So I'm starting to write down what I eat, everything I eat and I'm kind of scared to start. My biggest struggle with losing weight is the food I should be eating and how much.

I've been trying to look up information about nutritional eating and it seems that everyone has a different opinion and I'm confused.

What do you do to keep track of your eating?

my breakfast today had 636 calories (2 eggs, english muffin w/butter, grapes and a glass of milk). I've never counted my calories before but I still feel like that is a lot.

I write down everything I eat. I plan my meals ahead of time, in the morning I will know exactly what I will have to eat that day, I alter it if necessary but stay within my calorie allottment. There are numerous places to get calorie counts, on the internet or in books. I personally like the Calorie King (book) it has loads of information besides calorie counts, others prefer online, it is all a matter of choice. 636 calories for breakfast sounds like quite a lot, remember butter is pure fat. I don't know the calories in English muffins, were you eggs, boiled or fried, maybe scrambled ? Thos things will all make a difference int the calorie counting. It is really not as hard as it may sound to you right now. I think of it like having money in the bank, I have just so much I can spend. Same with calories , I eat about 1400 calories a day and divide it up by meals and snacks, my snacks are 100 calories or less , other than that I eat 3 regular meals.

I use an app on my phone. I don't have the patience to write it by hand and look it up. There are tons out there, but I like mynetdiary.com because I can use it everywhere and it already has almost every food I eat preprogrammed.

I keep a food journal and just write what I eat, how much and the calories. I try to eat a lot of whole foods and low fat, high fiber foods. I keep my calories between 1200-1400 a day and workout for 60-90 minutes of cardio 5 days a week.

For me, keeping a food journal is probably the single most helpful thing in keeping my weight loss on track. I just write down everything by hand- right now I keep track of calories and grams of protein. I'm pretty good at mental math so it just takes me a second to add on to my running total. Sure, it was a pain in the a$$ to look everthing up when I first started, but since I tend to eat a lot of the same things, I rarely have to look things up anymore.

It definitely gets easier over time and it is worth it to stick with it because you'll learn SO MUCH about what and how much you're eating and you will easily see places where you can start to cut back or swap things out.

Calorie counting is not an exact science, and you might find slightly different calorie info depending where you look. And that's OK! Just do the best you can to weigh/measure your food and that will help you be as accurate as possible.

Great job getting started! The beginning is always the hardest, but it WILL get easier over time. This is a great place to bring questions!

I think 636 sounds high too. If you're interested in calorie counting then I suggest calculating your bmr online using your height & weight so you can figure out some calorie guidelines for your meals & snacks. I have 1800 a day and I divide mine up as follows - 300 breakfast, 200 snack, 400 lunch, 200 snack, 500 dinner, 200 snack. I tend to not need as much food in the morning but I get super hungry in the afternoon/evening which is why eat of my meals increases a little

Depending on what you like, you might just want to split your calories evenly by 3 or 4 meals with no snacks, but it's really up to how you eat and what your schedule works best with. If I might suggest ways to reduce the above breakfast calories-wise, I would say switch to a buttery spread if you're using regular butter (I like brummel & brown, just 45 calories a tbsp), eat just one egg OR half the english muffin (since most whole english muffins are ~120 calories and a large egg is around 70, you're saving equivalent calories either way), and switch to 1% or skim milk if you haven't already. For some, 1% or skim isn't tolerable but in general if you drink calories through milk, soda, juice, etc then you have less calories to eat and are more likely to go over whatever daily allotment you choose.

I know that it's a lot of advice to take in all at once, but at the very least it's great that you're just tracking what you eat at all to see your typical intake and get used to calorie counts for the foods you normally eat. You'll be a pro in no time

I just began my journey as well, and it is only day 3 for me keeping track of my calorie count in a food log. What helps me is weighing everything I eat with a kitchen scale because weight is typically a more accurate way to measure than volume.

It's a lot of calories for a breakfast, but that sounds about right. Depending on how many grapes, how much butter and what type of milk you drank, it adds up.

An egg is approximately 70 calories, so you ate 2, that makes it about 140 calories for those two eggs. You didn't say if they were fried, poached, or boiled. The frying will add some calories to that, because of the oil.

A pat of butter is about 40 calories, if you put more on the English Muffins, then you've already hit 200 calories. The English muffin itself can be anywhere between 160 - 220 calories (or more, depending on the type). That's already 400 calories more or less. Then you add in the milk and the grapes and you're over 600 calories.

Because calories add up quickly, I decided to make some choices that really don't impact my life significantly, like not drinking anything that has calories (or artificial sweetners). I'd rather EAT those calories than drink them!

I also had to change some things that I really like and only have them once in a blue moon. My breakfast now are a lot lower in calories and they keep me full -- like fruit and cottage cheese (4% because I find the low fat is kind of icky). I'll have a snack mid-morning when I get hungry again.

636 cals for me sounds about right if breakfast is your largest meal of the day. For me, I wake up super starving and I have a very active job so I eat most of my calories at the start of the day. Sometimes my lunch is my largest meal, but I never eat the bulk of my calories at dinner.

Making different food choices might help. Did you have full fat milk or fat free milk? Real butter or fake stuff? (Even though the fake butter saves some calories, i would much rather save some of my calories and use a bit of the real stuff.)
I love eggs and to help save calories is using one egg + egg whites from the store. it adds volume and little calories.

And I agree with Rana I would much rather chew my calories than to drink them. Water, diet soda, unsweetened tea...ect. Though I stay away from diet soda because the fake sweetener gives me headaches. So ever so often I'll save some calories though the day and splurge on a real sugar soda No sweetener, no corn syrup, but the real stuff.

The fact that you've started writing everything down is a great step, do this for a few days, see where your calories are comming from. Then you can figure out where you can trim them off if you are eating too much. measure everything out to make sure you don't cheat yourself.

Try not to fear tracking calories. I think what I found so scary at first was realizing just how many I WAS eating. Hang tough, you can do this!

I'm doing the same thing starting tomorrow. I've been trying the whole eating smaller portions/making better choices thing, and (shocker) it doesn't seem to be working. So time to get militant about it.

I also figure for the first few weeks I'm going to make it easy on myself by only eating things that have calories clearly stated (ie: frozen meals, 100 calories snacks, soups, etc). Eventually I'll incorporate home cooking and try to estimate the caloric content of everything, but I figure to begin with it's too easy to cheat.

I'm trying to make it as foolproof as possible.

myfitnesspal.com has been a lifesaver for me. Members contribute to their food database and it saves SO much time. They also provide you with an exercise tracker and daily caloric goal. Check it out. I tried several cal counting sites before I found my favorite.

I use Fitday PC software, really helped me a lot

I started my food journal yesterday, I'm just using a pretty journal my mom gave me (to motivate me to actually use it) and I wrote down everything I ate yesterday and the calories and I added up all of the stuff I ate yesterday and I actually ate under what my goal was. I'm also tracking my exercise in my journal too.
Considering yesterday was the first day of tracking, and I didn't feel full (you know, the classic "ugh, I don't want to move" kind of full) at any point yesterday, and I made a conscious effort to exercise- I feel great today!

How did your first day go, Kbandnerd?