This is the fourth article in the Get Started Eating Every Three Hours series that outlines how to start eating every three hours and the benefits of such a diet.

As I mentioned in “You Must Count Calories if You Want to Be Healthy“, keeping a food log is essential to ensuring that you are not eating too few or too many calories each day. This is especially important if you need to lose weight or train for a sport. Having a log aids in keeping your meals properly balanced and your daily calories on track. Knowing what to track in your food log can be a daunting task for the beginner. Today we’ll look at the key information you need to take from nutritional labels and put into your food log.

Start reading nutrition labels… today.

The nutritional labels on food are there for a reason. Don’t put anything into your body unless you can read and understand the label. Even if you end up eating a high calorie, nutrient deficient food, at least you know what you are eating and the consequences it will have on your daily plan.

Start reading the nutritional labels on everything, preferably before you put it into your shopping cart. Temptations are much easier to curb when you are still at the grocery store. You are far more likely to eat a “bad” food if you already paid for it. Nothing should go into your shopping cart unless you have read the nutrition label and decided if that particular food can be put into your Eat Every Three diet plan. Make reading the nutrition labels a habit.

What to track in the log.

In your log, you want to track the “sides” of the meal or main ingredients. Do not only track the combined calories of the entire meal unless you absolutely must. Keep track of the following in the log:

The name of the food would be its own row in your spreadsheet. The other information should be column titles. Armed with this information, you can add up the information from each of the columns to get your grand totals for the meal.

The reasons for tracking the nutrient information in addition to calories will become useful later when we get to meal planning.

Make a spreadsheet, use a notebook, or an online log.

Creating a simple spreadsheet to to log your food and the nutritional content is the most convenient method of tracking your calories and nutrients. If you are not savvy with spreadsheet programs such as Excel, then you can use a notebook to write the information down. Use whatever method that you will consistently utilize. The advantage with Excel is that it can provide an automated way to add columns together, that way everything in your meal will be added up for you.

My log consists of two spreadsheets. I use one sheet to track the meals, the other is a list of the common foods and their nutritional content that I routinely buy and eat. This way, I can cut and paste a line of nutritional content from the food list to my meal plan without having to memorize or reread the labels on the food. This works well for me, but you may find another method that is convenient for you.

There are free online food logs available from a number of places. I personally have not used them, but I know others that have. Each of them have their own food database (which may or may not match up to the food you eating) so you can easily populate your log with the relevant information. I am not sure if they all track the information listed above. Feel free to check them out and see! Try online logs such as:

I do not use online logs because I’m too lazy to take the extra step of logging into an account. However, there is the added advantage of accessing your food log from any computer with Internet access.

Get in the habit.

Habits do not form overnight. I believe there are studies that show a habit takes three weeks to form. Tracking all of the food you eat will be slow and time consuming in the beginning. Before too long, keeping your food log up-to-date will be second nature. If you are serious about achieving personal health goals, keeping a food log is a must.

Do you have a handy method or tricks for keeping a food log updated?

This is the third article in the Get Started Eating Every Three Hours series that outlines how to start eating every three hours and the benefits of such a diet.

Many people believe the goal of counting calories is to count as few calories as humanly possible in your food. I’m sure there are diet plans out there that advocate this barbaric practice, but not here at EatEveryThree.com. Today you’ll learn that you must count calories not only to avoid eating too much, but also to avoid eating too little.

Have a goal.

If you have physical goals to meet, such as losing fat weight, you must count the calories in everything you put in your mouth at every meal until you reach your goal. This usually involves keeping some sort of log of your foods and portion sizes. Yes, food logs are inconvenient, but we are talking about your health, which should be of concern to you. Weight loss can be achieved without keeping a log, but it will take longer or you may never reach your goal.

Uncontrolled calorie intake will either leave you landing low or high of your required calorie target. Both circumstances will have negative consequences on your physical health and your ability to lose or gain weight.

If you simply want to maintain your weight, you should be at least counting calories in your head to make sure you are in the ballpark of your target calorie range.

Don’t eat too few calories.

People often do not think of this as a problem. One of the reasons you should be counting calories is to ensure that you are eating enough, and often this means eating more healthy food at each of your meals. Keep in mind that many healthy foods are not calorie dense. As a result, you may stuff yourself with healthy food but still be short on your required calories.

If you do not eat enough calories, you may lose fat for a little while. Eventually, your body will stop losing weight as your metabolism slows due to the lack of energy (calories). Reduced metabolism makes losing fat weight difficult.

The only cure for slow metabolism is to eat more healthy calories. It seems backwards to popular opinion, but I promise it works if you have been in calorie deficit for a while. The trick is figuring out how many calories YOU require.

Don’t eat too many calories. 

If your calories are too high, the common side-effect is weight-gain in the form of fat. Regardless of whether you are eating healthy foods or not, you may still be eating too many calories in any given day. Remember, it is possible to eat too much healthy food and gain weight.

Eating more calories than your body requires is not necessarily a bad thing. These excess calories can be put to good use. For example, weight training on a regular schedule will cause some of those excess calories to build muscle, which increases metabolism. The type of foods you eat will also contribute to how well this process works.

Eat the calories YOUR body needs.

There is not a magic number of calories I can tell you to eat. Any diet program that tells you there is a perfect number of calories is lying. I can say a man should eat 2800 calories a day to maintain his weight, but that would probably only be accurate for 1 in 8 men. The number depends greatly on his activity level and body composition (muscle mass and fat). Don’t get caught up in statistics that show calorie averages. As far as I’m concerned, the average American is unhealthy and overweight. You should not want to be average.

There are formulas available to help men and women determine how many calories they require based on body composition and activity. The difficulty with the numbers is that the multiplier for the activity level is subjective. Most of the time, these numbers need adjustment, because they only provide a number of calories as a starting point.

As a starting point, men can look at 2200 and women 1800 for weight maintenance. Expect to adjust these numbers based on your results. If you are eating healthy food that adds up to the target calories (+/- 50), you should know within a week or two if those numbers are too high, or too little based on weight gain or loss. 

The CalorieKing has a basic weight maintenance calorie calculator that I found somewhat accurate. You may need to get a couple of calorie calculations by adjusting the activity profile if you feel you fall between categories.

If you want to lose weight, shave off a few hundred calories. Do not cut calories too much or your metabolism will slow down. Women might want to only shave 100 calories at a time. If you go too low, then you may be literally starving yourself to death. You will still get great results by cutting small amounts of calories.

Check your weight each week, if you are going down then don’t change a thing. If you stayed the same or gone up, adjust accordingly. If you distribute your calories properly throughout the day (eat every three hours), you will have more energy and get better weight loss results than you ever have before.

There are more advanced methods of calorie calculations that I will cover at a future date. For now, get accustomed to counting your calories for every meal. Before long, counting calories will be second nature.

In my next article, I’ll discuss the specifics of tracking your food in a log and planning daily meals.

Do you have any calorie counting tips or tricks to share?