Tracking Ingredients

To be as accurate as possible when tracking your food you have to record your food as ingredients.

Let’s look at something as simple as a ham and cheese sandwich as an example.

How many calories are in that sandwich depends on the specific ingredients that were used and how it was made.

What sort of bread was it? Did it have butter in it? How much filling did it have in it?

You need to be specific. So here is how to track it.

The specific bread you are using – scan the barcode, get the calories per slice, input how many slices you had

the specific butter or spread you are using – scan the barcode, input the exact number of grams you used

the specific ham you used – scan the barcode, input the number of slices

the specific cheese you used – scan the barcode, weigh the slices, input the exact amount you had

doing that will give you the exact number of calories that you had in that sandwich.

You can’t just say you have had – a ham and cheese sandwich because you have no idea what that means calorically.

You could have a ham and cheese sandwich that contains 350 calories, or you could have one that contains 550 calories. It depends on the ingredients used and how it is made!

You don’t know unless you track it properly.

Common practice might just be to search on myfitness pal – ham and cheese sandwich and pick the top one off the list.

But that will have no relevance to the sandwich you just made for yourself, that Is guess work.

If that is what has previously been classed as “tracking” then it is easy to see how inaccurate that can be.

And it is things like this that cause the confusion when people can’t understand why despite feeling like they are tracking everything, they aren’t making progress.