HOW TO TRACK

YOUR CALORIES
ACCURATELY

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How to track calories accurately
So you’ve decided you want to lose some body fat, and you’re going to track
calories - great!

It doesn’t matter which method of eating or diet strategy you follow. The only way
to ensure you are losing body fat is to track what you eat and drink and create a
calorie deficit.

Let’s recap that for a moment.

This is how your body burns calories and is known as your Total Daily Energy
Expenditure or TDEE. Another name for this which you’re probably more familiar
with, is your metabolism.

There are four parts to your metabolism and how your body burns calories, so let’s
explore each one.

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BMR - Basal Metabolic Rate

In order to function effectively, your body needs

calories for fuel. Think about your heart beating and
pumping blood around your body, your lungs
expanding, your kidneys filtering; every bodily function
requires energy, and you get that energy from calories
in the food and drink that you consume.

It’s not the most pleasant visual, but another way of thinking about your BMR is the
number of calories you would need if you were in a coma. This part of your
metabolism accounts for around 60% of your total weekly calorie burn.

NEAT - Non-exercise activity thermogenesis

The next level up from your BMR and the next

part of your metabolism is your NEAT (Non-
Exercise Activity Thermogenesis). This is the
unplanned movement that you will do day in day
out. Brushing your teeth, walking around the
shops and even your fingers typing on a keyboard
are all examples of non-exercise activity.

Your NEAT is often the part of your metabolism that is the most overlooked and
the part you have the most control over. NEAT accounts for 25-50% of your
weekly calorie burn, depending on how active you are. People with active jobs
get closer to the 40-50% and have a much higher calorie burn/faster metabolism.
This is why if you have ever gone from a very active job to sitting at a desk all day
without changing your eating habits, you may have experienced gradual weight
gain. Committing to getting your NEAT up is one way to be more active and
create more of a calorie deficit.

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EAT - Exercise Activity Thermogenesis

EAT is your planned exercise. A home workout, that

gym session or your weekly Zumba class could be
examples of EAT. If it’s planned, it’s exercise, and your
EAT accounts for 5-10% of your weekly calorie burn.
This figure shocks people as they often think it will be
more. They think doing more workouts at the gym will
yield better results, but it is arguably more beneficial to
also focus on your NEAT through your daily step goal.
We would never dissuade anyone from planned
exercise because of all the other physical and mental
health benefits. NEAT and EAT work well together so
committing to maximising both is what we would
always advise.

TEoF - Thermic Effect of Food

The Thermic Effect of Food is the calories your body needs for the digestive
process. Yes, you consume calories in the form of food and drink, but your body also
needs calories to break that fuel down. This accounts for around 10% of your weekly
calorie burn.

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The Principle of Fat Loss - A Calorie Deficit

You will have no doubt heard about the importance of a calorie deficit when it comes
to fat loss, but until you fully understand what a calorie deficit is and how to
achieve it, saying “You need to be in a calorie deficit” is pointless advice.

Steps to create a calorie deficit

1. Work out your daily calories - we advise using

https://www.calculator.net/calorie-calculator
2. When selecting your activity level, underestimate. Better to underestimate than
overestimate. So if you currently workout 4 times a week but you’re quite
sedentary the rest of the time, pick the option that suggests your activity level is
working out 1-3 times per week.
3. The results will give you a calorie intake estimate for maintenance (remaining the
same weight), mild weight loss (0.5lbs a week), weight loss (1lb a week) and
extreme weight loss (2lbs a week). Pick a calorie goal and weight loss that is
right and realistic for you.
4. Track everything you eat and drink accurately using a calorie calculating app -
we advise using MyFitnessPal.

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How to track accurately

Now you understand your metabolism, creating a calorie deficit and the principle of
fat loss, it is time to help you track your calorie intake accurately.

It is very easy and normal to fall into a few pitfalls when counting calories that will
take you out of a calorie deficit and stall your results. That’s why we want to ensure
you’re clued up with the proper knowledge so you can always remain in a calorie
deficit a

Tracking food and drink - the basics

When it comes to tracking your food and drink, you will

need to invest in a pair of kitchen scales. We advise using
scales that also track fluids, as you will also need to track
drinks along with food.

You can pick up a basic set of scales for under £15/$20,

and they will help you track your calorie intake accurately.

No, you don’t have to track forever

At first, it can seem time-consuming and tedious to track your food, but you will soon
learn the caloric values of food when you repeat this process. In the future, you
won’t need to weigh and track your food. I weighed and tracked my food for such a
long time and gained a vast amount of knowledge and experience understanding
calorie values that I no longer weigh everything. I haven’t touched kitchen scales or
MyFitnessPal in over three years. It’s a skill I’ve mastered and it’s set me up for
nutrition success forever.

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I encourage you to think about tracking your food as mastering a new skill.
Eventually, you will be able to see by sight and mentally calculate your calorie intake.
Most Body Smart clients get to the point of being able to do this without tracking
after 12-18 months. I always liken it to learning a new language! You will become
familiar with the visual volumes of food and the caloric value as you learn this over
time. Or I also say to people to think of it like you’re a character in a video game.
When you start off the video game, your character might have a skill level of 0. Over
time and with practice and adopting the right moves, your character will master the
levels and be at level 100. Tracking is the same.

It’s also never too late to track. At Body Smart, we

have clients in their 60s sign up to coaching with us to
undo decades of fad diet habits. Tracking their food for
12-18 months might seem like a long time. We’ve even
had many people comment on our social posts that
tracking is excessive and obsessive! Would they say
that about you spending time mastering a new skill like
learning a language? No. 12-18 months is a drop in the
ocean to master something that you will do EVERY
DAY until you die. Having control of your nutrition will
make you feel, look and live your best life.

Weighing food

Place a bowl or plate on the scale and then turn it on. This should set your scale to 0.
If you are in the wrong mode, for example, the scale turns on measuring fluid ounces,
and you want to measure the gram weight, select the ‘grams’ option, and you should
be able to reset the scales to 0 with your plate or bowl on the scales. Now add your
food, and it will give you the gram weight.

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Tracking liquids

If you have a measuring jug with litres or

ounces, you may wish to use this for liquids and
visually assess the volume using the
measurement check marks on the measuring
jug. If your scales have the ability to measure
fluid ounces or millilitres, then you can repeat
the steps in the ‘weighing food’ section above,
ensuring you’ve selected the liquid
measurement function that you require.

Weighing your bowls and plates

Sometimes you may forget to reset your scales when weighing your food. You
could weigh your plates, bowls and measuring jugs and make a note of these weights
in advance so that if you find yourself weighing food that is already in a bowl or on a
plate, you can minus the weight of your crockery. Or you might find it easier to place
another piece of crockery on the scale and reset your scale to 0 before adding the
food again. It’s a bit more washing up this way!

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Using the barcode function

On MyFitnessPal and other calorie-tracking apps, you can use the barcode function to
easily scan items and track your calories.

BEWARE THOUGH

Not all entries into calorie calculating apps are accurate!

MyFitnessPal has the green badge next to foods that

have been checked and verified, but we have found
even this is not entirely 100% accurate, like this butter
here. MyFitnessPal says this is the right calorie value,
but when you compare the entry on MyFitnessPal to
the back of the butter, you can clearly see it is wrong.

How to identify incorrect entries on MyFitnessPal

As MyFitnessPal is an open database, users can add their own foods. If you are also
tracking your macros, carbohydrates, protein and fat, then not all foods contain this
breakdown.

If the macros are greyed out, you know that this is an inaccurate entry.

Look for things like fibre, sugar and sodium count along with vitamins and mineral
breakdown. If they are all at 0, you know that this has been added as a lazy entry by
someone just tracking the calories in that food, and you might need to find an
alternative that is more accurate and reflects what you see on the back of the
packaging of your food or drink.

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Weighing cooked vs raw food

This is an age-old problem that we don’t have a

100% accurate answer to, unfortunately. As
many meat products contain varying amounts of
added water, this can affect the calorie count.
Our advice is to scan the packaging and look at
the nutritional information. Check whether it
displays the nutritional information for the raw
or cooked weight, and then weigh and track
accordingly. If the packaging gives you the
calories for raw meat, weigh it before cooking. If
the packaging provides the calories for the
cooked weight, weigh your meat after cooking.
Just be consistent with what you choose so you
don’t end up over or underestimating.

When it comes to cooked vs raw pasta and rice, our advice is to weigh it uncooked
and find the uncooked entry value in MyFitnessPal, unless you are using pre-cooked
rice or pasta. You will find values for foods that you can buy dry or cooked, such as
pasta, rice, couscous, noodles and quinoa. Whatever form it is in before you cook or
heat it, weigh and track that.

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The things we forget to track

There are many food and drink items that people forget to track, and the calorie
values in said foods can add up very quickly. Foods that we often forget to track
include:

Cooking oils
Sauces
Spreads
Liquid calories like soda and milk
Alcoholic drinks
Sugar and milk in hot drinks
Cream in cooking
Nuts
Supplements
Additional licks, bites and tastes

Licks, bites and tastes

Additional licks, bites and tastes of foods can really add up and take people out of
a calorie deficit when not tracked.

On the next page are some eye-opening infographics of how small nibbles and sips
can add up.

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The untracked calories that could be
costing you your calorie deficit

Mindless bites add up

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 Mindless drinking can take you
out of your deficit too

It's nuts how calorie dense nuts are!

100 calories of nuts:

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Other tracking mistakes people make
Tracking after you’ve eaten

One sure-fire way of getting your calorie intake

wrong is tracking AFTER you’ve eaten. In our
experience and according to scientific studies, even
dieticians qualified in all things nutrition estimated
their calorie intake 300-500 calories less per day
when they didn’t track before eating. The average
person will estimate around 600-1000 calories less
when tracking retrospectively instead of in advance.

If you really want to succeed with your calorie deficit, track before cooking your
food for the most accurate calorie value.

Don’t eat back your exercise calories!

If you have a smartwatch or a FitBit, you may have

linked this to MyFitnessPal, and it tracks your
exercise calories.

This will give you a larger daily calorie allowance on

your MyFitnessPal view.

Remember you set your calorie intake at the

beginning using calculator.net and set your activity
level? This is because your exercise calories are
already accounted for in your daily calorie target.

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There are studies that suggest smartwatches are wildly inaccurate. Research
conducted in 2019 showed that they are 40.1% inaccurate. In 2018, another study
conducted by the University of British Columbia, showed the accuracy of fitness
trackers have a 50-50 chance of getting the step counts right. That means, if you
think you’ve walked 10,000 steps, in reality, you may have only walked 5,300. Our
head of content can type at speed while sitting at her desk, and her watch falsely
declares she has done up to 6,000 steps after a day of writing. Yes, her typing will
burn calories, but not the same calorie burn as a 6,000 step walk.

If you have your fitness watch synced to a calorie

tracker like MyFitnessPal, it will give you more
calories to eat depending on the activity that you
have done. Knowing that these watches are
inaccurate on genuine sporting activity and that
they also pick up motion of typing as steps taken,
you can see why giving you more calories to
eat in your daily allowance would once again
cause you to no longer be in a calorie deficit.

At Body Smart, we get all of our clients to un-sync their devices and adjust their
calorie and macro targets according to their personal lifestyle factors that determine
their calorie output. We work with our clients on a 1:1 basis to ensure that this is the
right formula for them and the right calculation. No two people are the same, so
this will vary from client to client.

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Tracking when eating out

One of the hardest things to track is food when you eat out. We never discourage
anyone from eating out, but you have to be realistic with your goals if you are
someone who goes to restaurants a lot as you are not in control of the ingredients
used.

Many restaurant menus are comprehensive, and

due to allergen laws, menus should tell you
exactly what is in each dish. However, most
restaurants don’t tell you the quantities or give
you the calorie and macro breakdown.

Our advice for tracking when eating out in a fat loss phase is:

Look at the menu online before you go and decide what you will eat in advance.

Plot what you will eat in your food tracking app, like MyFitnessPal. If you loosely
plan your meal in advance, you will have a better idea of the caloric intake you can
expect, and it reduces willpower if you decide what you are having in advance.

Don’t think you are being awkward if you want to call ahead or discuss
ingredients and cooking methods used in certain dishes, you are within your
rights to ask. Deep frying foods, meat encased in breadcrumbs or pastry, cream in
sauces and sides will all need to be accounted for, and if it isn’t clear from the
menu, call ahead or ask your server when you arrive.

As a rule of thumb, go for a source of protein, veggies and a small source of

carbs when ordering your meal. Consider ordering vegetables or salad sides to
help you bulk your meal out.

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Ask for sauces on the side, and request that vegetables are served without
butter if you’re trying to save calories. Restaurants want your meals to taste
amazing, so they will use calorific ingredients like butter, cream, wine in sauces
etc. Sides like mayonnaise and sour cream will also bump up your calories.

If you’re drinking alcohol, opt for lower-calorie drinks like white spirits and diet
mixers.

Drink plenty of water and ask for a jug of water for the table.

Learn from your personal experience. The more you cook and track at home,
the more knowledge you gain, and it becomes easier to track when eating out.

Always overestimate rather than underestimate what you’re tracking when

you’re out. No, you do not need to take your kitchen scales out with you but
overestimate weights and volumes.

Plan a gym session or a decent walk the next day and use those additional
calories to fuel yourself in your workout.

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What next?

We hope this eBook has been helpful for you to understand how to track accurately.

If you are looking for further nutritional education, support and accountability to
achieve your results and you’d like to work with your personal Body Smart coach
on a 1:1 basis to improve your mindset, nutrition and fitness, get in touch.

We start all coaching journeys with a call to a coach. Let’s make sure we are right for
coaching, and you are right for us. We can chat about your goals, what you’d like to
achieve, how we can fit the right habits and actions into your busy life and how to
sustain your results for life.

To apply for coaching, click here.

bit.ly/bodysmartcourse_apply

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