Biggest Mistakes People Make When Calorie Counting

Calorie counting is not often as easy as counting 1,2,3. You would think that with nutrition labels and apps like MyFitnessPal, calorie counting would be a breeze but there a ton of errors that people make when trying to track calories – especially if they’re tracking calories for weight loss.  In this article, we’ll go through the top mistakes for calorie counting and how to fix them.

Why Track Calories in The First Place?

When I’ve talked about tracking calories on social media, regardless of the calorie goal, I often receive comments like “this is so unhealthy” or “this is too obsessive.” The truth is that with a harmful mindset and with an inappropriate calorie goal, these commenters are right. Calorie counting is useful because it is the easiest way to see if you are trending towards your fitness goal – whether that goal be weight gain, weight maintenance, or weight loss. However, if it is something that isn’t going to be beneficial to you because you know it will cause you a great deal of stress and anxiety, I’d avoid it all together. There are other methods you can use to reach your fitness goals, but we will save that for another article.

For right now, we’re going to assume that you have a healthy mindset when it comes to calorie counting – this not only means holding yourself accountable, but it also means giving yourself grace when you have a slipup. It means that whether you are under or over your calories, this isn’t the end of the world, rather something that you’ll just try to be better at tomorrow.

Mistake #1 – Having the Wrong Calorie Goal

Even if you are accurately counting every single calorie you put into your body, it is less likely to be effective if the calorie target you are tracking against is way too high or too low for your fitness goals.

Take for example a calorie target that is far too low. Some people think that if they plan for a significant calorie deficit, they will lose weight faster. And while they aren’t necessarily wrong at first, they are often surprised when all the weight they lost comes back – and then some. This is because an excessive calorie deficit is often too unsustainable to manage and causes intense hunger cues that are impossible to ignore. What’s more is that a calorie deficit too low can cause physical damage, such as insomnia, loss of menstrual cycle, and loss of energy.  Unless advised under medical supervision, a calorie deficit that is extreme should be avoided.

The fix here is to be moderate in your calorie targets, which you cannot do until you find your maintenance calories. To find your maintenance calories, either use an online calculator calorie calculator or the formula below. Once you have that number, track against it for 2-3 weeks. If your weight stays consistent – congrats, you know your maintenance calories and can plan a moderate calorie surplus or calorie deficit (around +/- 200 -500 calories) depending on your goal. If your weight fluctuates during this time, adjust up or down slightly as necessary and check out the rest of this article to avoid other calorie counting mistakes.

Start By Calculating Your Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR)

Formula For Women

BMR (kcal /day) = 10 × weight (kg) + 6.25 × height (cm) – 5 × age (y) – 161 (kcal / day)

Formula for Men:

BMR (kcal / day) = 10 x weight (kg) + 6.25 x height (cm) – 5 x age (y) + 5 (kcal / day)

Multiply Your BMR By an Activity Level Factor to Get Your Maintenance Calories

·       1.2 is for little or no exercise

·       1.4 is for light exercise 1-2 times a week

·       1.6 is for moderate exercise 2-3 times/week

·       1.75 is for hard exercise 3-5 times/week

·       2.0 if you have a physical job or perform hard exercise 6-7 times/week

Mistake #2 - Not Using a Food Scale When Beginning Tracking

Weighing your food sounds extreme when we have nutrition labels and Google. However, it is the most accurate way to track the calories in your food. When we estimate portion sizes, especially when we haven’t tracked before, we are more likely to overestimate or underestimate our serving, and by default our calories.

Take peanut butter for example. It is so easy to eyeball a tablespoon of peanut butter and be completely off!

The fix here is 3-fold:

1)      Use a food scale and set it to grams. Because grams are a small unit of measurement, this will make your tracking super precise and much easier if you need to increase or decrease a recipe amount.

2)      Eat similar quantities of similar foods to learn about portion sizes.

3)      Eat foods with few ingredients. The less ingredients to track, the greater probability that you haven’t missed anything.

 Mistake #3 – Not Tracking Calories on The Weekend

If you miss a day of calorie tracking, it’s not a big deal. However, if you continue to miss the weekends, which is almost 30% of the total week, it does make a difference. I know the weekends are particularly challenging because you are more likely to eat out. And while I don’t expect you to carry a food scale in your clutch or ask the waiter portion out your meal, you could still estimate how many calories you are eating.

The fix here is to break down the components of what you’re eating vs. trying to estimate the meal in its entirety. Take steak fajitas for example – instead of googling how many calories are in steak fajitas or logging them in on MyFitnessPal, break down the calories for each component of the meal (e.g., calories for steak, calories for tortillas, calories for vegetables) and then add to find the total.

 Mistake #4 - Forgetting to Count Small Bites

You snatch a couple of French fries off your brother’s plate at lunch. You grab a handful of chips at a party. You split an ice cream sundae at the diner with your best friend.

Pretty innocuous right? To your overall health, yes. For tracking the correct number of calories for that day, maybe not. Especially if the small bites that we are conveniently forgetting to track are made up of hyperpalatable foods, or foods with higher levels of fat, sugar, and sodium, then it may have a big impact on your calories for the day.

The fix here is to use apps like MyFitnessPal or even google to estimate the calories in these small bites and track them.

Mistake #5 – Forgetting to Count Oils, Sauces, and/or Any Other Liquid Calories

Just because you aren’t chewing doesn’t mean it doesn’t have calories. This includes your cooking oils, your dressings, your sodas, and your alcohols. I know it seems unfair as many of the things on that list don’t even help to satisfy your hunger.  Luckily for you, the fix here is there are a ton of low-calorie options, such as diet sodas instead of regular soda and olive oil sprays for cooking oil / butter, that you could buy instead, where you won’t have to worry about tracking. And if you are trying to gain weight, liquid calories can become your best friend if you get full easily.

You’ll notice that these mistakes are similar to another and stem from either trying to achieve a calorie goal that is not sustainable or not holding yourself accountable. Fixes such as tracking the calories on your phone after meals can be simple in nature but hard to build the habit of. Take it slow and take responsibility and the results will come.