5 Tips for Building Healthy Tracking Habits

Whether you’re a veteran calorie counter or a newbie, it’s always nice to learn new methods to simplify the process.

We’re sharing our favorite tips and tricks to make tracking your meals even easier.

5 Tips For Effortlessly Tracking Your Meals

1) Don’t Focus On Your Budget The First Few Days

The first few days you start logging your intake, you may go over your nutrition goals. Instead of stressing, know that it’s completely normal. Calorie counting and cutting down on calories is going to take some getting used to, and you’re not going to be able to completely overhaul your diet on day one. The first few days are more about understanding your eating habits than hitting a calorie target.

Being honest about what you eat and drink (even if you’re over budget) will help you learn which foods are more calorically dense than others and will help identify areas where you can make simple substitutions.

Here’s an example: You might not realize exactly how many of your daily calories come from soda. Once you identify that pattern, you can look for smarter swaps and start to cut down your consumption of sugary drinks.

2) Ditch The Stress When Eating Out

Don’t worry about finding the exact match for menu items, especially when starting out with calorie counting. Our food database is quite extensive, which may initially feel a tad overwhelming.

If you’re out at a restaurant, don’t stress about the exact number of calories in your meal. Find a meal that seems reasonably close and log that option instead. It’s more important to build the habit of logging than to log the exact number of calories from each meal.

Here’s an example: If you’re eating chicken parm at a family-owned Italian spot, search the app to find chicken parmesan from a chain restaurant and log that option. The calories will be close enough, and finding a close match is a lot better than logging nothing at all.

3) Search Brand Names For Foods You’ve Eaten Before

After you’ve logged a specific brand-name food, you should be able to quickly log it again. Simply type in the first few letters of the brand name, and the food should pop right up.

Here’s an example: If you’ve logged Dannon Light and Fit Greek Yogurt before, all you have to do to log it again is search the word “Dannon” (instead of Greek yogurt), and your exact results will populate a lot faster.

4) Prioritize Better Habits Over Perfection

Are you whipping up a home-cooked meal but don’t have time to add the entire recipe to our recipe builder? Instead of giving up on tracking altogether, try to find a similar home-cooked recipe and track that instead.

Here’s an example: If you’re making a chicken stir-fry, search for “homemade chicken stir-fry” and log the option that seems close enough to what you ate. Sure, it’ll be more accurate to record your exact recipe, but when you are in a pitch, you can ballpark the calories by using existing recipes that are already in the database.

5) Make Friends With Your Meals Tab

If you tend to eat similar food combinations each day, you’re in luck. Instead of searching for each individual ingredient for your daily breakfast, simply click the meals tab, and you’ll see all the meal combinations you’ve recently logged. Select the one you want, remove any ingredients that you won’t be consuming, and quickly track your berry oatmeal or a veggie omelet. Easy peasy!

6) Sync Your Fitness Tracker

Instead of manually entering your exercise, consider syncing your smart device to make this process much faster. That way, the calories you burn will automatically update in the Lose It! app, making it simple for you to see your food and fitness information all in one place!