#tdee

How to Track Calories Effectively

Tracking your calories doesn’t have to be complicated! Here’s how you can do it:

1️⃣ Use a Calorie Tracking App 📱 Apps like MyFitnessPal, Cronometer, and Lose It! help log your meals and track calories effortlessly.

2️⃣ Know Your Maintenance Calories 🔢 Use a TDEE (Total Daily Energy Expenditure) calculator to estimate how many calories you burn daily.

3️⃣ Weigh & Measure Your Food ⚖️ A food scale and measuring cups ensure accurate portion tracking.

4️⃣ Plan Your Meals Ahead 🍽️ Prepping meals in advance prevents overeating and helps you stay consistent.

How to Read Serving Sizes Correctly

✔ Check the Serving Size – Always look at how much a "serving" is on the nutrition label. ✔ Look at Calories Per Serving – Multiply accordingly if you eat more than one serving. ✔ Weigh Your Portions – Using a scale ensures accurate calorie tracking. ✔ Beware of Hidden Calories – Oils, dressings, and sauces can add extra calories! Tips for Making CICO Work for You

✅ Be Consistent – Track your intake daily. ✅ Focus on Whole Foods – Prioritize nutrient-dense options. ✅ Don’t Overrestrict – Allow yourself some flexibility. ✅ Stay Active – Exercise boosts calorie burn. ✅ Be Patient – Fat loss is a gradual process!

💡 Final Thoughts Understanding CICO can help you take control of your health and fitness. Tracking, awareness, and consistency are key!

Do you track your calories? Let me know in the comments! 💬👇

(I swear this will be my last long rant before I go back to tracking workouts and keeping it short and simple. This is a rant, it’s trash, don’t even read it) Before I begin I want to caveat this by saying: Diets, eating styles and nutrition are highly individualistic and there are many factors that come into play for any one person. Something that works  for one person may not work for another and I know this. I speak very generally and in relation to myself. Being overweight does not necessarily mean you are unhealthy and being skinny/shredded does not mean you are healthy. None of that matters if you feel awesome or feel like shit. That being said:

Personally, I went through a very high stress time where I was restricting my intake (barely eating at all) with sporadic days of actually eating enough. Yes, I did drop weight almost overnight from it (people did actually notice and complimented me. A lot was muscle too.) but I felt like shit and my system is slowly recovering. This is by far the weirdest recovery I have ever done with myself. It dawned on me the other day that things felt very “out of control” and a way to control it, in a sense, may have been to control that I wasn't eating. It’s not something I'd like to admit I did on purpose but maybe subconsciously. I’m not sure, might not ever know but I am definitely willing to recognize those darker parts of myself if I'm being objective and deal with them. I may get things wrong sometimes (often) but I never fucking quit. I really can't ever see myself quitting. Managing my stress has been vital and things seem to be falling back into “normal”. I credit this to making sure I  e a t and following a sleep schedule. 

I am slowly increasing my intake up to a 2,000+ calorie diet by adding calories every week and monitoring how I respond. I’m eating whole foods, keeping nutritional quality in mind and following 80/20 rule. 80% whole foods and 20% snickers bars (jk). If it’s the weekend and I want to have a bagel, I'm going to have a bagel. I am tracking macros to make sure I stay in range get enough carbs, protein and fat. My calories are increasing as my activity level increases (the more energy I get from food over time, the more energy I have to workout harder etc). 

My body has seen a massive deficit for a very long time. Right now my days look like 1600 -1700 calories (which is still a deficit for me but it’s where I'm at) but I should be ramping up to 2,300 calories over time. My BMR (basal metabolic rate), on paper, is 1,500+ calories. That’s the calories needed for me to sit in bed all day and not doing anything. I should never be dropping below that number, or even close to, if I want to simply live. I am incredibly active and get 12,000 - 18,000 steps a day according to my Garmin, not including any workouts, runs, or activity I do outside of my normal 10,000+ steps.

Metabolic Adaptation:  (time for some science) Metabolic adaption occurs when your body is in a deficit (burning more than taking in) for an extended period of time, and your body tries to close that gap on it’s own by adapting. If you look at “dieting” as essentially being starvation in a controlled environment, the body naturally wants to combat this. (I want to make it clear I am not “dieting” but speaking as dieting being a form of calories in vs calories out. I know full well I do not have any actual weight to lose or gain. Looking at me you it would seem I am quite healthy. But my intake has plummeted when I stopped eating and it responded to my low intake) The body adapts by adjusting your TDEE (total daily energy expenditure) because you’re essentially starving yourself (it makes you burn less/run more efficiently over time/be less careless with the calories it gets). Calories in EFFECTS calories out. It’s science. I am trying to ramp mine up, to eat more food to support more training and combat this tiredness (recovering from my great fuck up of the year still) etc. - Your TDEE takes into account your BMR (basal metabolic rate -what you need to keep your lights on), NEAT (non-exercise activity thermogenesis - walking, typing, fidgeting etc), TEF (thermic effect of food), and your EA (exercise activity). The last thing I want to do is drop below the calories I need to simply exist (functioning organs).. then I need to add on the calories to literally be here and live, then how many calories (aka ENERGY) you get from food (you have to put energy in to get energy out)(looking at calories as energy), lastly, activity level. If you aren't eating enough to fuel activity then you won't get anywhere and in fact, you’ll be holding yourself back. What I'm trying to say is: Your body doesn't want to starve. IF you stop eating as much as you NEED your body ADAPTS to make you burn LESS over time so it gets HARDER.

Some Math: [We do live in a diet culture but even worse than that is the fact that we live in a culture that tries to tell us we need anything but real food and complete diets lmao (I understand that different styles of eating work for different bodies but i’m speaking very generally). Quality food does matter too. I mean, most girls have been dieting since.. they got their first bra? Pretty nuts. It’s engrained in our brains to always eat in a deficit which makes things harder when we DO want to diet because our body DOES NOT. No wonder diets fail and we’re essentially fucked. Because we’ve been dieting for 10 or 20+ years on shitty foods and constantly lowering and lowering our intake for years to reach those same results we might have seen once. There is a time and place for calorie restriction but not until your (my) metabolism is up to speed to be able to handle the impact of being in a deficit.] If you start off your diet and you are already eating 2300 calories a day, you slowly cut over the course of weeks, your body will be able to handle it better. But if you’re eating 1400 shitty calories and want to diet even more from that... you don't have much room to drop.... 1200??? and what if 1200 is below your TDEE to even be alive? Good fucking luck. You might see some initially progress but not for long and you will hit a wall and start the cycle all over again. Then, you unintentionally lower your body set point even further. If you are dieting and it’s going well that’s because your energy input is less than your energy output. You created a gap. Your body doesn’t want to starve and it will naturally try to close the gap. (I know there are studies on rats living longer on a calorie restricted diet but I digress and that is not my point here but interesting to note)

I don’t want a gap and I want to eat to fuel big dreams lolololol. End rant. It feels weird to... eat enough real food. I get so full. Raising my calories is weird and scary but............ I’MA DO IT ANYWAYS. 1700, 1800, 1900, 2000. bam. back up to speed with minimal impact (I hope). 

I’m just a girl.. sitting in front of a Tumblr page... asking to run all the miles, lift all the weight, be a strong mother fucker and eat all the food while I'm at it.

There’s absolutely no way for me to answer this because there are way too many factors involved.  I would suggest that you calculate your BMR and TDEE, HERE is a link to the explanation of these, as a starting point.

From there, you can get an idea of how many calories you could consume and maintain your weight, but keep in mind that it is just an ESTIMATE, so you’d need to try it and see how it goes. If your weight starts to edge up, then you’ll need to cut back or make a few healthier choices, perhaps substituting a sugary snack with fruit.  Also, if you are insulin resistant, the number of calories you can consume will be affected by what proportion of them are refined carbohydrates vs. protien; that is something else you could experiment with, for example, substituting cauliflower mash for mashed potatoes to lower the effect of insulin in your body. 

Your body is not a math equation. While “calories in / calories out” works sometimes for some people, it definitely does not work all the time for all people. Your body is a complex organism with a metabolism which is controlled by multiple hormones, and, from my experience, hormones don’t do math. 

I’m a little worried about the expression ‘if I do enough exercise’ because you can do TOO MUCH exercise. Your body needs time to recover and rest; everything in moderation.  Compulsive exercising is just as dangerous as anorexia or bulimia, so please don’t begin to think if you workout hard for ‘X’ hours a day that you can then eat everything you want and be fine. You can’t. It will tear your body down.

In the end, this is something that you’ll have to work through and also something that will very likely  change over time and may even change with seasons of the year.  Start with your BMR and TDEE and go from there, proceeding in a way that will focus on your health and how you feel, rather than a specific number on the scale.  Remember that HEALTH and a feeling of vigor and strength is the goal and moderation is key, in diet and exercise.

📢 Welcome to my blog! Today, let’s break down Calories In, Calories Out (CICO)—the fundamental principle behind weight management. If you’ve ever wondered how fat is stored or how to track calories properly, this guide will give you all the answers! 🥑🔥 What is Calories In, Calories Out (CICO)?

CICO is the simple idea that your weight is determined by the balance between: ✅ Calories In – The energy you consume from food and drinks ✅ Calories Out – The energy your body burns through metabolism, movement, and digestion

➡️ If you eat more calories than you burn, you store fat. ➡️ If you burn more than you eat, you lose fat. ➡️ If calories in and out are equal, your weight stays the same.

🔹 Example: If your body burns 2,000 calories daily but you consume 2,500, the extra 500 calories get stored as fat over time. DISCLAIMER: Most people burn around 2,000 calories a day just to stay alive! These calories are burned from your body digesting food, thinking, and keeping your organs functioning—even if you don’t move at all, just from sleeping. Now, imagine if you’re exercising—this can make a massive difference in your body over a month or two!

It’s not necessary to eat less than 1,500 calories if you’re exercising because an average workout burns 300–500 calories. Cutting calories too low can slow down your metabolism and affect your energy levels, so balance is key!

How Fat is Stored & Burned

🔥 How Fat is Made

When you eat more calories than your body needs, the excess energy is converted into triglycerides and stored in fat cells.

Over time, excess fat accumulates in different parts of the body, leading to weight gain.

🏃‍♀️ How Fat is Lost

When you eat fewer calories than you burn, your body breaks down stored fat for energy.

Triglycerides in fat cells are converted into energy, shrinking the fat cells, leading to weight loss.

💡 Key Takeaway: A consistent calorie deficit (eating fewer calories than you burn) is required for weight loss! 💡 Final Thoughts Understanding CICO can help you take control of your health and fitness. Tracking, awareness, and consistency are key!

Do you track your calories? Let me know in the comments! 💬👇