Calorie Tracking Tips
Who else is planning on using My Fitness Pal again this year?! đđ»ââïž
Hereâs a few tips to help you out:
* Donât add your exercise. Itâs usually wildly inaccurate and generally says youâve burned way more than you have (donât shoot the messenger!) With some calorie tracking watches if you stick your arm out the window whilst driving it thinks youâre burning calories for fun!
* Donât trust the bar code scanner! Always double check the nutrition label. Once I scanned a fat free yogurt and it came up as chocolate mousse. Ok maybe it was a chocolatemousse! but still double check label matches.
* Finish the week. If your goal is weight loss and youâve tracked so well for 5 days, keep going to the end of the week. Itâs easy to ruin all of your hard work over the weekend, even if youâre allowing yourself a few more cals. Itâs great to be able to see your 7 day calorie average to get a true picture of your intake over a full week.
* Donât obsess over macros. If your goal is weight loss then your total calories and a good amount of protein is all you need to focus on. The carbs and fats can move around but as long as youâre under your calorie target (calorie deficit) and youâre keeping yourself full with high protein, itâs all good.
* Donât use the pre set calorie calculator. My Fitness Pal doesnât really know anything about you! and often suggests quite a bit less than you can have. More often than not youâre much better off with trial and error. If youâve tracked for 10 days and not lost any weight, bring your calories down by 50-100 per day.
* Check youâre inputting the correct values. They donât always make it easy for you. Check the label and make sure itâs the same on My Fitness Pal. Some items are cheeky and only show 25% of the calories when we all know youâve munched the whole thing but only inputted a quarter of the calories consumed.
* Itâs never going to be 100% perfect. Especially if you cook a lot of home made meals. Thereâs nothing wrong with you inputting one of the default Roast dinners for example. The more you use the app the better you become at knowing what a 300 or 500 calorie meal looks like.