Calorie Counting 101
If you are new to the losing fat section of the bodybuilding.com forums then it will not take long for someone to tell you that in order to lose fat one must eat less calories than one's body burns in a day. To do this one must have an accurate count of calories consumed. This guide will go over the basics of counting calories. It will not cover how many calories a day one should consume or what macronutrient ratio is optimal for fat loss. That can be found here:
http://forum.bodybuilding.com/showth...hp?t=156380403
Logging foods: In the old days bodybuilders would use a pen and paper to log everything they ate and calculate the calories and macronutrients consumed by hand. This method will still work but it's the 21st century and we have more time efficient ways to do it. I will link the 2 most popular online food logging websites. Both of these sites have apps for smartphones. They are both free.
http://www.myfitnespal.com
http://www.fitday.com
Whether you choose fitday, myfitnesspal, another website/app, or use pen and paper, the principles of counting will remain the same. You must log everything you consume in a day that contains calories. This includes liquids and/or supplements that contain calories. Some people also log calorie free foods (gum, diet soda, black coffee, etc). Since they do not contain any calories, this is optional. They may however contain something that you want to track (vitamins, minerals, sodium).
Weighing foods: You must weigh your foods! Do not estimate! Weigh everything on a kitchen scale. Preferably a digital scale that weighs in grams. Only liquids can be measured by volume. On a package of oatmeal the label will usually say that a serving size is ½ cup. It will also have 40g in parentheses. Use a scale to weigh out 40 grams. You will find that if you dump oats into a ½ cup measuring cup that it won’t always equal 40 grams. This becomes more important with calorically dense food such as peanut butter. 1 tablespoon is usually 100 calories, however one can easily put 2-3 “tablespoons” worth of peanut butter on the end of a normal kitchen spoon. Instead weigh the peanut butter according to how many grams are in a serving. The same goes for scoopers found in supplements. One scoop of whey does not always equal 1 serving. Always weigh your whey! Here are some links to a couple of kitchen scales for purchase: http://www.amazon.com/EatSmart-Preci...eatsmart+scale
http://www.amazon.com/Ozeri-Digital-...rds=food+scale
Handling foods with no nutritional information: Sometimes fruits, vegetables, and meats do not come with nutritional information. The USDA has a comprehensive list of nearly all fruits, vegetables, and many different cuts of meats in grams.
http://ndb.nal.usda.gov/ndb/search/list
Using myfitnesspal you can simply search the fruit, vegetable, or meat with “usda” afterwards to obtain the same nutritional information. When weighing meat, ALWAYS WEIGH IT RAW. The nutritional facts are based on the raw weight of meat unless packaging specifically states otherwise. This is true for just about any food you cook.
Dining out: When dining out, attempt to find nutritional information on the restaurant you are at. Many larger chains have all that information available. Know that this is somewhat of an estimate as they are not weighing things to the gram in the kitchen. They also might be liberal with ingredients like butter and oil which can add up quickly. If the restaurant does not provide nutritional information for their meals, attempt to deconstruct your meal and track it piece by piece. Bring a food scale to a restaurant if you must. If you want to ensure absolute accuracy, don’t eat out.
Accuracy: Accept the fact that you will never be 100% accurate. The FDA allows for up to a 20% margin of error with nutritional information. You must simply do the best you can possibly do to not let that margin grow any larger by estimating what you have eaten. Along these lines you will find products that claim to be zero calories like mustard, cooking spray, and many others. They actually have somewhere between 0-5 calories per serving. Because of rounding they can claim zero on the label. If you want to be precise, count them as 5 calories a serving. This is increasingly important if you consume these products frequently.
Once you have a solid idea of what your daily/weekly consumption is like, it is easy to manipulate calories to fulfil whatever your goals may be. Before you decide that you need to increase or decrease calories to help accomplish goals, ask yourself “Am I tracking everything correctly?” Are you drinking something with calories and not counting it? Are you weighing everything to the gram? Are you having cheat days/meals that you are not tracking? If you answer yes to any of these then your caloric goals may be correct, you are simply not meeting them.
Tips:Here are some tips that I personally like to use in my own tracking of calories:
When weighing condiments I zero the scale with the container sitting on the scale. I apply the condiments to my food. I then put the container back on the scale. It will read a negative number in grams. That is how much condiment I used. This does not work for aerosols like pam or whip cream.
If I am on a cut and am going out to eat at a restaurant with no nutritional information, I reconstruct the meal in myfitnesspal and add 10% to the caloric total. This is in case I underestimated. Research shows humans are notorious at underestimating what they eat. In the rare case I overestimated the calories contained in the meal, I can enjoy a small extra deficit for the day.
Myfitnesspal lets you enter in your own foods. If something is not in their database you can add it. I get my burritos from Chipotle the same way every time. They have all their nutritional information listed on their website. After I determine the values of my burrito I create the food in MFP and don’t have to bother with it next time. The same goes for Subway.
If you want to weigh liquids, this site will help you based on what liquid you are weighing http://www.convert-me.com/en/convert/cooking/
Final thoughts: Counting calories is in my opinion the best thing one can do to help lose weight. This guide was written to help you be as close to 100% accurate as possible. Some of you might not like the idea of bringing a food scale to a restaurant or weighing condiments. These things aren’t musts. If you don’t want to do them then you must accept that you will be less accurate than if you had. If you are a bodybuilder preparing for a competition then you will want to be as accurate as humanly possible. If you are a gym rat with no real deadlines and don’t mind if your cut takes a few weeks longer than planned, feel free to be a little less strict. If you find you are not losing weight despite the fact that your caloric intake is low enough that you should be, then you need to start doing things like weighing condiments. Only then can you be truly sure it is time to lower calories.
Hope this helps! Feel free to add your own tips below and I can add them to the main article.
Originally posted by lee__d, this video should further reinforce the above, and the importance of ACCURATELY counting:
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Thread: Calorie Counting 101
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02-03-2014, 12:22 PM #1
- Join Date: Apr 2012
- Location: Massillon, Ohio, United States
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Calorie Counting 101
Last edited by Ammex; 02-09-2014 at 10:29 AM.
-Former 300lb club
My Transformation Video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QlEs4py6FUs
My YouTube Page: http://www.youtube.com/feedingfitness
"Obsessed is a term lazy people use to describe the dedicated."
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02-03-2014, 12:23 PM #2
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02-03-2014, 12:34 PM #3
- Join Date: May 2013
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I don't know if you'll want to add this or not but I also weigh liquids. You can find charts online that transfer for you. For example (the only liquid I use with calories in it) a cup of 2% milk weighs 246g. If I use my measuring cup at home, 246g of 2% milk actually measures a little over 3/4 of a cup. So before I started doing this, I was getting more calories from milk than I thought.
Beginning Weight (1/13/2013)- 245
"Never forget what you are. The rest of the world will not. Wear it like armor and it can never be used to hurt you." -Tyrion Lannister
"Death created time to grow the things it would kill." -Rust Cohle
5 reason you may not be losing weight/have hit a plateau. http://forum.bodybuilding.com/showthread.php?t=160842471
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02-03-2014, 12:34 PM #4
Great guide bro.
I actually use an app called "LoseIt" on my smartphone. Not sure how popular that is amongst the other apps, but it works pretty well for me.
Also, something I recently adjusted in my own diet.
Zero calorie condiments and cooking sprays
Yellow mustard and PAM cooking spray actually do not have zero calories as their labels claim. Yellow mustard averages about 3 cal per tsp, and PAM cooking spray has about 9 cal per 1 sec spray.
I'm not sure how well this fits into this guide, but those two things together were probably fouling up my counting by at least 50 cals per day.
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02-03-2014, 12:35 PM #5
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02-03-2014, 12:39 PM #6
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02-03-2014, 12:43 PM #7
Maybe use sub-headings to break it up into more digestible chunks? To some that would just look like a wall'o'text and may be quite daunting to a complete beginner.
Edit: Forgot to say, nice post.R.I.P urukhai29, sentinel3, AncientYouth.
"Eating chips and cookies and drinking soda is just like wandering through life. These are the agents of a purposeless existence. Avocados, turkey burgers, brown rice and eggs etc are the agents of a purposeful existence." - orderoutofchaos, The Internet, 2014
2 Kings 2:23-24
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02-03-2014, 12:45 PM #8
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Do you really have to weight meats raw? I usually like to buy chicken breast in bulk then just boil it so i can store it in my fridge easily. When I do decide to cook a meal with chicken breasts I defrost a bunch then weigh like 100-150 grams and chop up those and recook it. Either saute it or make soup with the chicken, but i weigh it before cooking it a 2nd time.
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02-03-2014, 12:49 PM #9
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02-03-2014, 12:56 PM #10
- Join Date: Nov 2013
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Hmm. So is this site incorrect? In regards to 6 ounces of chicken breast. http://www.fatsecret.com/calories-nu...onamount=6.000
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02-03-2014, 01:04 PM #11
- Join Date: Jul 2010
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Figuring out calories that arent in a listed portion, these macros wont obviously add up to weight but its an example:
If a cup of yogurt is 227g, has 23g protein, 8 fat, and 49 carbs and the scale reads the weight as 293g, you would take 293 and divide it by 227, so you get:
293g / 227g = 1.29 multiplier factor. Then you just use that multiplier factor on the macros and it will change them.
if the number is less than the serving and was 158g weight, and that listed serving again was 227g, you would take 158g and divide it by the serving number, so you get:
158g / 227g = 0.70, so the reduced factor is 70%, so the macros are just 70% less of what the listed serving is.
Your actual serving amount is always divided by the listed amount, it gives the multiplier factor.
This is good for people like me who write things down and can do math in their head/on a sheet and dont use sites to log their food.There is always someone less fortunate, with real hunger, with real adversity, who made something of themselves. What is your excuse?
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02-03-2014, 01:28 PM #12
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02-03-2014, 05:28 PM #13
- Join Date: Apr 2012
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02-03-2014, 05:32 PM #14
- Join Date: Jul 2010
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i feel that people have long forgotten to know how to do basic math and didnt even get a "smartphone" until late so there is no point in using something i wont use as i can keep a tally in my head that is more accurate than most. Many people here cant even find their lbm if they are given their percentage :/
There is always someone less fortunate, with real hunger, with real adversity, who made something of themselves. What is your excuse?
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02-03-2014, 06:18 PM #15
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02-03-2014, 06:23 PM #16
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02-03-2014, 06:24 PM #17
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02-03-2014, 06:27 PM #18
Food scale: http://www.amazon.com/Ozeri-Digital-...rds=food+scale
$16.
Target, Kroger, Wal-Mart, etc., typically have food scales in that same price range.Started in April, 2013 at 212 lbs. Completely inactive at the time. Fat with zero muscle mass.
Before/After Thread at the end of my first cut (April '13 - October '13 - 6 mos): http://forum.bodybuilding.com/showthread.php?t=157820563
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02-03-2014, 06:29 PM #19
- Join Date: Jul 2010
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Eat smart on amazon for both digital food scale, and digital bodyweight scale for 25/35 shipped respectively, are dead accurate.
There is always someone less fortunate, with real hunger, with real adversity, who made something of themselves. What is your excuse?
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02-03-2014, 10:11 PM #20
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02-03-2014, 10:19 PM #21
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02-04-2014, 09:17 AM #22
On Fitday, you can track the meats as cooked. I'm not sure how different it is, but I cannot weight my meats raw. I cook the hell out of them, so usually, they will end up being a lot less than what they are when they're raw.
Does it really matter if the food log gives you the option of tracking the meat as "cooked?"Thus let me live, unseen, unknown;
Thus unlamented let me die;
Steal from the world, and not a stone
Tell where I lie.
2/17/15 - Dunk Tank Results: 15% bf (Omron said 18.6%) - 123.4 lbs LBM
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02-04-2014, 10:47 AM #23
- Join Date: Apr 2012
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Yes. Raw meat weights are consistent. Cooked meats will weigh very different based on the method used for cooking. I personally find that grilling will usually make the food weigh significantly less then baking/broiling. More so if I use an indoor grill like a George Foreman. If you are unable to weigh your meat raw then attempt to find nutritional information for the meat cooked the way you are eating it (grilled, baked, fried, etc). Also know that it will not be as accurate as if you were weighing meat raw.
-Former 300lb club
My Transformation Video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QlEs4py6FUs
My YouTube Page: http://www.youtube.com/feedingfitness
"Obsessed is a term lazy people use to describe the dedicated."
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02-04-2014, 11:06 AM #24
Yea, that's why I asked. Because Fitday has cooked in various options. Fried, Baked, Broiled, Battered & Fried, Boiled etc. etc.
I'm a germaphobe, just thinking of raw meat juices touching my scale is making my skin crawl. O_oThus let me live, unseen, unknown;
Thus unlamented let me die;
Steal from the world, and not a stone
Tell where I lie.
2/17/15 - Dunk Tank Results: 15% bf (Omron said 18.6%) - 123.4 lbs LBM
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02-04-2014, 11:07 AM #25
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Vismal, great write up buddy. Well deserved sticky.
Maybe there is room there for being consistently inconsistent. By that I mean, like I know both you and I practice, things like logging spices. I know I personally don't log them but I am consistent about not logging them. I don't just decide to do it one day and not another day. You either log them or don't. But you have to know they are always there if you ever need to reevaluate progress or lack of progress. I don't know, maybe it's not worth adding. Just a thought.
Maybe your next write up can be on refeeds.
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02-04-2014, 11:23 AM #26
What about the most common frozen chicken breast? Most of these bulk chicken breasts are "enhanced with 15% broth", does it make any difference or is it already accounted for with the nutrition label?
Im sure there are a million "what if" questions people could ask, but chicken is one of those common staples.Total fat lost by following advice in stickies: ~100+ lbs.
95:5 Crew - (95% diet, 5% weights) || Ceiling cat is watching you crew
Cut V.3.0
Sept. 07: 198 lbs
Sept. 25: 196 lbs
Oct. 5: 193 lbs
Oct. 10: 191 lbs
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02-04-2014, 11:32 AM #27
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02-04-2014, 11:39 AM #28
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02-04-2014, 01:37 PM #29
- Join Date: Apr 2012
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02-04-2014, 02:33 PM #30R.I.P urukhai29, sentinel3, AncientYouth.
"Eating chips and cookies and drinking soda is just like wandering through life. These are the agents of a purposeless existence. Avocados, turkey burgers, brown rice and eggs etc are the agents of a purposeful existence." - orderoutofchaos, The Internet, 2014
2 Kings 2:23-24
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