If you are cooking big batches of multi-ingredient recipes, the best way to figure out exactly how much you ate is to weigh the final product and then weigh your portion. Alternately, you can enter the ingredients separately into your daily food log. Most tracking apps will allow you to input custom recipes, which is helpful for foods you will make again and again. Your version of chili might differ substantially from what’s considered “average” chili by the app. Do NOT Use Pre-entered Recipesįor example, if you make a pot of chili, do not simply select the entry for “Chili” in your food tracking app. When you enter them in your food tracker, make sure you select the entries for the raw items (e.g., “Celery, raw” instead of “Celery, cooked”). This is true even if you intend to cook them. While tablespoons (mL) work for liquid measurements like salad dressing, weight is much more accurate for proteins, fruits and veggies, nuts and seeds, and legumes. If you care about precision, invest in a food scale. That said, there are steps you can take to improve the accuracy of your tracking: Weigh, Don’t Measure Don’t micromanage to the point of causing yourself grief or anxiety. You should view tracking as a helpful but imprecise method of gathering data.
However, there’s no point in stressing if you’re off your daily targets by 25 calories or 7 grams of fat. That doesn’t mean it’s futile-it can still be useful for the reasons I gave above. Depending on how the food is prepared and the portion size you are given, your specific meal might vary a little or a lot.Īll this is to say that food tracking is not an exact science. Likewise, i f you’re eating in restaurants and relying on the nutritional info they provide, consider it a rough estimate.
That means that any information you get off the package might be wrong by 20% in either direction. The FDA allows for up to 20% error on packaged food labels. That cabbage was grown in more nutrient-depleted soil. Besides measurement error on your end (we’ll get to that in a minute), there is natural variation in foods. There will always be some error in food tracking.
You have a good sense of how to keep your carbs low enough to stay in ketosis, and/or being in ketosis 24/7 isn’t that important to you. Once you know the nutritional info for your standard meals, there’s no reason to input them in a food tracker over and over. Even if you’re trying to manage your macros, if you’re a creature of habit, you can probably get away without tracking. You stick to the same basic meals most of the time.You feel good and aren’t looking to change anything.In any case, you can’t make the necessary adjustments unless you know how much you consume on a typical day. Some people find that keto dramatically suppresses their appetites to the point where they need to intentionally eat more. On the flip side, if you’re an athlete whose performance and recovery have been subpar lately, perhaps you are eating too little. If weight loss has stalled, your total calorie intake might be higher than intended. You suspect you aren’t eating the right amount.Maybe you’re going to try a month of strict carnivore and plan to track your micronutrient intake. Maybe you want to see how your hunger changes when you eat more protein and less fat, or if your sleep improves if you increase your total carbs by a certain amount.
This includes cutting before a bodybuilding competition, starting a ketogenic diet, or even just losing weight.