Faster Fat Loss: 13 Calorie Counting Mistakes You Want to Avoid

August 23, 2021
Nutrition, Fat Loss

calorie tracking mistakes

 

Tracking calories and/or macros is a great tool for losing weight and educating yourself on portion sizes, the calorie content of foods you regularly eat, and macronutrients. It’s not necessary, but it certainly helps make the fat loss process a lot easier. When you’re much more aware of the calorie content of the foods and drinks you consume and how much you’re actually eating, compared to how much you think you’re eating, you can stop guessing, and starting making changes that will make your fat loss efforts much less complicated than they need to be.

 

In addition, tracking allows for more flexibility. In the end, it is total calories consumed that matters most for weight loss and weight gain. When you’re tracking your calories, it’s easier to fit less nutritious foods that you normally wouldn’t eat into your diet, and still stay on track. As long as the majority, about 80% or more, of your diet consists of nutrient-dense, high-quality whole foods, you can still enjoy other less nutritious foods in moderation and still achieve your goals.

 

Unfortunately, there are a lot mistakes that can be made when tracking that can leave you frustrated and confused as to why you’re not losing weight.

 

You think you’re eating a certain number of calories, you’re not sure why you’re not losing weight, but little did you know that your tracking hasn’t been very accurate, and you’ve actually been consuming more calories than you thought.

 

It happens quite a lot.

 

I’m here to help you put an end to those mistakes so you can improve your level of nutritional awareness, and make your fat loss goals finally happen.

 

 

1. You’re Guessing and Entering

You’re just guessing and entering, and not actually weighing out the food accurately.

 

For example, you might assume a single chicken breast is 1 serving, but it’s probably closer to 2.

 

Or, maybe you eyeball that serving size of pasta, or assume a big spoonful is a serving of peanut butter.

 

Many people think they are a lot better at estimating how many calories they are consuming than they really are. Studies have shown that those that are overweight can underestimate their calorie intake by nearly 40 percent. 

 

Take the extra 60 seconds or less it takes to find the correct food in your calorie tracking app, or write down the calories based on the portion size you chose.

 

A little bit of extra effort to save you a lot of frustration later on.

 

2. You’re Choosing The Wrong Foods

You’re choosing the wrong food in your calorie tracker. If you search a food into MyFitnessPal, don’t just choose the first one. Make sure you’re choosing the EXACT one. You might search “chicken salad,” but you might choose the one that has 150 calorie less than what you actually ate.

 

As far as I know, you can enter your own recipes into MyFitnessPal, and most calorie trackers. If you manually track calories in your phone in a note taking app, or write it down with pen and paper, that’s even easier to write down your own meals and recipes with the correct macros and calories. Use Google if you need to search certain foods.

 

3. You’re Not Including The Details

You’re not including the details and accounting for EVERYTHING.

 

Oils, sauces, higher calorie condiments, salad dressings, and coffee creamers are some examples. These add up throughout the day and over the course of the entire week. They can easily add an extra couple hundred calories per day.

 

I remember the first time I measured coffee creamer and the amount I was using. Prior to measuring, I was eyeballing it and assumed I was using a serving, so I was entering an extra 25 calories per cup of coffee. When I finally measured, I found out I was using double that. So make it 50 calories per cup of coffee. Three cups of coffee means an extra 150 calories from creamer. And that’s just creamer. You may also be underestimating how much salad dressing you’re using, BBQ sauce, or pasta sauce. By the end of the day, you might have an extra 300-400 calories that went unaccounted for.

 

Again, it’s just a little bit of extra effort that goes a long way.

 

4. You’re Using Measuring Cups & Spoons

You are using measuring cups and spoons instead of a food scale. It’s easy to take a measuring cup and do one big, overflowing scoop of rice and call that 1 cup.

 

Maybe you’re using tablespoons to measure peanut butter, but your “tablespoons” are huge, heaping tablespoons that actually contain more calories than what you’re recording in your calorie tracker. 

 

Measuring with a food scale will be more accurate and doesn’t allow much room for error. Use a food scale as often as possible.

 

5. Weekend Are a Free-For-All

You’re only tracking Monday through Thursday, and Friday through Sunday is a free-for-all. 

 

Yes, on the weekends alone, you really can wipe out the calorie deficit you created throughout the week, and it’s easier than you’d think.

 

Some alcoholic drinks Friday and Saturday, brunch and dinner at your favorite places on Saturday and Sunday, and next thing you know you’ve racked up a few extra thousand calories.

 

Enjoy foods and drinks you typically wouldn’t eat, but have them in moderation, and track them when possible. You’ll probably be surprised how many calories you’re consuming when you go out to eat and overindulge in both food and alcohol.

 

6. You’re Entering Your Food At The End of The Day

You’re waiting until the end of the day to enter your food. You’re trying to remember everything you ate, but you end up forgetting certain details that matter. Maybe you even forget an entire meal or snack.

 

Enter your food before or right after a meal, but don’t wait hours and hours later. Just make sure if you log your food before the meal, that you go back and make any changes if your meal ended up being different than what you originally logged.

 

Entering your your food before or after a meal should take about 2 minutes or less. If you’re eating 5 meals, that’s about 10 minutes of your entire day.

 

7. You’re Inconsistent—Raw vs. Cooked

You’re inconsistent with how you track your food—raw vs. cooked.

 

When it comes to meat and fish, you might weigh the food cooked, like most people do, then track it as raw. This will be inaccurate. The food label provides nutrition facts based on the meat or fish when it’s raw.

 

Raw will always be more accurate. But a lot of us like to cook in bulk because it’s convenient and saves time.

 

It’s estimated that meat loses about 25% of its weight when cooked (I use the same method for seafood). This can vary a bit depending on the method of cooking, but it’s a good number to use. So if you’d still like to cook in bulk and weigh your meats cooked like I do, here’s a conversion you can use.

  • Raw to cooked = raw weight x 0.75
  • Cooked to raw = cooked weight / 0.75

 

Here are 2 examples.

  • 8 ounces raw chicken breast x 0.75 = 6 ounces cooked
  • 12 ounces of cooked chicken breast / 0.75 = 16 oz. raw chicken breast

 

Measuring and tracking rice throws a lot of people off. It depends on the rice and the amount of water used. Different grains will have a different conversions from uncooked to cooked. Some bags of rice have the conversion placed on the back.

 

Oats, pasta, and potatoes I always measure and track raw.

 

Be consistent with your cooking methods and tracking, don’t weigh your food cooked and log it as raw, and find the correct conversions.

 

8. You’re Not Tracking Drinks

You aren’t logging drinks, including alcohol, or your drink at Starbucks that is much more than just coffee. Calories from drinks often get overlooked because you’re not actually eating them, and they’re often not very filling at all. 

 

Many people aren’t aware of the calorie content of their favorite alcoholic drink or drink from their favorite coffee place. 

 

Alcoholic drinks can vary quite a lot. A shot can range from 75-150 calories.

 

Mixed drinks can be anywhere from only 100 calories to a few hundred.

 

Your Starbucks in the morning, and a few alcoholic drinks in evening can easily add up to an extra 600 calories, and that doesn’t include the food you ate a long with it.

 

Am I expecting you to pull out a food scale at the bar and have the bartender weigh out the alcohol and all of the ingredients, yes.

 

I’m kidding, don’t do that.

 

But do your best to track it as accurately as you can in your calorie tracking app, and Google it if you have to. To play it safe, you can add an extra 50-75 calories to the number you log for each drink.

 

9. You’re Not Adjusting

You’re logging your food before you eat, you end up eating more than expected, but you don’t go back to make the adjustments to what you logged.

 

Two tablespoons of peanut butter turned into three, but you had already logged two tablespoons, and didn’t go back to increase it to three.

 

It’s easy to get lazy, tell yourself you’ll adjust it later, and then forget to do it.

 

Either log your food after you eat, or log it before, but make sure you make any adjustments if you didn’t eat exactly what you logged.

 

10. You Believe The Calories On The Menu

You believe the calorie count on the restaurant menu is accurate. If your goal is fat loss, add 200-300 calories to that number. If your goal is weight gain, use the number on the menu.

 

Restaurants don’t care about hitting that exact calorie number that’s on the menu. They’re also most likely not actually weighing out everything that goes into the meal.

 

Take Chipotle for example. They have their calories online, but do you ever see the person behind the counter weighing out the beans, rice, meat, cheese, and guacamole they put in your meal? Nope, they never do. They take a spoonful or handful, and toss it on there.

 

Sometimes you get someone behind the counter who’s feeling extra generous that day and gives you quite a lot of steak and guacamole, and the next day you could get someone who’s hating their life working at Chipotle and gives you half a handful of steak and the smallest spoonful of guacamole you’ve ever seen. It varies.

 

The calorie counts for their meals are just estimates, and can be pretty off.

 

Their goal is not to make their meals macro friendly, it’s to make sure you’re satisfied with your meal and come back for more.

 

When in doubt, add a few extra hundred calories.

 

11. You’re Using Generic Measurements

Instead of weighing out your food in grams or ounces, your using generic choices in your calorie tracking app like “1 medium banana” or “1 small avocado.”

 

Let’s be honest, was that avocado actually small? And how many grams is a small avocado?

 

Like I’ve mentioned a few times throughout this post, take the bit of extra time and effort it takes to weigh out your food and be as accurate as you can instead of choosing generic options.

 

12. You’re Misreading Food Labels

You might look at a certain food, think that one package is 1 serving, but you didn’t look at the number of serving sizes. You just ate the entire package, and didn’t realize that the package had 3 servings in it. So you just ate 3 times the amount you originally thought you did.

 

Pay close attention to food labels. Specifically, the number of servings, the size of the serving, and the calories per serving.

 

13. You’re Not Accounting For Snacks

You’re not counting that handful of nuts you had at your desk at work, that small piece of your kids chicken nuggets or peanut butter and jelly sandwich, or a piece of fruit you had as a snack.

 

Do I expect you to grab the left T-Rex leg of your kid’s dinosaur chicken nuggets and place it on the food scale and do math to find out how many calories are in it? Of course not, but maybe you account for it by adding 25-50 calories to your calorie count. While 25 calories isn’t much, chances are that if you’re snacking on your kids’ meals throughout the day and not accounting for them, there are likely other things that aren’t being tracked or accounted for either. And those can all add up over the course of the day and weeks as we saw earlier with condiments, coffee creamers, sauces, etc. 

 

Even if you don’t actually track the few bites you took of a meal, that’s fine. It’s not realistic to always track small things like that, but make sure you do account for it like I mentioned earlier—by adding a certain number of calories to the next meal you track.

 

Final Words

Do I expect you to measure and weigh out everything forever? No, not at all.

 

But tracking is great because it teaches you so much, and builds the nutritional awareness you need to slowly ease your way off of tracking everything. You’ll learn proper portion sizes and get better at looking at a plate of food, and making a very close estimate of the calorie content of the meal.

 

I do believe nearly everyone should track their calories and macronutrients at some point to learn more about how many calories their body needs, portion sizes, and the macronutrient and calorie content of specific foods.

 

 

Online Coaching Application Form

Start Your Transformation Today