Not asking for a calorie count! I’m just newer to tracking and struggling to feel confident that I’m doing this right (I am used to things like oatmeal, yogurt bowls, tuna salad, poke bowls, etc— but I’m not the person in the household who typically cooks dinner so I am still getting the hang of weighing and tracking it).
I made my own dinner tonight and it was super simple (looks gross but it was good I promise lol). Spicy chicken/spinach/cheese wrap on a mission carb tortilla, leftover green giant brand garlic parmesan green beans, and seasoned enoki mushroom (and also snacked on leftover Japanese prawn crackers while making dinner, logged it as well lol). Literally the most simple meal, right?
But then I start getting stressed about the “0 calorie” cooking oil which I know isn’t 0 calories, then I start worrying about if I logged the chicken wrong (it said 4oz is 110 cals, I had 5.69, so the app said it was about 160 cal. I had a few pieces I didn’t add to the tortilla because I was too full and overestimated how much I needed haha). But I weighed it raw after the chicken was thawed. Was that the correct move or was the calories specifically referring to the cooked amount?
I also seasoned the meat and mushrooms with salt and pepper, paprika, garlic powder, red pepper flakes, etc. i didn’t track it but now I don’t know if I should have, bc while salt and pepper pretty much have negligible calories, I’m not rly sure about the rest.
And the green beans were 60 calories for 84g frozen or 2/3 cup prepared— they were already cooked and I just had the leftovers which were 164g. I ended up only eating a certain amount, and the leftovers I didn’t finish were 69g, so I only ate 95g total. Again, the tracking app is telling me that’s around 70 cal for what I ate, but I feel like it has to be more purely since the volume was kind of a lot and I am so full!!
And then when your eyes are too big for your stomach and you can’t finish (such as the last few pieces of chicken there in the last photo), you can’t even change it in your tracker because you forgot to measure the full amount cooked😖that was def my own fault there, but I’m just gonna take the full portion into account since I ate most of it anyways. It makes sense that its not a high calorie meal with how simplistic it is but I’m not used to so much volume so it feels like a lot. Without the prawn crackers, if I did this somewhat correctly, the calories for this food should be 413 calories.
I know this is long, but all of this is just to ask how you guys become more confident in your ability to track meals and how to not care about the really minor mistakes since they’re bound to happen as you learn and improve? Especially once you shifted from simpler meals to more complex ones!
by oceanmaango
13 Comments
Based on your post history I think you would benefit from speaking to a therapist about all of this.
You posted this recently:
> I now restrict a lot and, surprise, the food noise is so unbearable that it dictates my life. I can’t be present in the moment anymore. I can’t really hang out with friends or my own family because all I think about 24/7 is food, calories, how I can burn off what I last ate, what to eat tomorrow. All I do is watch content related to weight, fitness and food because I can’t stop. I an technically not at an unhealthy weight, but I haven’t had a period in 3 months and despite the fact I am trying to eat a healthy amount now, my hair is still thinning, my acne is the worst it has ever been, I’m always cold, I get dizzy all the time, and this shit is only going to hurt my body more and impact my dental health and bones and fertility and all that if I don’t prioritize turning things around and getting help for my own disordered eating mentality.
which is pretty concerning.
i stop counting for a while until i get my head back on straight. id recommend therapy
You gotta lean to let go. Get rid of the scale. I am on the same boat as you and I’m on a weight gain journey which terrifies me.
It’s gonna suck, it’s gonna be scary. Start by not tracking one snack or meal, then two, then three. Go off by portion sizes if that makes things easier. But no weighing.
It sounds like a severe ED. Try to get help. You’re more than numbers and calories and your body
Nope, don’t care at all. A couple of hundred calories here and there is irrelevant in the grand scheme of things.
For context, I lost 85 pounds.
I only eat things that have the calories pretty much, or that i know well enough.
I only eat at corporate restaurants, I eat cliff bars as snacks.
It’s kind of sad, and even then, there’s a 30% inaccuracy range. I like things like cliff bars cuz there are no different-sized pieces and therefore more accurate nutritional info.
I’d just recommend going with the flow, ultimately if ur eating little enough it’ll work eventually. Ur bound to over estimate AND under estimate and over time it’ll even out. Don’t get OCD about it, i’ve been weird w this typa thing for 5 years now & my therapist thinks we need to look into my “ocd tendencies” 😭 Just do what u think is right and keep at it
I mean yeah i sometimes worry, but at the end of the day I trust the scale, and that helps ease my worry
No. You try your best. Just weigh what you can, and make smart decisions based off what your tracking app says. It’s impossible to count every single calorie in everything unless you make everything yourself and use precise measurements. But if it comes down to this, you have to ask why you’re doing all this? Are you competing? For health? Weight loss?
In all honesty if counting calories stresses you out this much, you should rethink calorie counting. It’s not supposed to be a stressful situation every time you log in some foods. If it stresses you out, eat intuitively, eat Whole Foods until you feel satiated.
Ditch the scale, maybe speak with a specialist. Like I said it’s not supposed to be a stressor.
If you’re seriously THAT concerned over a couple sprays of oil, seasonings, and two uneaten bites of chicken on your plate, then I would highly suggest going to a therapist instead of asking for advice here.
This is a reasonable meal. The anxiety you are feeling is not normal, you should def look into therapy to help you overcome the worrying feelings you are having. If you are eating healthier with less calories than you were before, take that as a win and keep with it. Weight loss will occur naturally in a calorie deficit
You’re definitely not alone in this – the overthinking about every little detail is so real.
For what it’s worth, you’re actually being way more thorough than most people already. The chicken thing – yeah you weighed it right, raw weight is usually what the nutrition labels refer to unless it specifically says “cooked.” And honestly those spices you’re worried about? We’re talking like maybe 5-10 calories total for all of them combined, if that.
The cooking spray is annoying though – I totally get that. Most of those “zero calorie” sprays are actually like 7-10 calories per second of spray, so if you did a quick spray it’s probably under 20 cals.
But here’s the thing – you’re getting so caught up in the precision that you’re missing the bigger picture. Being off by 20-30 calories on a meal isn’t going to derail anything. Your body’s daily calorie needs can fluctuate by way more than that just based on activity, temperature, sleep, etc.
The real problem is that current tracking apps make this whole process way more stressful than it needs to be. That’s exactly why we’re building Welling AI to handle all this complexity through conversation instead of you having to overthink every ingredient and measurement.
For now though, just log what you can reasonably estimate and move on. The mental energy you’re spending on perfection isn’t worth the extra 2% accuracy.
Xanax
work out enough to not worry about it
Heres my input from a biological standpoint:
1. It is impossible to “count correctly”. The way humans originally measure the calories in food is by burning it and seeing how much energy is produced. Your body doesnt burn food, and each human is slightly different in how we absorb nutrients (slow metabolism, fast metabolism, intolerences that prevent certain sugars/proteins from being absorbed) so *all calorie counting is estimation*, but people still succesfully lose weight doing it, because *you dont have to be 100% accurate*.
2. Your body isnt going to change over one meal, even if you forgot to log it entirely. Our bodies get used to digesting and absorbing the average amount of food we eat. If you, for example, eat twice as much for one day – your weight will only rise temporarily from the weight of the food itself and the weight of the extra water your body is holding from all the extra sodium you consumed. After you poop the food and pee the water out, you’ll return to the real weight.