New To Calorie Counting
 

Hi! I'm new calorie counting...

I've done Weight Watchers, South Beach and Atkins in the past...

I was wondering if there were any tips or "must knows" to calorie counting.

Thank you!
;)

not sure what you are using but I use sparkpeople.com as a calorie counter- it's awesome!!

I second sparkpeople.com for recording food/drink/exercise.

I purchased the body bugg. I love it! It has an awesome program to input food.

I guess I'm just new to calorie counting and don't want to do anything wrong. lol

:)

The thing I'm finding very helpful is writing up the food and the calorie value BEFORE I put any of it in my mouth. I have an iphone/ipod touch app called Tap & Track that I use to do this and its mobile which means I have it everywhere all the time and the calorie info is available offline which means I have it available if I'm abroad or can't roam or I'm on a plane.
Before I had this app, I had the Calorie King Book and a small notebook which was a lot less discrete but still pretty good.

The reason I say it's important to take note or keep track through out the day is that in the past, I tended to at the end of the day forget what exactly I had consumed or if I remembered, at that point it was too late to make better decisions or edit my actions for the day. Because sometimes when you see the calories of some items, it gives you second thoughts about wanting to eat them, especially in light of how your day is going in terms of calories consumed.

Thank you!

I second recording it before. Whenever I guess, I'm almost always wrong, and I'm wrong in the wrong direction!

Also, buy a food scale, it makes life easier.

Don't forget to count the "little" things. If you sprinkly parmesan cheese on your pasta, you have to count it. If you eat ONE m&m...count it! Everything that you put in your mouth, make sure to account for. I think this also helps you stay on track because it's hard to look at a days worth of food and see two snickers bars or something like that in there lol But I have a friend that eats the 'fun size' candy bars and she would never count they in her food diary b/c they were "little". She wasn't losing any weight and was getting discouraged, after a few disagreements I got her to start including them and low and behold she realized she was adding hundreds a calories weekly with "little" foods.

A food scale, measuring cups, measuring spoons, and good online sources for finding calories is a must. Read labels!! For instance this week I needed to buy some pasta sauce. There was a brand claiming to be "heart healthy" and I thought oh that one is probably better. NO! The regular brand had less calories, less sugar, and more fiber.

I agree that you must record everything you eat. Either do it before or keep a notepad with you and write down everything and then record it.

I second this! I used to ignore all the "little" foods thinking that they couldn't possibly add up to THAT many calories. For some reason, I did it this time around and whaddaya know? They DO add up! Sounds so silly, but it's so easy to discount all the mini-foods. Good luck! :D

All of the above!

I started calorie counting for real about 2 months ago and I have learned so much from here. I use FitDay, but often go to other sites to look up nutritional info.

The only thing I can think of to add is to try to look up restaurant info before you go. Even better, if you can, choose the restaurant based on where you can get something low-cal and delicious. This has been a definite downfall, when I am stuck going out with other people. Recently we went to Chili's and I knew it wasn't a low-cal deal, but I thought I made reasonable choices - I found out later I consumed ~1700 calories at that one meal! (and I only ate 1/2 of my black bean burger!!) Just last night I asked about the restaurant where we were going and was assured they had grilled fish and salads. Well, they didn't. I would have eaten before if I had had that information. I ended up eating a bowl of lettuce with some dressing on the side. Every single other item was fried. So I ate two fried mozzarella sticks 'cause I was starving. Still stayed within my calorie goal but went way over in percentage of F-A-T.

Live and learn!

you guys need to try the app for the iphone and ipod touch called "Lose It".
It is an amazing tool and I'm having a really great time using it! It has all sorts of supermarket foods and restaurant foods and a place where you can log your day and add your own foods. =)
Check it out!!! I can't imagine doing this without it!

I agree Lose It is great...it's been tracking everything I eat since I started my journey. I can't imagine doing this without it..totally agree here too!!