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[quote=Anonymous]Here are my tips - 
At first it will be tempting to eat a lot of packaged foods so you can scan the bar code or to eat at chain restaurants that are in the app. Remember to also eat lots of “Whole Foods” like fruits, veggies and easily weighed things like a piece of chicken.
Get a digital kitchen scale that can measure grams. Lots of snack foods are 28g per serving. The calorie difference between 25 and 32g of peanut-butter can really add up. On the other side, if you are using a measuring cup and rounding it to 35g instead of 28g, you are slowly undermining yourself. Measure until you get good at eyeballing portions. Then measure again one week a month or so to keep yourself accurate.

Homemade recipes are the hardest to track. I used to dutifully put all the ingredients in the app and portion out my recipe and then my husbanbd would take a weird size portion. Now I put my recipe in the app, weigh the empty bowl or dish, weigh the ingredients to get total cal and then weigh the finished dish. I have a notebook on the counter that tells me how many calories per 100g. This works for me because I cook ahead and eat the same dish 3-4 times for dinner and lunch during a week.

Ask yourself if calories seem realistic. There are some values in there that seem off. If you google you can usually find the USDA basis for the calorie count and that will tell you weight. I think the app says an apple is 100cal, but that might be based on a 6oz Apple when my Harris Teeter sells those massive 10-14oz apples.

Many calories are user entered by other users. Some people are idiots. Use common sense and double check when in doubt.

When you feel lazy, use a similar dish at a familiar restaurant instead of entering all the components of a recipe. Just use common sense.

It gets easier after the first month because the food you eat often will come up at the top of the list when you search. [/quote]

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