Are you making these mistakes when tracking your calories / macros?

Here are some common mistakes you might be making and how to fix them:

1. Eyeballing instead of weighing

Weighing your food with a food scale is the most accurate way to track. While eyeballing occasionally is okay, you'd be surprised by how must the difference adds up over the course of a day.

2. Tracking cooked vs uncooked incorrectly

This is especially important when tracking meats and things like rice and pasta that decrease/increase in size after cooking it.

For example, meat cooks down by about 25%. Chicken that starts at 8 oz raw comes out to 6 oz after being cooked. If you use a cooked chicken entry in MFP and type in 8 oz, you are overshooting the amount of chicken you are actually eating, which means you are un-intentionally eating less protein than you realize.

Rice almost triples in weight after being cooked in water. 30g of dry rice roughly turns into 90g of rice. If you track 90g of rice when you're actually eating 30g of dry rice, then you will be over-tracking and ultimately under-eating your carb goal.

Remember that the nutrition label listed on dry rice (or pasta) is going to be measured by the amount of dry rice at the starting point (not after it has been cooked).

3. Tracking after you eat

The most accurate time to track your food is while putting it on your plate. This way you can measure out exactly what you are eating. If you wait to track until after, you wont' have that accurate measuring. And if you wait to track until the end of the day, you will most likely forget something that you ate.

4. Not tracking bites and snacks throughout the day

Little bites and nibbles add up throughout the day. If you are known to take little bites while cooking or in the kitchen and think that a few handfuls of a snack won't make a difference in the long run, you're wrong! These can definitely add up throughout the day by up to a few hundred calories! So, avoid these little bites or make sure you are adding them into your logs!

5. Not tracking creamers, sauces, oils, etc

This is a big one! Creamers, milks, sauces, oils are all usually pretty calorie-dense. This means that even a small serving can be quite a bit of calories and fat.

A "splash" of creamer might actually be a full serving which is missed calories throughout the day. If you are using oil to cook your food, please add this into your log! 1 TBSP of olive oil has 14g of fat and 120 calories!! If you use cooking oil multiple times a day, this adds up quickly!

Bottom line, accurately tracking everything you are intaking is the most important way to make sure you are actually hitting your calorie / macro goals and can help determine if your nutrition goals are set in the right spot. These mistakes may seem like a lot, but usually only require a few extra seconds to complete!

Have any questions about tracking? Reach out to our team and we'd be happy to help you!