How practicable is measuring the calorie intake of every day ?

Well, I've been counting calories for the past three months. Haven't missed a single day since I started. I wanted to lose the weight I gained during my last pregnancy, so I started using myfitnesspal to track my net calorific intake. It was difficult initially, especially since Indian food is hard to track. But I got used to it and it's become much easier now. I've set my goal at losing 0.5lbs a week and I have lost 10lbs+ so far. This is without any regular exercise. In fact I'm just 5lbs away from my pre-pregnancy weight. I set such a gradual pace of weight loss mainly to avoid issues with loose skin.

I think what helps most is to create standard recipes for the most commonly eaten foods in your household. Like, I always make dal exactly the same way so I know how many calories one serving contains. Also I do tend to frequently repeat a lot of the foods I eat. With Indian food you need to know the weights/measurements of the individual ingredients in a dish, and the number of servings they make. Over all I think I spend around 15-20 minutes everyday tracking my food, and I feel that considering the results that is time well spent.

 

Just to illustrate better, here's a page from my diary. This is from yesterday. Pretty much everyday looks like this. Tracking my food also makes planning meals easier, since I just have to go back and pick any random day to replicate.

 

I used myfitnesspal religiously too this time around. I've always been very slim. After the first pregnancy, I got back in shape just like that. This time around, the weight didn't budge. I always eat healthy and control portions et al but nothing seemed to work. Only when I started measuring ingredients and tracking intake did I lose the pregnancy weight. I'm generally very active, except for during pregnancy when I'm bed bound. I used to dance to Zumba or jazzercise 5-6 times a week. I also used to strength train twice a week. Only thing that worked was what my trainer said. She gave me a number and asked me to try and stay within. I did ad hoc without MFP initially and nothing. Then when I actually tracked(thanks to shiva's blog on measuring portions) I lost all that. I eat a lot of calories for someone my size though(2000 ish maintaining or 1800 losing). I believe in workout to eat more

 

On MFP, when you click on the food tab it will show you your diary for today. Under breakfast click on 'Add food'. Now you can search for chapatti in their database. You will find many different options entered by other users. Now which one to select is a little tricky. It requires you to be able to at least guess how much your food weighs/measures. In my case, I actually took some dough and weighed it. Turns out I use approx 50-60gms of flour per roti. That amounts to 80 to 100 calories. Same applies to your curry. Instead of using the items from the database I like to save my own recipes, so that I can measure more precisely. So for potato-tomato gravy, I would add the amounts of oil, potatoes, tomatoes, and all other ingredients. I generally skip spices and water since they barely add to the calorific content. Once you have your recipe, you need to decide how many servings are in that recipe. That will give you the amount of calories per serving. It is tedious but as I said once your most frequently eaten foods are saved on MFP, you will find the process get much quicker and easier.

To answer your other questions, yes a standard a recipe is one you prepare in exactly the same way every time, so that variations in calorific content are minor. I do use a weighing scale and cup measures to measure everything I cook or eat. It is definitely a useful tool to invest in.

Hope this makes some sense. If you any other questions, please do ask.