Step three: Track what you eat

In a tiny town in Eastern Idaho, there is a famous little restaurant called Big Juds. They are famous because you can get some very large burgers: a 1 lb classic Big Jud or a 2 lb Double Big Jud. Both come with a large fry and large drink of course. If you can eat the entire meal by yourself, you get your picture up on the wall and get your meal free (you have to buy a T-shirt commemorating your accomplishment though.)

They are good burgers and it's a fun novelty. But I wonder--how many calories would you have eaten if you ate an entire classic big Jud or a double big Jud? There isn't any nutrition information available online, so pretending you didn't even eat any fries  (impossible, I know) or drink soda, we could make a guesstimate using McDonalds quarter pounder with cheese that weighs 7 oz (520 calories) to extrapolate and guess that the classic Big Jud is about 1200 calories and the Double Big Judd must be about 2400 calories.

These numbers could be way off, but the sake of making a point, knowledge about what and how much you are eating are critical in being successful in maintaining or losing weight. It isn't magic, it's math and we need to know or have good estimates of the numbers to make this work.

Step Three: Track what you eat

Before I track anything, I like to make a meal plan for the day where I allot calories for each meal. This way, you don't have to keep track of total calories for the entire day necessarily, you just need to make sure you aren't going over per meal.

Example Meal Plan for 1800 calorie diet

Breakfast: 350 calories
AM Snack: 100 calories
Lunch: 450 calories
Dinner: 600 calories
PM Snack/Treat: 300 calories

Personalize your meal plan to your own preferences and tendencies for eating--do you like a small breakfast? Do you always get hungry for a snack around 10 am? do you have to have something sweet in the evenings? Are you pregnant and have to eat every 2 hours? Jot down a plan and don't be afraid to change it if you feel like you've given yourself too much for one meal and not enough for another.


I'm about to say some dirty words. Forgive me. It's time to talk about calorie counting. Calorie counting is a bad word to many people because it for sure can be tedious and for sure difficult depending on what you eat (determining calories in grandma's homemade hamburger casserole will be a challenge).

I wouldn't even suggest calorie counting if the benefits didn't far, far outweigh the inconvenience. Here is a list of the good things that come from calorie counting:

1. Form healthy habits. As you go through the process of reading labels and counting calories, you will learn and will make better choices in what foods you eat and how you prepare food. Over time these changes will become habit.
2. Being conscious of what you are eating. Ever eat potato chips straight out of the bag? How about ice cream straight out of the container? I have. Ignorance is bliss. This would be the opposite of conscious eating. (Unconscious eating doesn't sound right.) When you write down what you are eating, how much, and how many calories, you will naturally self-regulate what you eat. If you have trouble binging, this should be your go-to method of stopping it. It's painful to write down that you've just eaten 800 calories worth of Nutella.
3. Nutrition Education. There is nothing that can educate you quicker and better about food and their nutritional quality than having to read labels. We get so many recommendations--eat more fruit and vegetables, eat lean meats like chicken, avoid added sugars and highly processed foods--reading labels and counting calories will teach you in a very real way why there are those recommendations. Example: It's recommended that we eat nonfat dairy. You read the labels and see that a 6 oz. cup of original Yoplait yogurt has 170 calories, but the same amount of Light Yoplait yogurt (nonfat) only has 90 calories. A calorie difference of 80 calories for such a small amount of food is a big deal.
4.  Being able to eye quantities of food. After measuring a cup of rice out on to a plate several times, you'll be able to serve yourself a cup of rice without a measuring cup. Not only will this help with not over-serving yourself,  this will also help with not overeating. Example: Wow, this big plate of pasta at the restaurant is probably 3 cups worth noodles (doing quick math in your head 3 cups of pasta = about 600 calories) plus the sauce, meat and cheese on top--I better only eat half. 
5. Making the math work. If you are going to make the math of weight loss work for you, you have got to have a firm grasp on how many calories you are eating. We don't want to be eating too much and not losing any weight or eating too little and starving ourselves and dooming our weight-loss ambitions. Counting is simply the best way to know where you stand. 

 

There are a few tools that you need on hand to start counting calories.  

1. Measuring cups. Go to a dollar store and get multiple sets of measuring cups and measuring spoons. You'll be glad to have lots on hand because you'll dirty several of them throughout the day. You can also use a measuring cups/spoons and see how much your own dishes hold--my smaller spoons are 1 tbsp and the larger ones are 2 tbsp.
2. A kitchen scale. Some foods are often measured by weight (like meat or cheese) and you'll be happy to have a scale to measure out 1 oz of cheese than trying to figure out how many ounces are in a cup of cheese and then do the conversion. My scale was $20 at Walmart--it's come in handy for baking and weighing envelopes/packages too.
3. Calculator. Get a little calculator to keep on hand so you can quickly do the math on a food. You'll be less annoyed having to find the calculator function on your phone or computer. 
4. A place to record what you eat. If you like the physical act of writing things down, get a notebook. I usually end up scribbling calories on spare scraps of paper (I'm not that fancy.). You can also use computer programs (word, excel) or websites or apps to keep track of what you are eating. This is a great option if you want to take some of the work out of  it and to be able to track your calories over a long period of time. There are some great free websites with food journals (They also have food databases and weight trackers, which I'll talk about that in the next sections) that make it very easy to keep track of your foods. I've used Fitday before and liked it fine. I'm sure there are others--if you have a favorite, leave a comment with the name of the app/website. 

My last list for you is probably the most important--where are you going to find the nutritional information for food? 

1. The label on the food. This is the first place you look and the most accurate. For foods that don't have a nutrition facts label (fruits and vegetables, foods packaged by the store, restaurant foods, foods you prepare from a recipe) you'll need to look the information up in the places listed next. 
2. A book. When I want to calorie count or look up lots of other useful nutrition information, I use "Bowes & Church's Food values of Portions Commonly Used". I got the book in college for my dietetics classes and I'd say it's one of the only books I still use on a regular basis. The book is very complete source of nutrition information on almost any food you can think of. The book can be expensive (especially if you get the newest edition with CD rom) but it would be worth a little effort to find a used or older edition copy. Note: If you ever have a health condition where you are trying to limit certain nutrients (i.e carbohydrates in diabetes, or certain electrolytes during renal problems) this book would be beyond helpful. 
3. The internet. There are many websites and apps that have databases of foods and their nutritional information. You can use the databases in websites like Fitday or you can just google "calories in a banana" and come up with lots of information. Warning: because there is so much variation in foods (sizes, ingredients, etc) you will find some big discrepancies between calories listed online. It helps to look at multiple sites to get a feel for which information is most likely accurate. The more practice you get, the more you'll know what phrases to use to search for foods and about the quantities used.
4. The menu. Because of legislation in the past few years, more restaurants and even vending machines are being required to display calories for their menu items. Research say people don't look at these, but you can and should if you are watching what you eat--you can still eat fast food and lose weight if the math adds up.
5. The recipe. It's more and more common for recipes found online or even in printed cookbooks to include the nutrition information. Make sure to account for any deviations to the recipe (did you use skim milk when the recipe required whole?).
6. Calculate. One of the hardest calorie counting tasks is to calculate how many calories are in something you've prepared. An example is fried rice--fried rice is a favorite at my house. I could google "calories in fried rice" but there are so many ways to make fried rice, I really doubt anyone else's fried rice is like mine. To calculate how many calories in my fried rice, I find the total calories for the entire dish then determine how many servings or cups are in the dish. I have to read of the label or look up the calories for each individual ingredient: (1) 8 cups of cooked rice 1860 calories (2) 16 oz bag of frozen peas/carrots 300 calories (3) 4 cups of broccoli (raw) 100 calories (4) 1 cup onion 61 calories (5) about 9 oz of ham 485 caloires (6) seasoning 10 calories (7) 4 tsp soy sauce 25 calories (8) 4 tbsp oil 480 calories for a grand total of 3460 calories and a yield of 13 cups of fried rice. I know that 1 cup of my fried rice is about 266 calories. Tedious? Yes! But if I keep records of my recipes and mostly stick to the same way of preparing them, I should only have to calculate calories once. 

Two question you may be asking are "do I have to be exactly accurate?" and "do I have to measure my food and count calories forever?" The answer is no and no. If it's taking too much of your time, don't get caught up in being exactly accurate--just the act of being conscious of what you are eating and doing your best to guess how many calories you are eating is huge. As per counting forever, this process will help you take control and form good habits, but I doubt anyone that could do it forever. However, if you find after reaching your goal, your habits are slipping and the quantities of food you eat growing larger and larger, it's smart to start doing this again to relearn portion sizes and reestablish good habits. 

This was a lot of information to digest. I hope I've given some helpful information/tools, but feel free to ask me questions. My next post in this series will be Step 4: Tracking your exercise