Ideas on easy calorie counting?

I'm in great shape, 5 7, 138, 20% body fat. I want to compete in a figure competition and am having a hard time counting macros (calories, carbs, fats etc)
I measure, I weigh, I write it down, I come to work, I go onto calorie count.com, i calculate how much of what I ate, then I have to average it out, then write it down. I eat 5- 6 times a day, and alot of the things I eat are combinations of several ingredients.........its sooo complicated and i cant seem to get the patience down. So by noon, I give up, cause i've spent an hour researching the internet for the specific ingredient.

Ideas?? I wish I had a "electronic chip" in my mouth, where everything I put in it, it'd say oh 4 egg whites, and add up all the fat, carbs and protien in the chip,. Then at the end of the day I'd click a button that says TOTAL ALL for the day..................

Fri. Apr 11, 2:29pm

I'd say come up with a list of things you want to eat - do all the calculations for those foods and be done with it for awhile. Another option is to buy a food scale that does all that work for you. The scale I have allows you to compute a single food, all the ingredients in a particular food, an entire meal, or an entire day.

Fitday.com will also do this for you, but you still have to do all the work of finding the food on their database and so on.

I'm guessing no matter which way you go - it still takes a little work.

I love the chip idea - some day, perhaps!!

Friday, April 11, 2008, 2:48 PM

KISS - LESS variety

I just read in Muscle and Fitness "diet succes is a matter of repetition"
I agree with 2:48 make a limited list
Variety is WAY overrated - I eat the same thing Mon-Friday 6 am to 6 pm then am careful about dinner as about 600 cals. and weekends same - lost tons of weight and weigh less than and can bench more than in high school.
Use Calorie King or http://www.thedailyplate.com

Keep it simple - why eat too many different things - there is NO proven benefit

Friday, April 11, 2008, 3:19 PM

I agree at first you just have to do the work to memorize what is in everything. I too eat pretty much the same foods so I know most of it by heart now. I always over estimate on things like salads where it is a handful of veggies and fruit because i dont have the patience to weigh it out. and if something new comes across my plate I google it.
That is actually how i found PT - googling calorie content for something the wiki came up.

Friday, April 11, 2008, 3:22 PM

thanks for all your help...I went to thedailyplate, registered, went to log in my steel cut oats, and all they had listed was 1 cup, and I had half.....so i logged out lol.....I am just gonna have to suck it up and do the manual work.

Thanks

Friday, April 11, 2008, 3:36 PM

on the daily plate, you can enter in the portion that you ate ... it doesn't have to be the full 1 cup. when you select that item, it will add it to your list. under that item, it asks for the portion. so you would put .5 and it will calculate for you. love dailyplate!

Friday, April 11, 2008, 3:45 PM

Very important issue

This was an issue that really made a difference in keeping the weight off. I just couldn't stay on a healthy eating plan that took most of my energy to figure out and write down. I bought a software program that allows you to make meal plans. You can enter in your own foods and serving sizes or choose from the database to create you meal plans. I made up some meals that are basically low cal, low fat. I have meal plans, about 2 each for Mexican, Italian, Arabic, American, Asian all with approximately the same calorie count. So when I deciding what to eat I just go through the different nationalities, then plug that meal plan into my software daily log. After awhile you know the recipes and can calculate in your head if you are away from your computer. The balance between variety and routine is very important. You can't have so much variety that it is a huge colossal decision every time you go to eat, prepare and keep a record of, and you can't have it so routine that it is boring. Good It take some time to figure it out but once it is done it is a great advantage to keeping it off for life. It took me about a year to put together really healthy interesting recipes before I finally came to a natural stopping point.

Friday, April 11, 2008, 3:54 PM

Memorize some of the basics, and round stuff up to the next 25 for ease of adding. Or I try and combine two foods that make a simple match to round to a nearest 100.

Dannon light yogurt: 60 + small orange: 40 = 100
serving of crackers: 125 + cheese: 75 = 200
2/3 cup oatbran: 260 + blueberries: 40 = 300
Veggies: 125 + 1/2 cup pasta sauce: 75 = 200

Friday, April 11, 2008, 5:07 PM

I suggest getting a food scale.

I use a combination of my food scale and calorieking.com (if the item doesn't have the nutritional information with it)

calorieking.com is usually measure in g and oz...sometimes other things too.

I also usually eat the same things over and over again...keeps me on track.

Friday, April 11, 2008, 6:53 PM

thedailyplate.com is brilliant, it's free onlin, and has most major food brands, generic food stuffs and restaurant chains. it has calorie content, fat and protein for most of the food. I find it absolutely invaluble

Link

Monday, April 28, 2008, 6:38 AM

I agree about The Daily Plate!!

Monday, April 28, 2008, 11:09 AM

wow - surprised no one has mentioned www.nutritiondata.com

You add foods to your "pantry", and then you can easily enter how much of each one you ate, and it gives you a total breakdown, just like a nutrition label on packaged food. They also have some other visuals and text...might not be of interest to you, but one of them shows the % of cals from cabs/fat/protein.

The most time-consuming thing is setting up your pantry, but even that is easy, and once you've done it, you will only have to add things as you eat new things.

~B

Link

Monday, April 28, 2008, 3:59 PM

Good calorie counting programs came up in one of my groups - wondered if anyone else has an opinion! I'm going to bump this thread, but also start one with another name, a name more specific to my question.

Monday, June 9, 2008, 8:51 AM

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