Best way to count calories?

[Anonymous]

I am going to try the "diet" where you just eat 400-calorie meals. However, I have never tried counting my calories, and I am sure that most of the meals that I eat are more than 400 calories. For people who are keeping track of your calories, how precisely are you doing this? I cook a lot from scratch, and most of the recipes I use don't have nutritional values. I know there are online calculators - any recommendations as to which are the easiest to use? If you count your calories, do you find that you just resort to using recipes that already have the calories calculated?

[Anonymous]

Most cookbook calories are innaccurate. I use an app on my smartphone. There are lots of them. I use loseit (loseit.com). I either enter the recipe or if it is a common meal, it will usually give an estimate. It depends how much time I have to input.

[Anonymous]

If you cook a lot from scratch, you can find the calories of the ingredients on the packaging (flour, sugar, oil, etc.) and you can do web searches on "calories zucchini" etc. Write the calorie counts on the recipe card, add them up, then divide by the number of portions the recipe makes. (Try caloriecountabout.com)

400 calories isn't too hard to hit if you practice portion control and go easy on the oil/butter/etc. One serving of pasta is about 200 calories; a serving of brown rice is about 170. 3 ounces of chicken or salmon is about 150-180 calories, and veggies are low-cal. I would worry less about hitting exactly 400 calories and hitting roughly 400 calories per meal.

[Anonymous]

I use my fitness pal. You can add your own meals to it. When I make a dinner I look at the calorie count on the packaging, say for olive oil, and multiply bu how many servings I used. Or I google to get an estimate. Then I add it into My Fitness Pal. MFP also has a lot of things already in the database, like 1 grilled chicken breast, condiments, etc.

Pretty easy so far, but I just started this week.