I have an excel file - it has a few columns - description of the food, calorie count, and its category. (I note if something is a sweet, unhealthy snack or alcohol.) I like to see what %age of my diet those things make up. I also enter exercise calories burned to get at a net number.

I take the calories from packages, from a restaurant's website or I just make my best guess.

I don't count all the time, just when I'm actively trying to lose some weight. Counting makes me more conscious of what I'm eating. I'm less likely to eat 3 spoonfuls of peanut butter or drink that second glass of wine if I have to write it down.

I use Loseit which has many time saving features like adding meals, adding by scanning the bar code, and a massive database of many existing foods.

Generally I find that 80% of what I eat comes from the same 200 or so items or so. It's quite easy to add a bowl of cereal at breakfast when you've had it two or three times that week or something. It's a little tricky when you go to a new place and order Pad Thai and they make it some way that you don't figure, but trying to (over) estimate the calories of that and you will generally work out ok.

For stuff at home, a small kitchen scale is a wise investment.

Honestly it really doesn't take more than one minute a day. I've been calorie counting now for 4 years (lost most of the weight in the first 9 months and just kind of keep at it for my own quirky quantitative reasons).

This is why we stopped counting calories.

I use the Fitbit app and it stores things you manually enter and keeps your “recents” and “frequents” so if you’re like me and often eat the same things made the same way, after the first few weeks or months it’s all at your fingertips. It also will suggest things in a group that you frequently log together—so if I make pasta and select my noodles, it also suggests the sauce and cheese I always log with it so it’s one smooth entry.

I used MyFitnessPal and you can look up stuff from restaurants. So if I'm having vegetable soup, I just add in a Panera soup or something that sounds similar. Plus after a while it stores typical things you eat so its easier to add them.

Anonymous wrote:When you started, how long did it take you each day to put in all the info?

10:16 here. I plan out my food each day and enter my stuff in the morning or even the day before - it takes me about 5 minutes now. I started with the customized foods a long time ago, so I imagine it took a bit longer, but generally I try to stick to simple foods during the week. I'll modify throughout the day if I decide to switch something up. If I know I'm going to be eating out that night, I'll plan to eat less fat and carbs throughout the day.

I keep a separate food scale in my office if I didn't measure out my food before-hand (for instance, for nuts or something).

This works for me because I have my own office and a desk job. I imagine if you're on the go, it takes a bit more preparation.

Also I accept it's not exact - I used to try to be a perfectionist about tracking and it just led me to eventually derail because it was too much work. Now I just estimate. For instance, I made a big pot of turkey chili with 2 pounds of turkey last night. Turkey and beans is already entered into my fitday, so I measured out the total chili amount when it was done, then ate 1.5 servings of it.

The 10:20 PP is right. It's important mostly to track the high-calorie stuff--to educate yourself about what you're actually eating and how much is in it. Most green veggies are low in calorie and aren't going to make or break you either way.

If you use an app like MyFitnessPal, you can enter stuff you eat a lot (like your favorite homemade recipes) into a "my foods" section and then when you eat them again, it's really fast.

I don't have a lot of weight to lose, but I use calorie tracking when I've found that I've gained 4 or 5 pounds from things like snacking on crackers while at work, or always having chocolate at night. Tracking helps me be mindful of everything I put in my mouth, which helps me lose the few pounds. And I know, if I'm planning to go to an event where i'll have dessert and wine, I should have lower-calorie meals all day.

For me, it's about mindfulness, not exactness.

Op, initially it is time consuming until you get the hang of it. Then you’ll discover that the foods you eat are more or less limited, so things start repeating.

Here are some shortcuts that I use:
- I don’t enter low calorie vegetables (lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers, etc). Unless it’s a very complicated salad with lots of things in it, I just enter the “big” ingredients. So a salad of greens, and vinaigrette, I just enter the vinaigrette calories.
- I accept that what I account is “in the area of” and accept that probably some days I may underestimate and some days I may overestimate and that is fine also. So I don’t bother with scales and getting things down to a calorie.

This helps me not to obsess about it and makes it easier to write down.

When you started, how long did it take you each day to put in all the info?

I use a food scale and enter my food in my app (I use fitday.com, but only because I've used it for so long and have created customized foods for things I eat regularly).

Focus on the higher-calorie things like your fats, breads, etc. I don't think you need to enter in the exact amounts of vegetables, as that stuff is negligible. I also enter in my proteins because I want to make sure I'm getting enough.

Once you've been measuring for a while, you get good at estimating.

I use weight watchers so I don't exactly count calories - I count points - but part of the reason tracking works is because you are being careful about amounts. You don't estimate, at least at first. You have to keep yourself to known portions so you can control portions. People who gain weight tend to overeat without even realizing it, and while overeating green beans or watermelon probably isn't going to matter, cheese is a very calorie-dense food which will add hundreds of unnecessary calories to your day if you aren't careful. It will be a pain at first but being precise in measurements, at least in the beginning, is the KEY to making calorie counting work.

PS, I like weight watchers because it's just counting points (not calories, so easier) and fruits and veg, along with certain other lean proteins, are no points.

I think people that do this strictly buy a food scale and do not eat out until they have the hang out it.

I've tried it a few times but putting in the ingredients of every salad or sandwich i make, must less dinners and the unknown of things I eat out make it really time consuming and unhelpful. It felt like the day could be off by 100s of calories based on whether I estimated my amount of cheese right and whether the tracker was using a high cal or low cal version of common recipes. Am I missing something?