I need to do this properly

G'day all

I have been lurking this forum for a little while now and I really need your help to lose fat.

I understand that I need to eat 500 cal under my maintenance level to lose fat and that there are various ways to determine my maintenance levels. (ps,I think a sticky with a guide to working out maintenance calories etc would be good for newbies like myself)

My main concern comes from counting calories/macros etc.
In the past I have used calorie counters on my phone and sites like Fitday to track what I
have been eating and for a little while I seemed to be making progress until an occupation
change brought me to a fattening end

My partner and I both like to cook together and enjoy our food,we do eat a lot of chicken breast,fish and veges but obviously caloric intake is out of whack as I keep gaining.
The part I struggle with is counting cals as we cook, we quite often pan cook chicken breasts and have steamed veges with a home made sauce (cream/mushrooms etc)
Does that mean I should be measuring each ingredient or am I overthinking this ?

Similarly I might take a couple of SAO's with PB on them for smoko,how does someone measure this ?

I understand the idea of macros and eating whatever suits to get you to your numbers,i just cant workout how to count them all, ie: a choc/protein sludge mix!
Look forward to your help and hope I was able to explain myself

Regards
Geoff

Get some kitchen scales and weigh everything individually. It's not hard but it came be tedious. Try and learn the amount of calories in the foods you commonly eat and after awhile you can guesstimate a lot of your intake.

I just weigh everything i eat and guess the weight when I eat out.

My Fitness Pal App will be able to track almost anything calorie wise.

Fitnesspal is the bomb diggety

Yeah fitness pal is a good app I struggled at the start with guessing weights of food when I eat away from home but you do get a rough idea of what stuff weighs after a while

food categories

this website helps you to visualise true portions against calorie standards.

yes weight everythign indivualdy,

Use my fitenss pal, It saves food and you can quick add, This makes life so much easier.

you said cream sauce on you vegies? id be cutting that out or mbaey once a week.

Stick to a drizle of good olive oil and some salt mabey? the cream is lots od added cals witch wont fill you up.

Id aim for 500 under maint, and then thow in as much exersise as possible.

Stick to that for a month then ajust up or down as you loose or gain.


Its tedious bro, Best advice would be dont over think things, Just do it.

Start here:http://ausbb.com/nutrition-diet/15230-calculating-calories-macronutrients-bmr.html

thanks for the replies

as recommended I bought a kitchen scale and am already starting to see
how guesstimating can become relatively easy.
Started using 'calorie counter' by fatsecret (I think) and am adding in foods as I go,being able to add stuff together and saving it as a meal is a big help.

Gunner,thats exactly the information I think would be good to have has a 'sticky'
for newcomers like myself

Just estimate the calories from the key ingredients in your homecooked meals. Counting is not an exact science, even with food with the nutritional information available.

Just out of curiosity, have you also looked at your eating habits? Counting is good in that it doesn't really lie (unless you purposefully don't count certain 'snacks' etc) and let's you know how much you are eating, but doesn't really help in terms of eating less if that's your issue (although it does allow you to avoid the caloric surprises in some meals).

If you like reading, I highly recommend "Mindless Eating - Why We Eat More than we think" by Brian Wansink, and "The end of overeating" by David Kessler. I found it amazing just how psychological eating was and how it is affected heavily by cues we aren't aware of and the simple things you can do to overcome these things (e.g. limiting the variety of food per meal rather than volume, using smaller plates etc).

i am a huge fan of creamy foods. depending on your macro's, some of these suggestions may be useful ...

here are my suggestions for creaming up savoury dishes;
- light evaporated milk
- light philly cooking cream
- uber skim milk with either philly cream cheese melted through or a light kraft single (they thicken the milk so it goes the consistency of cream - excellent tip)
- pureed white beans and a little milk / oil

hyjak said:

Fitnesspal is the bomb diggety

Click to expand...

Is there a way to make it display the macro breakdown totals? As opposed to just the caloric totals?

rino60 said:

Is there a way to make it display the macro breakdown totals? As opposed to just the caloric totals?

Click to expand...

Yeah, depends if you're using the phone or desktop version though.

Desktop version is easy enough to find, should be straight under your food diary (check out my log to see what they look like)

Or if you're using the iphone version, it's under home > daily

Thanks - I figured it out earlier, and changed my breakdown online. Had the app forever, used it 3 times.

probably my favourite function on myfitnesspal is the barcode scanner saves so much time

jonny987 said:

Just estimate the calories from the key ingredients in your homecooked meals. Counting is not an exact science, even with food with the nutritional information available.

Just out of curiosity, have you also looked at your eating habits? Counting is good in that it doesn't really lie (unless you purposefully don't count certain 'snacks' etc) and let's you know how much you are eating, but doesn't really help in terms of eating less if that's your issue (although it does allow you to avoid the caloric surprises in some meals).

If you like reading, I highly recommend "Mindless Eating - Why We Eat More than we think" by Brian Wansink, and "The end of overeating" by David Kessler. I found it amazing just how psychological eating was and how it is affected heavily by cues we aren't aware of and the simple things you can do to overcome these things (e.g. limiting the variety of food per meal rather than volume, using smaller plates etc).

Click to expand...

Jony,
great point,I do constantly eat way more than I need to,just finish whats on the plate regardless of feeling full or not

xwifex said:

i am a huge fan of creamy foods. depending on your macro's, some of these suggestions may be useful ...

here are my suggestions for creaming up savoury dishes;
- light evaporated milk
- light philly cooking cream
- uber skim milk with either philly cream cheese melted through or a light kraft single (they thicken the milk so it goes the consistency of cream - excellent tip)
- pureed white beans and a little milk / oil

Click to expand...

thanks xwifex for those tips