Do you write down everything?

Hey.... just wondering what others do... I eat and write down the food and calories after every meal and snack. What do you do? I can't keep it all in my head.

I write down everything from the piece of gum Im chewingto that squirt of ketchup... I keep a weekly journal, and I have kept them for proof on what I did toi lose this weight! Write it down.,... your less likely to forget. I write it down after each meal, or as Im eating!

I started off just writing down the foods that i ate and their portion sizes but then my weight loss plateaued so i added up all the cal. in the foods i had eaten in the previous 2 days and realized i had eaten 2000-2500 cal. on both days!!

So then i started meticulously tracking calories in everything. Now my weight loss has come to a standstill again. Starting today i am now tracking foods, portion sizes, calories, protein, carbs, sugar, and fat. This way i can make sure i'm getting a nice balance of everything, which hopefully will help

I think in the beginning it is important to be precise, because of the tendency to undercount.  However, for some it becomes an OCD thing, it drives them crazy... I have been shocked to read this sentiment expressed by so many over in the maintaining forum. They want to quit altogether.  I don't think quitting is the way... at least for me, I always regain the weight if I stop stepping on the scale and counting calories. However, as I have been at this many years now, I do pretty good roughly estimating.  I think the ultimate compromise goal is to get where you spend no more time counting calories than brushing your teeth.

I also do not enter it into a computer.  I have three calorie guides, eventually I compiled all foods I eat regularly onto one sheet of paper, a cheat sheet.  Part of my refined method includes counting things in 25 calorie increments for easy adding. Some foods are naturally close to these increments, in other cases I intentionally eat in 100 calorie increments, to keep the math easy.  I will also combine foods to make them come up to 100.. say I eat a 70-calorie thing... I then eat a 30 at some point in my day to make the math work out. I have to do it this way because I am dumb at math.

I use an 8.5 x 11 piece of scrap paper folded  in eighths... each section for one day, a page for the week, the eighth section is for averaging and other notes. I carry this with me always  in my jeans pocket always, and a stub of pencil in that little pocket in front... so no excuses not to write it down as I eat (sometimes I play catch up, but not long after I eat).  I subtotal several times in the day, so I always know where I am.  I also use my own code "PB & BR 100" means 1/2 slice of whole-wheat bread with 50 calories of all natural peanutbutter, total 100 calories.  Often I estimate a whole plate of food together and write it down that way.

I do know people who enter their calories into a computer... but they get lost when they go on vacation. Others quit because they find computer entry tedious. They get hung up, thinking they need the accuracy that the program tells them the apple they ate is 92 calories... but really there is no such exact number...100 is close enough for big apples.  It does work to estimate. .. I maintain usually within a half pound of my goal weight.  I do periodically recheck my estimates.  Recently I filled a measuring cup with spaghetti to double-check my estimating... to see what a cup looked like when dumped on a plate ... much larger than I remembered.  I realized I had been significantly OVER counting for quite a while.

So I think the ultimate goal is to find an easy system you can do for life. If you don't keep up with your system because it is too time consuming or inconvenient, then streamline your system.

This is my method, I'll be interested to read what other people do.

Ship~` I can agree on this one... I generally eat the same foods, so I made up a cheat sheet. After awhile you start to know how many calories that are in what because you eat them often.... I do carry my paper in my purse with me at all times, and I have never plugged it into the computer. I did sit and look up all of the calories of things on the computer, and then created my cheat sheet! It has worked well for me!

Yee Haw we agree on something! ;-) 

I usually type out a meal plan for myself every morning for the day I am beginning. it just makes it easier for me at this point :) 

wow shiptona, i love that folding a piece of paper 4 ways and carrying it with you idea. I also like the idea of rounding cal. up b/c i tend to get pretty 'OCD' about my calculations. I am also really bad at math so i have a calculator at my side all the time. This is all fine and dandy for now but when i get back to work i'll need something simple and more convenient like the ideas you suggested.

Also like the idea of planning meals ahead of time... except that when i do that i always change my mind about what i want to eat and then my journal ends up with tons of scribbles... hehe

i have a small notebook that i write everything down in.  I plan ahead what im going to eat at work so its there when I come home.

There are only two things that I never record: gum and ketchup.  ketchup solely because I love it and dont want to know, and I also eat it so rarely that having extra on my frozen hashbrowns isnt going to hurt me.  (the hasbrowns are awsome for potato/ketchup cravings, 70 cals in one cup)

I also occasionally dont write down my Sobe Leans, they are about 12 calories.

I do it online www.fitday.com usually BEFORE I even go out for the day I decide on what I'm going to eat and log then... so I know if I'm going to have any "wiggle room"...

and I log all the extras...

Just like losing... I log EVERYTHING... today at the grocery store... they had sample chips and salsa...  one chip... 9 calories... the miniscule amount of salsa ON the chip... 3 calories.. and I logged it...If I eat a cup of field greens... 5 calories.. .log it.

I don't quite understand people who don't log vegetables... everything is a calorie... and there really isn't any such thing as a "negative calorie"  but that's me!

As far as the OCD of it goes... Yea... I guess i probably am somewhat...  but it keeps me busy doing something other than eating!!!

Oh yea... and Viactiv Calcium... 20 calories...

I stopped to write down everything a while ago, however I am eating with cals in mind since almost half a year now, so I have a quite good clue on how much cals stuff has that I eat.

I allways roughly calculate my cal intake for the day. Since I am not logging every food I just overestimate the amount of cals it might have had, so I won't end having less than a 500 cals deficit. If I really don't know how much cals something I ate had then I watch it up here or on some other websites and try to remember the cals of that food for the future.

It's quite easy, most sausage type bread supliments have arround 250-350(salami) cals per 100 grams. Ham is between 100(very lean ~1% fat) and 200(really fat one) cals/100 grams. Cheese is almost everytime the same cals as salami(350/100grams). A Banana is 80 kcal, an apple 50 kcal and so on. Some Ketchup is 50 cals butter on my bread is 50 cals, and so on. I already have a good clue on how much stuff I eat is worth in cals ^^

I don't think I do well with estimating... and not to start an argument... but I thought an averaged sized apple was 80 cals.

i think small apple= 70cal, medium=80-90 and large=100cal

but i'm not absolutely positive

Shiptona,

Loved your post!    Definitely some good points.  :)

Rachel

Wow.  It doesn't seem like people use the daily weight log included on CC.com.   I write down *everything.*   It's so easy for me to add it into CC's format -- much easier than writing everything down longhand.   I especially like the "tagged" function so I can tag all the foods I eat normally.  It takes me about sixty seconds to add my breakfast in the AM since I normally eat the same thing.  

I also like CCs log because, for example, when I go to Costco and eat some of their samples, it's easy for me to just add those items into the "recipe analyzer" (I choose "1 serving" then list what I sampled -- like 1 cracker, 1 tsp cream cheese, .25 ounce smoked salmon, etc.) and it gives me the total calories.  I just title it "Costco Samples" and click "add to daily log."  It's so quick and a great way to keep track of those "little" calories that we all forget (then wonder why we didn't lose weight!). 

If I go out to a restaurant, I try to add those calories as well.  If the restaurant lists nutrition info (like Red Lobster), then it's easy to look it up on CC.com and click "enter."   If it doesn't have nutrition info, like for example, I went to a small Mexican restaurant the other day, I choose something from a national chain that LOOKS like it may have the same nutrition/calorie info.  I figure that way I'm pretty close.   The other day we went to a Vietnamese restaurant and I couldn't find an equivalent on CC so I just used the recipe analyzer and listed most of the foods I thought were in the entree (I did ask the chef how much chicken he used -- 3 ounces) and just eyeballed the rice (looked like 1.5 cups to me).   It was fine.   (Although I always try to over-estimate rather than underestimate, so I'm never disappointed.) 

Even on days I don't eat well (I made a conscious decision that I was taking July 4th off to enjoy the picnics and parties) I log what I think I ate during the day so I understand just how many calories I went over by and have a realistic view of how long it takes my body to recover from that.