How do you guys do it?
 

How do you guys do you day to day calorie-counting? Do you plan all your day's meal in advance and then adjust it if needed or do you just add on up the points? Do you give yourself an approx per meal? I'm trying to get into a new routine of keeping a food diary and I want to know how you guys are keeping track. I know some of you are going online to keep track of everything but I don't have a smart phone to bring with me so it'll have to be in a notebook. I'll be coming online to check the nutritional information though when I don't have it.

I am not a mean planner. I find that it is too constricting for me and I know I would never stick to it.

I tend to just eat when I am hungry and add those points up then once I have reached my limit for the day, I know I cannot have anymore.

i preplan (ish) - i used to preplan the day before (it's really not that big a deal) but i've got my menu pretty much set now so i already know breakfast is going to be one of these five things, lunch will be one of those half-a-dozen things, etc.

plus, i've gotten pretty good with the portion counts so i can easily swap on the fly.

I keep track of everything in my head and round things to the nearest 50. I never write anything down.

I get the next day's lunch and snacks ready the night before, but that's pretty much the extent of my planning.

i keep track of everything, i keep a notebook in my purse, i dont have a smartphone either. i allow myself 1500 to 1800 calories a day, and i wont eat late meals.

i cant be too strict, if i do that i will never stick to my diet, but for example today i had an egg and some fruit for breakfast, lunch was a salad with chicken, peppers, and corn, and dinner is a bbq at my friends house. i ate very light earlier, so i know i can have some bbq!

I used to plan things out in advance and then eat what I had planned, but I wing it right now and it's working fine. I think this way works well since I'm familiar with the rough calories of common meals I make or foods I eat, and they're all relatively low-calorie -- makes for easy swapping out/wiggle room when things go differently.

Of course, I'm home-bound at the moment, so there's an inherent flexibility in my meals. When I worked, I definitely needed to at least roughly sketch the day. Either way, I also roughly plan out dinners for the week (for shopping purposes). I usually end up pretty "off track" - eat out instead on a bad pain day, or make the meals in a different order than I thought I would.

I don't adhere to a strict calorie limit, either. I have a target to aim for, but under/occasional over-shooting is fine by me. Calorie cycling works better, I've found. Anyway, it's not very strict at all and I could be losing faster, but doing it this way is incredibly easy.

I don't know if I could keep doing it if I didn't have an app to keep track of the calories. I have a rough plan every day for what I will eat and generally shoot for around 250 calories for breakfast and 250 for Lunch and then the rest goes towards snacks and dinner. If I know I'm getting close to my count for the day, I will enter in what I plan to eat for dinner and then make adjustments as needed to avoid going over.

I plan my meals for the day in my head (roughly), but it's always subject to revision as the day unfolds. I eyeball portions, estimate calories, and keep track in my head. I enjoy breakfast and lunch foods more than dinner foods, so my calorie allotment is divided equally between breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks (about 500 each).

F.

I do it after the fact. I'm aiming anywhere from 1300-1600 calories per day (depending on if I exercise and how my weight loss has been doing). Then when it comes to meals, I just mentally divide my total calories into 1/3's, then try to eat that amount at that meal (I eat at my college's cafeteria). I've been calorie counting for a while, so I can guesstimate pretty close to what something will be. Once I get back to my dorm room, I log the food using an online food journal and *most* of the time I'm pretty close to what I guesstimated in my head. If not, I just have to cut back on the next meal.

If I know I'm not going to be around a computer for a while, I go ahead and jot it down on a napkin or in a notebook, so I won't forget anything once I put it into the computer.

I personally love calorie counting and food journalling--nothing is off limits, as long as you count it (I do try to eat my fruits and veggies though). And I've lost 30 lbs. so far, so something must be working. :)

I eat diet meals.....and when I eat something that is not then I have to check the calories....but since I eat diet meals, it is really easy to just add the calories up....

Dinner is my most unpredictable meal, so I start my "day's" calorie count with it (e.g., Tuesday night's dinner gets put into my smartphone app as Wednesday's "breakfast"). The other meals' claories are easier to regulate. After I input my dinner, I just think about what I might have the next day and input my planned breakfast & lunch. Sometimes, I diverge from what I planned, and that's no big deal. Even if the divergence is over my allotted calories, I just deduct that overage from another day (I calorie cycle as well, so I have some flexibility).

I have an account on lose it dot com . I can enter my data through their website data base or use my smart phone. Either way.

I track my calories on sparkpeople.com. That site seems to keep me more motivated then most calorie counting sites. I'm a big gamer, so I'm going to take a wild guess and say it probably has something to do with the points and trophies you unlock.

I'm an intermittent faster.I don't plan my meals. I cook relatively healthy..rarely deep fry etc and I give myself a pretty big calorie window to fill. My absolute limit for the day is 1600, and I have a difficult time even reaching that number with the way I eat and cook. I also don't snack or drink my calories, other then some cream and a wee bit of sugar in my coffee.

Thanks for the replies guys! I'm still figuring out how I should do this in order to succeed.
cbressler, what diet meals do you mean?

I've been a calorie-counter from the get-go, and my strategy hasn't changed much since I started. I have a smart phone but don't use it for my calorie counting; I just keep track of my numbers in an excel spreadsheet on my home computer. I eat 1200-1500 cals/day, and lately try to stay as close to the 1200 end as possible.

I usually know what I'll be eating for breakfast, lunch and snacks the next day, and so sometimes I input those numbers ahead of time... but often I just wait until the following evening, as I have a rough idea of what they'll come out to. I generally try to keep my pre-dinner calories to 600 or less. Dinner usually runs around 300-400 calories, and I always input that info (and the food from earlier in the day) after my meal, and then I know how much wiggle room I have for snacks the rest of the evening.

On days when I know I'll be having dinner out, I plan ahead to a degree - basically, plan to eat lightly (<400 calories before dinner) so that I have some extra room for the higher-calorie restaurant meal.

I'm not too much of a planner, but we eat the same rotation of things for the most part, so I've come to know what's what.

I also keep a spreadsheet on my computer and track that way, since I work at home I am on my desktop all day anyway.
I am aiming for around 1400 a day, but I am attacking it more from a weekly standpoint than a daily.

So I have 10,000 calories a week to play with. (I don't add or take away for exercise)
I weigh in on Tuesdays... then it's a free for all. LOL Whatever I have been craving I eat on Tuesday. One week we did Chinese food, one week ice cream sundaes, last night it was pizza. So I ate 2600 calories yesterday ....
but come Monday I will most likely only eat about 700 to 800 for the day.
I find attacking it from a weekly standpoint instead of having to hit that number perfectly every day is working really well for me. And having the low days I feel is helping me in the long run, where if I feel like I need to cut calories down to 1200 or so a day instead I am already used to eating that and less on some days, so it won't be a big deal.
I have one very high day, 4 days of trying to hit the number, 1 day of being on the lower side, and 1 day of very low. I am averaging 2 pounds a week so far and I am thrilled with the way it's going.

I also am not feeling hungry, nor deprived since I always know Tuesday is on its way if there is something I really just feel I have to have. This way I also make sure it's something I REALLY want, and not giving into cravings on a whim.

I promised myself the only way I was going to do this this time was with foods I love and want to eat and to do it MY way, other than any kind of formal plan. I suppose if it needed to be labeled you could say I am doing a bit of calorie cycling and a bit of intermittent fasting. (I have gotten used to skipping breakfast most days, or will just have fruit) But again, really it's just what is keeping me happy and losing weight at the same time.

HTH!! :D

When I started in January, I pre-planned for a week at a time. That way I KNEW what I was going to eat and exactly how many calories it was.

Since I feel like I've gotten the hang of it, I now just pretty much make sure I have the same things in the house from week to week and eat whatever sounds good at that time.

It's worked pretty well for me! I'm down 52 lbs since January!

I have a pretty steady routine:

-Breakfast is some kind of sandwich/wrap/etc and changes all the time = 175-250 calories,
-Snack is fruit = 70 cals or less,
-Lunch is soup that I've already cooked and frozen into 1-cup portions = 100-175 calories,
-Snack is veggies w/hummus = 200 calories,
-Dinner is anything that I want to eat, often meals I've already cooked and frozen into portions with calorie counts = 300-400 calories
-Snack is usually popcorn or something crunchy = 130 calories

I have room to groove. Sometimes I don't want my snacks, want something different to eat, or sometimes I have last minute dinner plans, but I just keep it similar everyday and don't stress it too much. I've been doing this for years and it works well for me. I just make sure that the meals I eat have a lot of veggies in them and I'm all set. :)

I aim for a certain amount for each meal and snack. Snack-wise I don't buy anything which would break my target, but of course it's always possible I might eat two of something. The only thing I choose in advance is whether I am having a big lunch and small dinner or small lunch with big dinner. Everything else I decide as and when I am likely to start cooking. I track on Fitday for PC as all the online ones were way too slow for me, they all refreshed every time you typed anything in and that drove me bonkers. I do have a certain number of "free" foods WW style. I have a low calorie count to allow for that, so I won't record things like sugar-free mints, a cup of coffee (milk but no sugar), certain fruit and veg, it's not worth it. I'd rather assume it will not total more than 100 cals and deduct that from every day's allowances.

Sometimes I make something to be "picked at" over the course of the day, like maybe a big bowl of popcorn that I input as if I've eaten all of it and then just eat it as and when I feel like it. I tend to find that too much advance planning leads to eating it because it's already been entered, so if I put into Fitday that I'm having some cottage cheese then I'll eat it all even if I'm already satisfied. Yes, I binge on cottage cheese, how twisted am I? I love it.

Myfitnesspal.com

Since you don't have a smart phone write everything down and enter everything on the computer when you get home. Before I discovered this website I did a lot of guessing and come to find out I was eating way too many calories! Now I vary around 1,300-1,450 calories a day. I'm allowed 1,510.

When I first started out, I was a daily-accountable-must-track-every-bite kind of person. I had to retrain my body to eat right and the diligence worked! As the months wore on, I realized what I could swap out sanely and eyeball without much grief.

Right now, I am at the eyeball/portion control phase. I don't obsess over the calories in a friend's stew, I just make sure to take a 1/2c serving and have salad or fruit before hand to keep things in check. I managed a birthday splurge weekend without any attention paid to anything calorie-wise and haven't gained at all, so it must be working just fine. :D

In the beginning I planned my whole day every morning. This really helped keep me on track when I was 1) still really susceptible to cravings and was building willpower and 2) didn't yet have a sense of how many calories were in things.

Now, it's been over a year. I have the same breakfast every day, similar snacks every day, and I split the rest of the calories between lunch and dinner. I roughly add up my lunch calories in my head as I'm packing it, and when I get home I enter everything before I have dinner so that I make sure I don't go over.

(I now allow myself to swap out snacks for an equivalent portion of dessert at work if there's a birthday or something, but I'm pretty picky. I won't waste cals on a junky cookie from the deli, but if it's a gourmet truffle, heck yeah.)

When I started counting, I pre-planned everything in a notebook usually the day before so I could add up calories and tweak my meals if need be. After a month I had enough of an idea of calorie counts to just mostly wing it. About once a week ill log my daily intake just to be sure I'm on track in my estimations.

A bit different
 

I have noticed that so many people tend to eat less calories during the day so they can "save room" for dinner (so to speak). I have actually found that this method makes me feel like I am starving by dinner time, not to mention even if I don't overeat I am still going to bed with a very full tummy. That can make for a nasty night of sleep, which in turn makes me crave poor foods like candy and chips the next day just to feel like I can keep my energy up.

I have found that if I start the day with a small breakfast and eat my lunch as the largest meal of the day, I am usually still quite satisfied by dinner. This way it isn't hard to just have a snack and go to bed. All total I usually consume about 1200 calories this way.

Most times I try to eat my carbs in the morning (i.e. cereal), a meat, veggie and fruit for lunch, and a bit of cheese or a nutrition shake for dinner.

I had previously gotten to 190 pounds and lost to 150 in the span of 6 months doing things this way, so it is what I a returning to. Working so far!

For me it's pretty easy, I usually have the same breakfast everyday, lunches rotate between the staples, weekend lunches are usually fairly predictable, and I map out all my menus for the following week to help with shopping lists etc. planning.

I log my calories for the day straight before bed, it's part of my daily routine, write in my diary and input into myfitnesspal diary too - I usually just use my iPhone to input the data, sitting at the computer for that sort of thing irks me.

I don't stress too much about going over on workday calories - because my weekends usually end up being under by hundreds, due to the extra amount of exercise I do and less intake (just the way it happens for me).

I figure out what I'm having for dinner first, and then I add up the other calories I eat until I hit my mark. Usually, I'm allotting 600-800 for dinner, and then eating 400-600 the rest of the day.

I'm like many others and worked out the calories on a few delicious quick meals and stick to these. It's easier said than done though. Tasty low cal meals are not often filling or fast to make.

It's important that these are delicious though or I won't stick to it. It's easy now. Visiting parents, eating out with friends and holidays usually involve a little weight gain though. It balances out in the end though.

I pack breakfast and lunch/snacks to work and put those in on my (loseit!) app on my Iphone. I know I can eat whatever is in my bag from morning until mid afternoon when work is done and that it is accounted for. Since I am a teacher it is pretty hard to eat out because of limited time so most of the time I pack lunch. On the weekends I try to stick to a similar plan.

Like someone above mentioned-I have also found that eating a light dinner is best for my weight loss. I try to save no more than 500 calories for a light dinner/evening snack and I try as a rule not to eat after 7pm.

Here's what has worked for me in the past and what I'm doing now~

Breakfast is easy to figure as I always eat one of 2 different meals.

Lunch is a low cal protein shake along with a very light meal or snack. The protein shake seems to do more to get me through till dinner than anything I've tried.

Dinner is where the majority of my calories are used and I generally eat what I fix for my family just keeping within my calorie allotment which usually means smaller portions. I also keep a few frozen meals in the freezer for emergency use when I don't have time to cook.

Probably the most important thing I do is to make sure I have food in the house that's both tasty and low calorie. When I make my shopping list I make sure to include several low cal foods and snacks because I know if I get hungry and there isn't any healthy food in the pantry I'll eat whatever I can find.

I use a notebook to jot down my calories at each meal and I take the notebook with me when I leave the house. I also just started using WeightCommander.com which is a pretty cool tool.

Well, I'm fairly 'new' to calorie counting but I do what I lovingly call 4 Square as in four square meals a day at 400 cals. I can have whatever I want as long as they add up to 400. The fourth 'meal' is actually my snacks. I can have snacks throughout the day or a dessert in the evening as long as in the end, it still equals 400. But most days, I end up doing two snacks at 200 each. I'm sort of a night owl, so eating the same at dinner as I do at the other meals works best for me or I would end up starving and overeat. Every person is different in that aspect. Also, you could change your totals... I aim for 1600 a day since my weight is still up there, but you could always cut some easily. Like, you could do 300 cal meals instead of 400 to do 1300 per day. All I know is that I use to track like crazy when I was doing lowered carb and well... I like that I can have whatever I want and as long as I stay at that cal. count for THAT meal or snack, I'm on plan for the day!

Interesting to see how much calorie counting can vary - we get so entrenched in how we do it that it's surprising to see that others can approach it so differently!

When I don't write it down, I cheat. Period. I use LoseIt.com and have been very happy with it, but a notebook works fine as well. I usually pre-plan at the beginning of the day (typically after breakfast) - since I can change it later in the day, I tend to put in what I am likely to eat for the day, and see how the totals come out. If plans change, I can go back and revise my log.

I think in the beginning calorie counting is a lot of work. You don't know how many calories are in the foods you eat often, and you have to do a lot of looking things up and adding it all up. But whatever your method, I think we all tend to eat the same foods with at least *some* regularity, so once you have looked it up to see how many calories are in your everyday foods, it gets easier because you already know some of the numbers. You still have to make some guesses when you go out to a restaurant, etc., but I think of that as extra motivation to cook healthy things for myself so I know what goes into my meals. :)

One thing that LoseIt does well is that it keeps track of your previous meals, and you can copy them into your log for the current day without having to put it all together again. You can definitely do this with a notebook too, if you tend to eat the same foods and meals regularly.

This is the first week of my weight loss journey and I'm calorie counting to do it. For me I'm following the plan by Slim Fast, 2 200 calories meals a day, a 500 meal a day, and then 3 snacks. SF aims for 1,200 calories a day but my goal is 1,400 a day, so my snacks usually are higher in calories or my big meal has a few more. I'm keeping track of what I eat in the daily calorie accountability thread here on 3fc. Right now, starting out, I'm eating/drinking a sf shake or bar for breakfast and supper and then having my big meal for lunch. I'm also looking into calorie cycling, to keep things interesting :)