full on tracking mode, I keep an approximate tally in my head. The good thing about tracking calories and digging up the calorie counts yourself is that you quickly learn what the approximates are in your most commonly eaten foods. If I’m not looking for a precice calorie count, this method is good enough.
Remember to include the little things like condoments, as they can add a whallop onto your count!
Also, by taking the time to measure every bit of food you prepare yourself, you will be able to estimate approximate serving sizes pretty easily. This really helps tracking what you ate in restaurants, when craking out the measuring cups could be a little embarassing!
IÂ’ve started using FitDay as well. As an earlier commenter mentioned, PRE-planning meals helps keep me on track. When I leave work, I print out my food journal (with all the food I already ate plus what I plan to eat later) and take that home. That sheet stays right out on the counter and I check things off as I eat them. If I donÂ’t stick with my plan and eat something extra or sub something out, I write it on the sheet and enter it on FitDay later.
This seems to be working well so far. I really like all the tools on site and have had a lot of fun playing with it. If I can keep viewing it as a fun thing to do, I think it will help me keep it up. It will be awesome to start seeing my weight numbers go down!
I also made my FitDay profile public and put a link on my blog. That adds another layer of accountability. People can see if I doing what I said I’d do.
I use The Daily Plate on Livestrong, and when I was being very consistent about it I lost 20 lbs. Then the holidays came, I got distracted and fell off the wagon. I’ve just started back up this week.
One thing that I do on TDP is create a listing of things I eat regularly (and as noted above, I find that having some regular go-to meals reall, really helps with making the calorie-counting process less tedious). For example, a couple of my usual breakfasts are oatmeal with a bit of milk and brown sugar, or a cup of plain lowfat yogurt with honey and granola. Rather than enter things in individually all the time, I created a Yogurt and Oatmeal entry that contains all of the things that go into that meal. Then I just click on it. If I know I will be having yogurt for breakfast all week, I just fill it in for the week so I don’t have to do it again.
Someone noted above that they finally got into the habit because they simply decided to buckle up and do it. I know that’s not a hack, but that is definitely part of how I got in the habit. Also, I made a challenge out of it. Simply staying within my calories was my first challenge. Then it was trying to cut down on sugar. Then came reducing sodium. Then it was trying to put in all my recipes for homemeade foods, because the bane of my calorie-counting existence is having to figure out and count calories on homemade recipes.
I have a desk-centric job so I am able to input stuff pretty easily most of the time. At home, I make sure to make a pit stop at the computer. If I had an iPhone I’d be using that Daily Plate app, definitely.
Good luck getting back into it! I know calorie counting has been invaluable for me, not just for llsing weight but in learning about portion control. I would say that is my main problem!
what a ton of discussion! I have not read through all of the comments, however I will just share my take on calorie counting. I have been writing my daily caloric intake in a journal for almost 4 years. I am to the point where I eat the same foods daily, so I could get away without counting if I wanted to. I continue to count calories because it gives me peace of mind. I also weigh out my portions daily too. I also pack my lunch daily, so no guesswork there as far as calories consumed. I also do enjoy eating out on occasion and I DO NOT count those calories
well, to help me, I use 3×5 index cards. I carry the index card with me, and then just write it down. It’s quick and easy.
Then, At the end of the day or sometimes the next morning, I enter everything from the card into simpleweight.com.
I tried some iphone apps, I tried doing immediately into the web. I’ve tried fancy food logs. It’s so much easier to just use paper and then when you have time to convert it into digital when you can.
Just another quick thank you for your suggestions. I’ve used many of them over the past couple of days. Though it seems silly to be pleased that I’ve completed 48 hours of calorie counting, I am. This feels like a good, smooth start. Entering calories in advance helps. “Lose It!” for iPhone helps. Limiting my tracking to just calories, fiber, and saturated fat helps. Lots of little things help. I’m trying to make it easy to succeed.
Awesome!! I’m glad it’s helping.
Keep track of your exercising calories burned also. There is a lot of stuff on myfitnesspal.com about why you need to eat the calorie amounts that you burn off during exercise (assuming you are limiting your calorie intake to a certain number per day, like 1500 for example). It seems counterintuitive but it helps take the weight off faster without losing muscle mass.
And no I don’t work for or get any money from that website, I am just a huge fan of it.
I don’t know whether you are on Twitter, but it is pretty compatible with the iPhone, and the site http://tweetwhatyoueat.com/ can show you how to keep a food log through those tools. If you are on Twitter, you may want to create a separate account just for this so that everyone who follows you doesn’t also see everything you’re eating
Edit to previous comment: that site utilizes direct messaging, so no secondary account is necessary!
I use my iphone to log my meals the night before. I’ve pre-programmed all my faves, so I just have to push a few buttons. I agree with Brian and Dr. Oz, that less variety is easier and just as satisfying. I lost 18 lbs since Thanksgiving without exercise. Once I lose 25, and the “diet” has become a “lifestyle”, maybe in another 4-6 weeks, I’ll start to exercise. I know I’ll be more likely to succeed if I don’t do too many things at once.
{ 1 trackback }