Tracking your calories can be a real pain, especially if you have a busy day or are eating a lot of meals on the go, but trust me-doing so is a huge help. Food logging is a large part of my success at AFS up to this point. I don’t know about you, but I’ve been known to eat absentmindedly: a handful of cashews here, some M&Ms there, or an extra slice of pizza just because it’s there. These all add up fast.
By making my diet intentional and holding myself accountable for the food I stuff in my face, I have been working hard to control and notice how many calories I have left each day.
Here are three tricks that have made logging food much easier for me:
- Set it and forget it
Enter a food plan for the upcoming day either the night before or first thing in the morning. By telling yourself what you will eat, you can make healthier choices based on what you have in your house or what restaurant you’re going to ahead of time. It becomes easier to eat the healthier option that you already logged into your app rather than delete it and re-enter the drive-thru food that you impulsively splurged on.
- Scan-tastic!
Did you know the FatSecret app has a barcode scanner built in? This isn’t to help you check prices at Kroger, 😉 it’s for quickly logging the food that you’re eating. Just click (+) to enter food like you normally do then press the barcode icon at the bottom right to scan. It will quickly enter your meals by automatically pulling up the nutritional info rather than having to manually search for the items and brands.
- Save your food- no Tupperware required
Maybe you have Taco Tuesdays at your house or you eat the same thing for breakfast every day. Use the Saved Meals feature to enter food with one button. Just enter each food/ingredient into the Saved Meal and name it. Next time just click (+) to enter the food and scroll over to Saved Meals at the top, and select the meal. It lists each food individually, so it is easy to adjust the meal if you swap out ingredients or only eat half of the meal.
See? It’s not as hard as you thought. If you stick to the calorie goals your Practitioner set for you, you’ll see remarkably better results.
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