Explain like I’m 5: Calorie tracking for summer chub emergency

With being in denial about how many cakes I’ve eaten through lockdown I find myself the heaviest I have ever been – and I missed on the boat on the summer chub club.

I know I need to track calories to ditch the weight – but how do you actually do this? I don’t eat that much-packaged food, just too much homemade stuff. So do I need to weigh everything I eat? Before or after cooking? What app is best in the UK for homemade food?

I think I just need to get a handle on calories first before thinking about manipulating macros. Any pointers gratefully received.

I’m aiming to ditch 8 to 12 kg in 12 weeks. Riding 5 days per week, and trying to use kettlebells on 3 days. Realistic goal?

If you are eating generally go9od food can you not just sack off the cakes and excercise portion control?

sack off some of the cycling and do some running, I believe the current thing is very short very hard or extended very gentle.

Personal experience only, but I used weightwatchers, it is a pain when it’s home made food, but you start to get a feel for what counts and what doesn’t. It is at cost and points not calorie based, paying for it made me commit to it more than MFPal.

I spent 6 months tracking using their app, I dropped 15kg and 2 years later have kept all but 2 of them off (includes going from 15 miles a day bike commute to almost never riding, cos needy dog, wfh and general laziness).

1kg a week will be hard to maintain after the intial drop, but it’s not impossible based on how much you have to lose overall.

So do I need to weigh everything I eat?

Pretty much yes.

Before or after cooking?

I do before, but often the app has differing values depending on cooking method (e.g. Roast Potatoes vs Boiled)

What app is best in the UK for homemade food?

Myfitnesspal has worked for me. (33kg lost overall, 5.4 kg this year, 15 ish last year10 ish in the 18 months before that)

You calorie requirements are based on your weight and activity level. I’m on 500 less cals per day than I was when I started.

I have days where I’m over the limit, days where I’m under – I try to keep my weekly rolling average under the limit (2150 for a fairly sedantary 100kg man).

1kg per week is definitely doable.

For homemade meals, I tend to do a search on myfitnesspal for an equivalent if I haven’t cooked it. If I am cooking, I tend to weigh everything anyway and then save it as a meal in MFP, especially if it’s something I might have regularly. Lots of websites that I get the recipe ideas from also have a the nutritional values with the recipe now too, so I can just enter that straight in and save as a meal.

I kind of agree with Josh – but I am always surprised when I actually track calories (using My Fitness Pal). However good I think I am being, by spending a couple of days religiously tracking every last mouthful…it’s surprising how fast the calories add up.

MFP is free for what you need, there is a handy barcode scanner so it’s really straightforward. Perhaps track for a day to get a feel for what x000 calories is.

Or you could go full iDave and send me £100 for a personalised plan…

For clarity I’m not remotely suggesting that tracking doesn’t work or that it is as simple as “just eat less”. Just that if you are generally cooking from scratch you probably have a good idea whats in your food.

I find its the “this is healthy when I make it” processed food that can get you. And crisps obviously because I have needs.

Run!

It’s the only thing that keeps weight off for me. I don’t want to be a calorie watcher and like beer too much to knock that on the head.

Just cut out some crap, run – then run a bit more!

I never found cycling helped with weight-loss even when I was a 200 mile per week rider.

When you say ditching weight do you mean ditching fat?

You can lose weight really easily by cutting carbs. Unscientific answer is carbs are stored with water, cut carbs you roughly double the weight loss in a very short period. It is why people doing diets that reduce carb intake see amazing results for a short time then slower results after.

Cutting fat is more about lifestyle. Unscientifically again you want a net calorie deficit (of course you don’t just use calories when you exercise, more muscle means more calorie use all of the time, and more exercise raises your resting metabolic rate.
It is then about what you put in, fatty calorie dense foods will always put you prone to putting on fat.

Easiest approach I found is to look at everything before you choose to eat it, ask yourself is it good for you, should you be eating it? The challenge then is filling yourself up. Pre-cooked turkey steaks are a winner there.

I listened to a nutrition podcast last week so started weighing and logging all meals, just be honest with what you actually eat.

So that’s the intake, then diarise the exercise and burn rates.

My mate lost loads of weight by writing his weight down and posting it on the fridge as a reminder every time he felt hungry. I just keep a paper diary so I can see how I m doing.

Good luck btw

74 pounds lost in the last 2 years. I used MyFitnessPal and was religiously measuring everything, but after a few months of that I knew what to cook and how much.

Now, I’m cutting back a bit more because I found in the last few months I’d plateau’d due to working from home and access to the biscuit tin. More biscuits than fruit but “couldn’t understand why I wasn’t losing weight” – also due to the bike packing in, I got out of cycling every lunchtime. Back on it and bought a nutribullet to try and get more fruit in my system.

It’s all about less in move more for me that worked, no gimmicks and keeping under a reasonable amount of calories a day. The App told me 2200 was fine to lose a pound a week, I aimed for 1800, now I’m aiming for 1500

+1 MFP – makes you think about what you’re eating too. It’s not massively accurate for home-cooked food even if you weigh the portions etc, but keeping a track and trying not to go over your ‘target’ intake means at the least you’re reflecting on food intake vs exercise.

I know I need to track calories to ditch the weight – but how do you actually do this? I don’t eat that much-packaged food, just too much homemade stuff.

Homemade or not, I’m assuming you know the difference between ‘good’ foods (leanish meats, veg, pulses etc) and ‘bad’ (sugary, fatty, and especially sugary-fatty) foods, so you can probably achieve what you want through a detailed look at what you eat and some portion-control, rather than fannying around with the intricacies of calorie-control. If what you’re eating now is predominantly ‘good’, just eat less of it. If there’s quite a lot of ‘bad’, then eat a lot less of that.

Definitely achievable. 11kg down since 1st March, including a wobble in May when my girlfriend and I broke up. Over half way to my target (started from a bad place). What I’ve learned you need a plan that works for you and your lifestyle (obvious I know).

1st Month I concentrated on diet and came up with this variation on 5:2 –
Mon, Wed, Fri – 500 calorie deficit using MFP – now I just eat pretty much the same stuff
Tues, Thu – partial fast – only eat evening meal
Sat, Sun – don’t be silly

Once gyms reopened I got back into going 4-5 times a week, probably means I eat a bit more, but the weight loss has continued and I can have a beer a couple of nights. Fitness and strength have improved too.

I’ve tried loads of things over the years (WW, free iDave, 5:2) with varying degrees of success, I needed something that works with my autism so I don’t catastrophise and give up as soon as I have one bad day.

I weigh myself daily, so I can try and fix a bad day, but look at the weekly trend (compare Wed with Wed etc.).

Hadn’t ridden my bike for five weeks, went out on Sunday and was amazed at the difference losing some weight and the fitness work has made. Even the ex-gf has commented on it (not my motivation, but nice).

Good luck!

edit – I have looked at what I eat and modified it slightly, there is a lot I could improve nutrition wise, at the moment I need to enjoy what I eat, so that’s something I’m looking to improve gradually. I’m the sort of person that when I feel “deprived” I subconciously fight against it and sabotage myself.

I weighed things religiously to begin with, just to get a ballpark idea of calories in each meal/snack, but then just went ‘approximate’ because as I understand it most ‘stated’ calorie contents, even for raw ingredients, can be quite approximate. Don’t quote me but I’m sure I read up to 20% out on nutrition lables.

Dylan Johnson had a good approach in a YouTube video. Stop counting calories but focus on low calorie density foods which fill you up but which the body either can’t process very well or which are mostly water anyway, e.g. unprocessed fruit and veg etc. My lunches now are usually those wee pre-packaged snacky veg packets from the Co-Op lunch aisle, e.g. a wee tub of carrot sticks, half a bag of sugar snap peas, some celery sticks with peanut butter (although PB is high calorie density) and maybe some cooked chicken or turkey.

I still think 1kg a week is ambitious after the initial water weight loss mentioned above…

what @boombang said.

If you’re serious about losing weight cut out the processed carbs, starches and added sugar. Go low carb high fat. Sounds counter intuitive but it works (I lost 3.5 stone following the Michael Mosley Blood Sugar Diet – and kept it off by sticking to the principles).

Basically there is a feedback loop between foods that up your blood sugar (sugar, processed carbs, starches), insulin spikes and being unable to burn your fat reserves. Which eventually leads to T2 diabetes.

You can go boot camp 800 cals a day and see some pretty miraculous weight loss (and surprisingly not be that hungry). Or just stick to the principles of the LCHF diet and watch the weight come down more slowly.

I know I need to track calories to ditch the weight – but how do you actually do this?

It’s not the best way to do it. Sorry to do this, but there is lots of evidence that what we used to think is wrong.

Basically foods that have high sugar or starch content get digested very quickly, which means a) their energy gets turned to fat quickly and b) they make you more hungry. A far better option than counting calories is to simply avoid sugary and starchy foods.

Sugar is easy to identify, but in this case starchy foods means potatoes, rice, pasta, and grains and flour. Wholemeal flour is not as bad as the rest, but still worse than other things.

So basically fill up on vegetables with normal amounts of meat and fish. If you want to go better, also avoid fruit (it’s sugary), dairy (it stimulates insulin release); if you haven’t the commitment and willpower to avoid all the starchy foods then have a bit of wholemeal bread. This does need some creative cooking ideas but it’s not that hard once you create a menu you like, but it does generally mean more actual cooking.

Don’t avoid fat either, it really helps fill you up and won’t make you crave more. But fat AND sugar does, of course.

I can’t restrict calories too much as it doesn’t actually result in weight loss, it just slows me down and ruins my bike performance. I can actually lose weight by eating a bit more than minimum. If I don’t eat enough and continue exercise then the cravings get so bad (understandably so) that eventually it collapses.

Portion control and being honest with yourself will make a big impact. I’ve had a fair few arguments with the other half about portion size, basically blaming her for putting too much on the plate and therefore I “must” eat it all. Reality is, it’s down to me to show restraint and not eat all of it on the plate or not be lazy and dish it up myself in the first place. I have stopped adding sugar or sweeteners to my coffee and drink a lot more water and have a flavoured squash as a treat rather than drinking all the time. Keep sugar to a minimum to stop the cravings to have more. I can binge a lot when the mood takes me, so another thing I have tried to stop and so far for the last few weeks, managed to do. I used to live by exercise exercise exercise. Nowadays I try to get out on the bike when I can, which is not as often as I’d like, even with an ebike.

It’s the cakes. I’m lucky in that I have never had to watch my weight. However in the few weeks following retirement even I lost about half a stone. It was clear to me it was down to the sudden reduction in Greggs bacon barms, Coop cakes and pints after work.

Cut those out for the period you want to lose weight and providing the rest of your diet is a healthy one you will lose weight.

A kilo a week is a lot. General advice is to aim for half of that

the key thing here is you do not need a “diet” You need a lifestyle change to “eat less move more”

A “diet” leads to yo yo weight. the lifestyle change means you keep it off and a more gradual reduction also makes it easier to keep the weight off

Avoid any advice from a “nutritionist”. Its a totally unregulated label and I have seen so much bizzare and frankly dangerous advice from them. ( there may be good people working under that label but I have never seen any – its a charletans label.) You need a dietician

Basically foods that have high sugar or starch content get digested very quickly, which means a) their energy gets turned to fat quickly and b) they make you more hungry. A far better option than counting calories is to simply avoid sugary and starchy foods.

Dude – crap advice – carbs run from extremely quick to be digested to very slow. Oats for example do not give the effect you desribe. short chain carbs do, long chain do not

However in the few weeks following retirement evenmonths following the enforced Covid WFH I lost about half a stone. It was clear to me it was down to the sudden reduction in Greggs bacon barms, Coop cakes and pints afterbirthday cakes and/or holiday sweets that were typically available on any given day on the end of a filing cabinet work.

Yup. Cut the crap, and the weight will follow.

Just to add – the medical consensus is changing from fat being the enemy to sugar particularly fructose. Watch out for hidden sugar. a can of coke contains 35 grammes!

Don’t worry about counting calories. Calorie deficit diets do not work long term. Reducing carbohydrates/sugar is the best and safest way of losing weight for good.

Many here slate a ketogenic or low carb way of eating but it works and is perfectly safe.

Check out either or both; Keto UK Community and Low Carb UK Community pages on Facebook packed full of free info. I’ve been low carb for nearly 2 years. Have lost 3 stone in weight and kept it off. Never felt healthier.

Dude – crap advice – carbs run from extremely quick to be digested to very slow. Oats for example do not give the effect you desribe. short chain carbs do, long chain do not

Ookay.

Firstly the glycaemic index of even wholegrain is still in the middle of the range, it’s not that low.

Secondly, the insulin response is related to the glycaemic load which is quite high for grain based products. GI is calculated on an amount of the food that contains the same amount of carbohydrate as 100g of glucose, but GL is calculated on a typical portion size that you’d actually eat. This is important because the insulin response is related to both the speed of absorbtion AND the amount there is. So one wine gum produces a lower insulin response than half a loaf of wholemeal bread.

The point about starchy foods is that whilst some of them have middling GI they all have high GL because you can very easily eat a lot of them, and it is in fact normal to do so. A pasta meal for example has a moderate GI but a pretty high GL. As for it being crap advice – I’m not telling you what to eat, I’m giving science-based suggestions and you will need to experiment to find out what works.

For the folks on this forum, you may find (depending on your genes) that cutting out all the starchy foods does not provide enough fuel for the amount and intensity of riding you want to do. So if you want to introduce more carbs you have two options – either introduce things like wholemeal bread, OR supplement your riding with carbs during and immediately afterwards. What seems to work for me is supplementing a modest amount of carbs around the riding or other exercise, and avoiding starchy foods the rest of the time. If I don’t have enough carbs to supplement the riding then I don’t recover and feel crappy all the time as well as being miserably hungry. But others seem to manage fine. It seems to be about how well you can adapt to fuelling your exercise via lipolysis which is partly circumstantial and partly genetic.

Watch out for hidden sugar. a can of coke contains 35 grammes!

Coke isn’t exactly hidden sugar, is it?

Hidden sugar in things like ‘healthy’ muesli, healthy sounding low fat yoghurts, or ready-meals and sauces.

Dude – please read up on this stuff before making definitive statements. You are simply wrong on the carbs, Oats for example actually smooth out peaks and troughs in your blood sugar

You are the man who was eating half a kilo at least of refined sugars a week and getting insulin spikes and crashes as a result – from what you described

providing the rest of your diet is a healthy one you will lose weight.

You’d be surprised how much any agreed definition of ‘healthy diet’ is in contention/confusion.

Mum thinks that living on chips, battered fish, cheese, crisps, sugary yoghurts and ‘Granary’ bread is a healthy diet because she’s eating ‘granary’ and yoghurt so it must be offsetting all the bacon and sausage.

OP, I inherited the family eating disorder until April this year decided enough was enough. I’m so seriously overweight that I chose to lose 2lbs a week until I reach my acceptable BMI and ‘normal’ weight.

First of all I used the NHS BMI calculator. Then chose target weight. Then created a free profile on My Fitness Pal and punched in the target weight and 2lbs a week weight loss.

Now all I really have to do is enter what I eat in the My Fitness Pal food diary and weigh in (I choose to weigh in/record progress once a week)

I’ve done a fair bit of label reading this past 8 weeks to double-check the MFP food item/calorie stats. It’s funny to realise how little variety is in your diet when you soon twig to the fact that you’re mostly recording the same entries week after week 🤣

Oh yeah, I cut out bread and chips and biscuits and milk chocolate, then adjusted this to the exception of very occasional handful of chips no more than once a week because I’m weak. Need to fix that. Still, have lost 16lbs in 8 weeks, have more energy, sleeping better, so…

Mum thinks that living on chips, battered fish, cheese, crisps, sugary yoghurts and ‘Granary’ bread is a healthy diet

sounds bloody fantastic where do I sign up?

@joshvegas

where do I sign up?

Just any day-chair and hospital within chauffeuring distance!

Each less each day than the previous day.

At some point you’ll realise that you can eat the same as the previous day.

Dude – please read up on this stuff before making definitive statements. You are simply wrong on the carbs, Oats for example actually smooth out peaks and troughs in your blood sugar

I’ve read a shitload. Did you think I made up this stuff about GI and GL?

Whole grains are among the lowest GL of starchy foods, but still higher than pulses and vegetables. As I said, if you can do without the starch in whatever form you’ll do better but if you find you need to eat more carbohydrate then whole grains are your best option, along side sweet potatoes.

You are the man who was eating half a kilo at least of refined sugars a week and getting insulin spikes and crashes as a result – from what you described

No, not in the least, I tried to explain this to you at the time and you wilfully ignored me and refused to discuss properly so I’m not gonna try again, it’s pointless.

Back in the day the SW “green” plan was something like
– as much fruit and veg as you like
– ditto plain boiled rice/pasta
– a certain amount of lean protein without “it counting” including beans
– careful control of fat (so if you make pasta with tomato and bean sauce, the main thing you’d do is carefully measure the olive oil)
– a certain amount of low-fat dairy “for free”
– careful control of bread, cake, pies, booze etc

Suited me as it meant I sacked off the toast and just ate lots of healthy stuffsoup, salads, pasta’n’sauce, curry, stew etc

PS exercise is important
– controls mood & sleep => better food choices
– builds muscle => better metabolism
– o yes does burn some calories
– can be down with a buddy in lockdown => more socialization => better mood => better food choices

Exercise is good yes but high intensity exercise can drive hunger which can wreck your weight loss. Lots of people think yay healthy and they slash calories and smash the exercise and don’t lose weight. You need the right diet and the right exercise in combination if you want to lose weight.

Basically if you are cutting calories and/or carbs don’t ride too hard. I find short rides are ok at reasonable pace though, like 1hr or there abouts.

I can’t restrict calories too much as it doesn’t actually result in weight loss, it just slows me down and ruins my bike performance. I can actually lose weight by eating a bit more than minimum.

Who/what is defining this minimum?

Who/what is defining this minimum?

It’s entirely personal, and you can only establish it through experience.

My problem is that I constantly end up riding too hard. I did pretty well in winter because Zwift races are short, but I can’t stay inside in weather like this!

Don’t worry about counting calories. Calorie deficit diets do not work long term. Reducing carbohydrates/sugar is the best and safest way of losing weight for good.

Reducing carbs/sugars is an absolutely fantastic way to reduce lots of calories. The end result is the same – less carbs/sugars = less calories = eating at a calorie deficit.

Its physics end of the day. Energy (calories) in – energy used = deficit or surplus.

Deficit you lose weight
Surplus you gain weight.

That’s all there is to it! Simples.

Where people lose their way is not understanding calories are estimates and even calculating your your Total Daily Energy Expenditure (TDEE) is not an exact science. If you’re not losing weight, drop your daily calories by 200 and then see if you start to lose weight again. Continue until you’re at your goal!

Lots of people think yay healthy and they slash calories and smash the exercise and don’t lose weight. You need the right diet and the right exercise in combination if you want to lose weight.

I figured this and for me it’s been relatively easy to use MFP food diary/daily calorie target with the included exercise diary.

ie yesterday I was about 300 calories over daily allowance thanks to overindulging in baked potatoes, and so reigned it back with an hour long drum-practice of varying intensity. This brought me back down close enough to the daily target/calorie-deficit for my plan.

Its physics end of the day. Energy (calories) in – energy used = deficit or surplus.

It’s not simple physics, not at all. It’s biology and it’s very complicate and still not fully understood by science. Because your body’s not a simple heat engine, it’s not like a car. The food you eat doesn’t get magically converted to fat and then get stored. Lots of things have to happen for fat to get created or metabolised, and it’s governed by hormones. The levels of those hormones produced and your response to them varies quite a bit.

Ultimately, the fat you store is *related* to the calories you eat but it’s not as simple as you say. Otherwise, everyone with even a slight calorie surplus (which is most people) would continue getting fatter and fatter all their lives til they died weighing hundreds of kilos. Likewise anyone with a slight deficit would eventually die emaciated. This clearly doesn’t happen.

There are studies showing that diets containing the exact same calories but consisting of different ratios of fat/protein/carbs produce different weight gain/loss results. Fat is laid down in response to insulin being produced, and eating high carb and high GI foods results in much more insulin being produced, even if the total calories are the same.

Where people lose their way is not understanding calories are estimates and even calculating your your Total Daily Energy Expenditure (TDEE) is not an exact science.

Also, doing exercise isn’t the only way for energy to leave your body.