Calorie Counting 101

[vismal]

When you need to lose bodyfat and gain muscle remember it comes down to a couple of things.
Eating high protein cutting fats,sugers,dairies and lowering your complex carb intake. If you dont do this in your diet, weighing meat and counting wont work. Its all about the content of what you eat more so than the amount.

]Do you really have to weight meats raw? I usually like to buy chicken breast in bulk

You don't have to do anything. If you want to be as accurate as possible, then yes you should weigh raw.

Hi All - First post here so hoping I make it count

My question is regarding cal counting with respect to chicken that is not boneless. Does the nutritional information per 100g include the bones? I never thought about weighing it raw before so I'll do that. But now the bones add a bit of confusion to the mix.

Perhaps if that is still raw weight information (sans bone), ill have to strip it off the bone first. That's a PITA vs post-cooked because then the meat falls nicely off.

It would not include the bones unless it specifically stated that it did.

[h3tz]

Thanks for the helpful thread!

Any advice on accurately estimating when it's really unavoidable? I keep ending up in situations where it would be completely inappropriate to break out the scale, yet it would be impolite not to eat something. When I can't avoid this, I've been coming up with a rough estimate and then doubling it since overestimating is better than underestimating and I get an incentive to try and avoid these situations. But then I get really hungry and it's hard to keep self control around food..

Do I just need to get better at saying no?

[tara19]

Thanks for the helpful thread!

Any advice on accurately estimating when it's really unavoidable? I keep ending up in situations where it would be completely inappropriate to break out the scale, yet it would be impolite not to eat something. When I can't avoid this, I've been coming up with a rough estimate and then doubling it since overestimating is better than underestimating and I get an incentive to try and avoid these situations. But then I get really hungry and it's hard to keep self control around food..

Do I just need to get better at saying no?

Estimating is the best bet.
You are not a professional bodybuilder. You still get to live life
Please don't pull out a scale.

[skinnyfat11]

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:


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.



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:

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.



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

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:

Thank you for this

[JanterFixx]

Nice guide. Much learned.

[mandykent111]

Great tips, this will help me get started!

[CrystalB2011]

Any suggestions on what type of scale to use?

[me5001]

Thanks for the post. I've been religiously logging weighing everything for about four years. This makes it much easier to hold myself accountable to my nutritional plans and to gain or lose weight. It's fun to sometimes estimate and then put it on the scale and see how close you are. Yesterday I estimated 100g of ham, it was 99g.

Anyway, a question that I should probably know the answer to. Some "zero" calorie foods have some calories. Does this include diet soda, specifically my favorites Diet Coke and Diet Mtn Dew?

[CrystalB2011]

Awesome posts, haha! I've been doing it for years and it's truly an easy thing to do...

[vismal]

Thanks for the post. I've been religiously logging weighing everything for about four years. This makes it much easier to hold myself accountable to my nutritional plans and to gain or lose weight. It's fun to sometimes estimate and then put it on the scale and see how close you are. Yesterday I estimated 100g of ham, it was 99g.

Anyway, a question that I should probably know the answer to. Some "zero" calorie foods have some calories. Does this include diet soda, specifically my favorites Diet Coke and Diet Mtn Dew?

Yes, zero calorie foods have calories. They have less then 5 per serving so the FDA allows them to mark it zero. Usually people do not consume enough of these products for that to be significant. If you think that you do consume enough of them for it to be significant, Count them as 5 calories a serving.

[12motivator]

Fantastic post. People usually underestimate how much they consume and are usually shocked with the results after they start calorie counting! I have passed this link onto a friend who will definitely find this useful!

[CrystalB2011]

Super helpful!

[Rafase282]

That's a great guide, I'll be following it as I want to lose weight and build muscle, yet I dont want to big muscles as I don't need them on my daily life. I'm sure the guide will help many more.

[Dannipeck02]

This is some helpful advice.

[JessicaT20]

Nice

[swilesjr1979]

AWESOME MY DUDE! I started at almost the exact same place you did! I was over 300 pounds and now I'm down in the 280's! Can't wait to get to my goal. I've started lifting and find it addictive! I honestly think the thing that helped me MOST was keeping a log of all my foods...I never realized how MUCH I was eating until I saw it on myfitnesspal! amazing!

[Kate890503]

Hi, guys! My name is Kate and I`m 26. I want to tell you the true story about how I`ve lost my weight. I`ve been fat since I was small and other children always laughed at me. I had 110 pounds in weight when studying in the fourth grade, 250 pounds when I entered the college though I was 165 centimetres in height!

I thought I was hopeless because I`ve tried an unbelievable number of diets by the age of 24 but I managed to lose only 17 pounds. I didn`t succeed in life, didn`t enjoy my job, I was tired of being mocked at behind my back. Being an optimist I`ve never admitted even the thought of ending my life but this idea began to cross my mind more and more often. I`m 25… I have no happiness, I`m alone and the only thing I have is my body I hate.
Everything changed in 2014 on the 7th of May. Yes, I remember the day I met Justin. It`s a silly thing to say but he fell in love with me with all my shortcomings. I was on the top of the world but I`m not going to tell you this love story now.

Justin explained to me one important thing I couldn`t understand because there are a lot of false information mass media bristles with. He said: “You can be what you want. You may stay a prisoner in your body or you may free yourself.” So, I made a choice and I don`t regret.

In fact, the process of losing weight isn`t so scary as it`s described. Human`s body is built as the universe – one kind of energy turns into a different one. If we eat less than we need we lose our weight, if we eat more we grow fat. The main thing is to estimate your need and your diet correctly. Justin helped me with it. He turned out to have problems with weight but he managed to gain the upper hand in this fight. He planned my everyday menu and it wasn`t a torture for me to follow it. The most difficult was to give up eating sweets but when I look at my body now I realize it was worth!

For 4 months my weight have changed from 242 to 209 pounds although I hadn`t had this weight since I was 13! I`m thankful to Justin for my deliverance and I wish every girl have such a boyfriend. I`m not going to make you envy me, I would like to tell you about one application I came across at the beginning of December in 2014. The name of this application was UltraDiet. The authors of the application suggested everyone trying it in one well-known social network. I decided to try it with a mockery remembering millions of useless applications of this kind. And how I was surprised to see the menu which was planned with a rigorous accuracy, exactly the same Justine planned for me. An essential distinction between them was a much greater variety of dishes. So, since that day I use UltraDiet and it perfectly helps me to save my time.

My weight is 154 pounds now. I changed my size many times and I will continue to do it. I feel I like it, I`m getting closer to the figure of my dream and I`m almost free. Healthy eating is a style of my life. Never be afraid of defining high goals and keep in your mind: YOU CAN BE WHAT YOU WANT TO BE! You may stay a prisoner in your body or you may free yourself.

By the way since recently the application UltraDiet is available on Google Play Market, if you want to find it, just type in the search ULTRADIET!

I hope UltraDiet will become your personal “Justin”. Enjoy it and evaluate the work of the authors! Good luck!

[ShlomiYitschak]

Check Out Our YouTube Channel: Shlomi&Yaron

[shifat]

great read..

[LatinChilli]

I weight everything and its pretty much a lifestyle now. In regard to the chicken breast, I don't weight chicken with the bone cause it would weight more. Thank you so much for such a great guidelines and don't forget to cardio specially fasted cardio its the best to lose body fat since the body is force to use the fat in your body as a source of energy

[smac2012]

From personal experience, I find that a diet that focuses largely on vegetables and fruits (in that order) can eliminate the need to count calories, long as as the calories consumed are from the non-starchy vegetable and fruit choices. I recommend eating no less than half a plate of these types of veggies at each meal. The weight loss is healthy, too, since plant foods are filled with vitamins, minerals and phytonutrients.

This way, instead of lugging a calculator everywhere or having to keep tally in your mind or on your smart phone of your calories, you can just eat without having to think of all of that. I feel that when we're constantly thinking about macros and such, it takes some of the enjoyment out of eating.

Hope this helps someone.

[clairelv]

thank you !

[IronFitMomma]

Thank You OP for sharing with us on BB.Com this info..it is much appreciated.

20 years ago I lost weight calorie counting 1,200-1,300 per day and a lot of long walks.

I have since had 2 children, injuries, medical problems...etc and lost enthusiasm for CC.

But now this thread has really inspired back in me again the love of Calorie Counting and what a proven method it is of obtaining weight loss.

Very grateful for that!

[vismal]

From personal experience, I find that a diet that focuses largely on vegetables and fruits (in that order) can eliminate the need to count calories, long as as the calories consumed are from the non-starchy vegetable and fruit choices. I recommend eating no less than half a plate of these types of veggies at each meal. The weight loss is healthy, too, since plant foods are filled with vitamins, minerals and phytonutrients.

This way, instead of lugging a calculator everywhere or having to keep tally in your mind or on your smart phone of your calories, you can just eat without having to think of all of that. I feel that when we're constantly thinking about macros and such, it takes some of the enjoyment out of eating.

Hope this helps someone.

This is not useful on a thread devoted strictly to calorie counting. If people wanted advice on how to NOT count calories, I don't think they would have clicked on a thread titled "calorie counting 101". While it is quite possible to lose weight without counting calories, many people find that it is easiest for them to do so. This thread is not about debating whether one should or should not count, it's about how to count properly should you choose to.

[sonofjameson]

I over indulged last night, went 2100 over my limit (cutting at 1700) due to drinking and binge eating while drunk for a total of 3800 cals

how bad is this for me? first time in 3 months I went over limit :S

[HedgefundCEO]

Great thread.

[DanCilley]

[FromPain2Gain]

Thank you for this AMAZING and informative post, ur transformation Vid. and progress is mind blowing and very inspirational; i have to say that its people like you who spur people like me to keep moving on.
Im new to this site, though iv been lurking for ages, so my profile isnt evn close to being don. That being said, id like som advice as i think ive plateaued and maybe som external input will help me get over it . Just a little bit bout myself, im 5'11 and on May 19th 2015 weighed in at about 223 Ibs (101.4 kg) my waist was about 44 inches, which in hindsight was frickin insane, i was fat and depressed and so decided to do somthin bout it. Discovered IIFYM and use myfitness pal to count cals. and ive combined it with IF 3 times a week. Today i weigh in at 192.9 Ibs ( 87.6 kg) with 37 inch waist with a set goal of 155 Ibs ( 71 kg) and a 32 inch waist, ive estimated about a year to reach this goal ( dunno if that's realistic or not).

Break down of my cals at the moment 1950 Cals a day Macros ( 45P/20C/35F) ive experimented alot with my macros and find that this breakdown suits me well. I tend to go above to 2100 cals especially after a leg day. i Dont do much running though i try and do a 6k fastwalk/sprints 2wice a week.

My situation at the moment is a little frustrating, as ive weighed in at 87.4 - 87.9 (fluctuates depending on workout intensity, prbbly due to water retention in muscle which is normal) for about 5 weeks, now i know at this point i need to change something but im not sure what. When i look back the only thing i did change was the fact that in the Past when id IF (only on days with no workout, or only sprint/walk) id cut my calories to 1000, havnt lost muscle because of it but definitely lost fat..

Any advice on changes/improvements to current regimen to reignite the fat burning furnace? Cheers

[axenios]

Thanks for the articles

[h8running]

Thanks for the info!