The Calorie Counting Club

The_Shed

The_Shed

New member
Hi All,

I thought I'd start a little calorie counting club on here. I've browsed around the site and there's a lot of useful stuff out there but it would be nice to get most of it under one roof.

I must admit I'm not starting this club out of the goodness of my own heart. I have just started to use FitDay to count calories and to be honest the whole thing bores me. I've tried a few things but as a scientist by training calorie counting just makes sense. It would be good to get some encouragement from everyone on here and it would be great if people could share tips on how to relieve the monotony of calorie counting.

Here's a tip to get you started...

When I'm in a hurry and haven't got time to note down calories fom packets of food etc I use the camera in my mobile phone to take a quick snapshot of the nutrition label so I can review it later.

Good luck everyone.
 
Welcome and goodluck to ya.I have gotten use to calorie counting to where
I can tell by looking how much it is.I have been counting calories since july of last year.Have a great day Tammy
 
I've been counting my calories since July 24, 2006 and find it extremely helpful to keep me on track.
 
Just wanted to chime in here and let you know that I made a website that lets you easily add custom foods to FitDay -- especially restaurant food. The address is: [link removed]

I hope you'll check it out and find it helpful.
 
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Cheers Girls,

So is the bottom line that calorie counting get's easier? It seems so monotonous to do. It's something I can handle when I'm at home and can weigh stuff but what happens when you go out? God, you can tell I'm a complete novice at this counting malarkey.

Cheers for the website dietfacts, it's very good. I've book marked it for future use.

I used to think I had a fair handle on how many calories were going in but the first time I did it I saw I was undereating a lot.

So do people tend to count calories for whole meals rather than individual components? I've been weighing each individual component and then totaling them up.

So many questions but I feel a little guilty having nothing to give back.
 
hi, i find counting calories the best way for me. i just registered with fitday and found it to be so useful. even if i have a bad day i am honest with myself. i also like the way you can custom add your own foods. as i am from england i find there are certain foods which i like and eat and they are not on there. slim
 
Hey The_Shed
I'm a calorie counter. I weigh each individual component of a meal out. It is a bit monotonous... but you only really need to do it until you get an idea of how much a serving really is. Plus eventually you'll get an idea of how much you should be eating to lose weight/maintain. As for restaurants... I don't really count them because obviously you have no idea how the food was prepared. I try to pick healthy options, and not eat out to often. The big problem for me with counting calories is alcohol lol... I'm in university so I'm obviously going to drink and it's amazing how many calories you consume on your way to drunkenness. It's unavoidable, so I usually accept that there is going to be one or two days when I'm not so perfect.
 
Interesting

Cheers Slim/Fresh,

I am honest with myself and accept that some days will be better than others. I'm in the UK so often find the Americanisms of most of the diet stuff a little frustrating, but hey, that's the world we live in.

Alcohol is also one of my downfalls too. It's amazing how many calories you can get through. To be honest though now that I'm a little older it's the hangovers that stop me before anything else!

So do people see themselves as having to count calories for the rest of your life? It's interesting what you said about just getting to know what a serving size is Fresh. That's the one apprehension I have...if I start counting calories and I lose weight, does that mean I'm a slave to calorie counting?

Cheers for the comments, plenty of food for thought (no pun intended!)

Shed.
 
I am counting calories and find it to be a real eye opener. I am also using fit-day.

I think the awareness is what really counts. Fit-day is not exact, but I use it to "build" my 1700 calories for the day. I enter in the morning what I ate for breakfast, what I brought to work for lunch and snack, and then, depending on the calories, I plan my dinner according to what I ate yesterday and what tomorrow is going to look like (special events? restaurant meals? meetings?). My family has gotten a huge variety of foods for dinner for the past four weeks because of this! It has helped me branch out a lot.

Also, last night my daughter made brownies. She and my husband grabbed one after dinner - both with big glasses of milk. If I wasn't counting, I would have grabbed one, too. But it didn't fit in with my planned calories for that day. So I "booked" a brownie for tonight... hopefully there will be some left!
 
Counting Calories is just another tool then

It sounds like my worry of calorie counting becoming a lifestyle isn't necessarily waranted. Most of the posts so far basically say it's a good way of just opening your eyes to what's in food.

I think what I'll do is do it for a month religiously and then reassess what it's giving me.

So is fitday the best thing out there? I guess it is since a lot of people use it. It seems to set the amount of calories I use as being extremely high (nearly 4000). I like some of the functionality but not others.

So do you guys envisage stopping counting calories at some point?
 
at some point I'll give up the security blanket of recording everything - because I pretty much know what I need in a day - but I will never stop counting... it's what has worked for me and im sticking with it
 
I'm calorie counting at the moment, and I'll probably carry on with it until I've reached my target weight and maintained it for a while, just until I'm sure I can keep the weight off without needing to record everything I eat.

I started out using FitDay but didn't really get on with it, to be honest. Being in the UK, most of the foods I eat aren't already in there, and I found adding everything I eat was too much of a pain. (I ended up choosing foods that looked similar most of the time, which kind of defeats the object of the exercise.) So I found another site that's targetted to the UK, which is much easier. It allows for meal plans and recipes, so now I can add my whole day's food with just a few clicks of the mouse. It isn't free, but I guess you pay a price for convenience.

What I have found about calorie counting that is good is that I don't worry about what I'm eating like I have when I've tried to diet in the past. I put in breakfast, which never changes (creature of habit :rolleyes: ) and dinner, and then I know how many calories I have to play with for the rest of the day. And if I know I'm going to have a more fattening meal or a glass of wine in the evenings, which usually happens at weekends, I'll spend a bit longer at the gym in the morning to make up for it.
 
FitDay

Hi Ali,

I'm not really getting on with FitDay either. Some lack of interest but it is a little too americanised for me also.

Which one are you using?

Cornwall eh? I'm jealous. I've got lot's of friend who come from down there. There's some very nice countryside. I went to the last year which was very surreal.
 
I'm using , which I have to say is working really well for me. Practically everything I eat is already in there, so it's really easy to update. If you want to try it out, you can get a free trial (only 3 days though, unfortunately) but after that you have to pay. It's targetted towards UK and US, so you have to make sure you choose UK foods on signup/login. If you don't, I guess you get the wrong food database.

I've only lived in Cornwall since last December, so it's all pretty new to me still. I don't live far from Minack, but we haven't been there yet. There are so many other places to explore within easy walking distance. We just saved up a bit of money (enough to live on for a few months), found a place to rent, and moved. We worried about jobs when we got down here. My partner started work in the middle of February, and I start next month, so it's worked out well for us. The money's just about run out now, but we'll be fine when we're both working. I guess it was a risk, but it was something we really wanted to do, so we did it :)
 
Calorie counting... a necessary bore?

I, too, feel that calorie counting is extremely boring. Especially if you have to actually measure or weigh your food. I'm a believer in the power of approximation -- if we can do it with our calorie expenditure, why not also allow for approximate values for calorie/vitamin/mineral input???

It seems that the best way to achieve a diet that is well-balanced (I'm talking calorie-.... carb-vs.-fat vs.-protein... vitamins-&-minerals -wise is simply to vary your diet WIDELY. It can be quite difficult.

Leftovers (especially the tastiest ones) cry out our name from the fridge and freezer... "SAVE ME! I WILL DRY OUT IF YOU DON'T HAVE ME FOR LUNCH!" That's a fine mindset when talking about fruits and veggies. But too often we are dreaming of that leftover slice of pizza in the fridge or last night's mac & cheese.

But the only leftovers worth considering are the fruits and veggies. Produce is the quickest to expire. And they are the most healthy to begin with. A good rule of thumb is to fill half (or more) of your plate with veggies before loading up on the entree. Very few people eat enough vitamin- and mineral-dense foods each day. And that is a genuine shame. In the land of plenty, there should not be malnourishment.
 
Ok, I've just started today and although I've only been doing it a few hours it's going quite well. Can anyone recommend any good sites on the internet that break down the calorific content of food?
 
there are a ton of them out there -and most access the usda food database.



are both pretty good tracking sites that reference the usda database

is a good resource for researching foods

really just google calorie counters and you'll find a bunch - the one that works is the one you will use...
 
Make your own calorie counter

Hi Sarah,

I've tried a few different calorie counting websites and like maleficent says what works for you is the one to use. It might take a little while to find one but you'll get there in the end. I found that the US ones didn't really work for me in the UK and most of the UK ones you have to pay for so I just started my own. I'm a bit of a techy geek so I started putting together a spreadsheet in combination with a little database. Everytime I eat a new food I enter it into my little database and then when I eat it again I can pick it from a drop-down list and it autopopulates the spreadsheet. I figure what's the point of subscribing to some website to have access to 30,000 foods when really I only eat about 200. Over time the amount of stuff I will need to enter into the database will drop and then I'll just have to put stuff in the spreadsheet. If all that sounds a little geeky then low tech is good too. Grab a diary, set aside some pages at the back to keep track of your foods and calories etc and then day-by-day in the actual diary you can make a note of what you eat and when. If you can't find the calories for a specific food the you can just goodle it. It's amazing what you'll find.

Good luck. I'm still finding it quite dull to do at the minute but I'm seeing the benefits of it and it'll become routine fairly quickly I think.
 
How long is long enough?

I've been calorie counting for a couple of weeks now and I'm still a little bored by it. How long do you think it takes before you get a good idea of calories...good enough so you don't need to bother counting calories.
 
at about 6 months I was pretty good at guessing what things were - but I will never stop reading labels because some things are deceiving, and using an online food journal helps keep me honest... but it's more a linus style security blanket.

I'm not sure I'll ever get to the point where I won't always have to watch - I like food and I like to eat -and when I do I gain weight - that part of me is not going to change - so I will always have to be aware...
 
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