How do you keep track of calories/ grams you eat?

[sybilvane7 21]

Hi everyone.

This may be a silly question but, how do you keep track of what you eat?

Im 3 weeks out and my nut has not set a calorie or Protein goal yet. But i read that most of you, do have one. I would like to know how much im eating of what just to know how i am doing but have no idea how to.

I have myfitnesspal but i dont think it is that accurate since i dont weight or measure the ingredients of my meals. (Ive cooked myself everything ive eaten so far)

So please share how you do it.

[Rebecca66 13]

I suggest you purchase a small scale and start measuring. Fitness Pal is a great tool but it does no good unless you know how much you ate. the only way tracking will work is if you measure portions.

Edited January 24, 2017 by Rebecca66

[DisneyMom2El 120]

If you are cooking all of your meals, my fitness pal also has a recipe tab where you can enter in the ingredients (provided you know how much of each ingredients you are adding). Then you can put in that you ate half or a quarter of it, or whatever.

Sent from my iPhone using the BariatricPal App

[JamieLogical 8,708]

Get a food scale. It will be the only way to accurately track what you are eating. Then, if you are cooking at home, you can enter everything into a recipe calculator on MyFitnessPal or SparkPeople to figure out the nutrition for the meal you've made.

[mylighthouse 782]

I measure or weigh all foods. I measure my veggies in a measuring cup.... I usually can't eat more than 1/4 cup of veggies with my meat at lunch and dinner. I usually have chicken, and right now the amount I eat is 4 ounces. I always weight my chicken or fish when I eat it, with a food scale. When I eat yogurt or cottage cheese, I measure it in a measuring cup.

Like Rebecca66 said above, myfitnesspal is a great tool, but it won't really do any good unless you are weighing and measuring the amounts of food that you eat.

All you need is a small food scale, which you can get at Walmart, Target, etc., and a measuring cup.

Edited January 24, 2017 by mylighthouse

[Brandeis 401]

I measure my food, but mostly just to make sure I don't over serve myself -- overeating isn't a problem, but I hate wasting food, so I make sure to weigh what I'm going to eat so there's not a ton leftover on the plate! I know very well I can only eat 4-5oz [closer to 4] in any given sitting, so I just measure that out.

My NUT actively discourages me from tracking my food, though. Instead, she wants me just to focus on eating the right kinds of things, and taking care with what I eat, than writing down every little thing. I appreciate it. The obsession really gets under my skin and drives me crazy, when I'm tracking all the food I eat. Also, I frequently find it makes me eat MORE; "oh, I only consumed ____ calories today! I could still eat _____ more!"

If you think it's something that's going to work for you, you should definitely do it, though! I used to do My Fitness Pal, in previous weight loss attempts, and I liked it a lot.