A step-by-step guide to Calorie Counting🍖
Calorie counting is a great way to increase our precision in terms of monitoring our nutrition, whether it’s sustaining a calorie deficit for fat-loss, a calorie surplus for muscle-gain or as a method to track our protein intake to ensure we’re consuming what we need to align with our training.
But that said, it is not the be-all and end-all.
Calorie tracking is a tool and like all tools, it has a place but bear in mind…
If the only tool you have is a hammer, you will start treating all your problems like a nail.
Now, let’s dive straight into the main steps as well as do’s and don’ts of calorie tracking!
1. Using MyFitnessPal
This is an APPROXIMATE caloric value determined to be the amount of energy your body requires to stay alive when at complete rest. This can be calculated using an online BMR calculator E.g. (https://www.calculator.net/bmr-calculator.html).
Depending on your activity level (ranges from no daily activity to intense daily physical activity), you will receive an ESTIMATED calorie target at which it is expected you will maintain your current weight (termed Maintenance Calories).
Note that these values are an estimate and are a starting point which may need to be adjusted depending on changes (or lack thereof) to your scale weight over the course of 10-14 days.
Tracking your scale weight on a weekly basis for between 10 and 14 days helps to more accurately convey the effect of the current calorie target on our body weight as our body weight can fluctuate significantly for a number of reasons e.g. Dehydrated, water retention from high salt consumption, late meal the night before, various stages of the menstrual cycle etc
Taking a measurement once per week is crucial, and doing so twice per week (~every 3-4 days) can be extra helpful because the more data we have starting off, the more confident we can be that the numbers on the scale are a true reflection of our current body weight and the more precise we can be with selecting an appropriate calorie target, although this is not essential!
Note: To accurately measure your scale weight, do it first thing in the morning, after going to the bathroom before consuming any food or water in underwear (to avoid clothes throwing off measurements). This way all measurements will be taken under the same conditions.
Calculating Calories Example
John - 42 years, 181cm, 87.6kg
Works as a Primary School teacher and trains in the gym 3 times a week. Not very active outside the gym
Goal: Lose 5kg body fat
According to the BMR calculator and taking his activity level into consideration, John’s estimated maintenance calorie target is 2478 calories per day.
Starting with a moderate target rate of fat loss of ~0.05 to 0.1% of our total body weight per week (0.5kg per week is a very good average over the long term), we can start John at 2278 cals (200cal daily deficit).
Tracking for 10-14 days and taking a scale weight 3-4 times in this period will guide our next steps.
2. Using MyFitnessPal
There are a variety of Apps to track our food intake, but MyFitnessPal (MFP) is quite user friendly and convenient for saving recipes and thus time!
***Don’t use MFP to calculate your calories. Work off the calorie target prescribed by your coach or via the above link and use MFP for logging food ONLY (Protein, Carbs, Fats) as the calorie calculator is not reliable.***
We have attached a video below to explain how to use the MFP app.
The most important things when it comes to calorie tracking are
Consistency - Track each day without fail
Accuracy - All consumed foods are logged with minimal room for error
Doing these two things along with training, and adjusting your calories guided by your coach along the way in line with your goals WILL lead to great results!
If you need any help setting this up or wish to get guidance through the process, let us know by contacting info@unit13fitness.ie or sending us a DM on Instagram (