You could be underreporting your calories... by a lot

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I am Nolan Vannata. This newsletter is a part of my mission to make health, fitness, and nutrition content that is evidence-based, digestible, practical, and accessible.

If weight loss is a goal of yours, I recommend calorie tracking

It can be time consuming to track your calories, but you will gather objective data behind the progression of your weight loss goals. You may not need to weigh everything you eat on a food scale forever, but I do recommend at least keeping a food journal of some sort for almost everyone trying to lose body fat. The method of tracking you choose should provide you with enough accuracy to help you guide healthy diet changes.

If you want to save a little bit of money, you might cut back on eating out once or twice per week. However, if you are in a serious financial pinch, you might need to bust out the excel spreadsheets and track all of your income and spending. The same applies for tracking calories and weight loss. Some people might be able to lose weight by committing to giving up something like soda. However, not everyone has such obvious culprits of weight gain, and you might need a more detailed approach.

My first exposure to tracking calories was shocking

During my exercise science program, my nutrition professor had a three-day assignment for us — “track everything you eat on My Fitness Pal (a food tracking app/website) from now until the next time we meet”. The goal was not to gain or lose weight, but rather get an idea of what it is like to track food in deep detail. It served as an eye-opening experience to how many calories and micronutrients there are in certain foods.

Most of the class was surprisingly successfully and tracked everything they consumed over the weekend. As you might guess, we had a good time laughing at each other’s reports. Think about it… a bunch of college students, mostly between the ages of 20 and 22, accurately tracking their consumption habits from Friday to Monday. One student had a whopping 30% of their calories come from alcohol alone. Someone had, like, 6 hot dogs by the end of the first day.

Interestingly, most students reported quite healthy-looking eating habits for most of the day, but with an occasional “Woah, the pizza I ate has how many calories?!”. 80-90% of the good habits unfortunately compromised of only ~50% of the calories. I am shocked that the classic “freshman 15” is not higher. These habits can carry into post-college adult life. Eating out, snacking, and alcohol are significant and sneaky sources calories.

So, should you track your calories? A solid “yes” or “no” to this question is not possible. Most answers to your fitness and nutrition questions will be, “it depends”. You will hear some state that you shouldn’t track calories as it will lead to you being obsessive and developing a bad relationship with food. Others will weigh all of their food on a food scale before they eat it and think that everyone else should do that if they want a shot at good health. Both of these mindsets are too extreme.

I do think that it is valuable for you to track at least one or two weeks of eating at some point in your life whether you are in good health or not. I think it will reveal a lot about your eating habits, just as it did for me.

Some people drastically underreport calorie intake

The 1992 study, Discrepancy between self-reported and actual caloric intake and exercise in obese subjects, found that people with obesity who thought they were eating 1,200 calories a day underreported their caloric intake by 47% and overreported their physical activity by 51%. The subjects thought they were resistant to weight loss diets, but in reality, their 1,200 calories per day was more like 2,400 calories. Another group within the same study thought they were consuming around 1,700 calories, but still underreported their similar intake of 2,400 calories.

Of course, that study is from 1992. However, more recent data demonstrates that underreporting is a still large problem. According to a 2009-2010 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, obese adults underreport caloric intake by 590 calories per day on average, and overweight adults tend to underreport by 289 calories per day on average.

In the 2020 article, Underreporting of Dietary Intake: Key Issues for Weight Management Clinicians, they examined 15 studies all published between 2015 and 2020 and found that anywhere from around 15-70% (depending on the population being studied) of people using food questionnaires or food recalls underreport their caloric intake. However, studies that had the subjects weigh their food and record it showed that only around 5-10% of people underreported their calories.

This article states that a person’s BMI is positively correlated with underreporting. Also, obese subjects tend to overreport their protein intake, meaning the underreporting of calories is mostly from foods high in fat and carbohydrates.

How to accurately track your calories

I don’t agree with the argument that tracking calories and weighing food is inherently mentally unhealthy and will necessarily create a bad relationship with food. If you need to save money, you can make a budget and track your spending. If you want to improve your bench press, you can track your weights on each set. Can you improve without tracking? Maybe, but tracking things accurately gives you control and precision. You can have a healthy or unhealthy relationship with anything, and tracking your calories is no different.

As mentioned above, those who weigh their food tend to record their calories more accurately. This requires work, but like any skill, you will get better at it. Also, you don’t have to weigh every single ingredient for the rest of your life. Once you know the composition of a meal, you can continue to make it the same way and know that you will be consuming roughly the same number of calories every time you eat it.

If you don’t want to use a food scale, I recommend reading nutrition labels more often. There are some nuances and caveats to nutritional labels, so I recommend reading my previous article on how to read labels.

An easier way to track your food, although it is far less accurate, is to keep a food journal. Take a picture of everything you eat and save it to a file or photo album on your phone. There are so many potential inaccuracies with this, but it is the least time-consuming option and can make you more mindful about your eating choices. These pictures shouldn’t be sent to a folder to never be seen again. You should look back at them and analyze what you ate so you can make adjustments moving forward.

Avoid these mistakes when tracking your calories

Eating out often can throw off your numbers. Even if you can look up the number of calories in your takeout meal, it could be different depending on who was behind the counter that day. I have eaten drastically different looking Chipotle bowls even though I always order the same thing. Also, nutrition facts are usually only available from fast food chain restaurants. Remember this: most restaurants are on the mission of making their food taste as good as possible and do not care if you are counting calories or not.

Not tracking liquid calories is another common mistake. The number of calories found in soft drinks, juice, certain coffee drinks, and alcohol are significant and should be accounted for.

Not tracking snacks can add up quickly, especially when your snack choices are calorie dense foods like nuts, chips, and granola bars. You don’t have to bring out your food scale while you eat a handful of nuts at a friend’s house, but it is worth noting and at least getting an estimate on what you ate.

Becoming hyper fixated on your calories can be problematic. Tracking everything you eat doesn’t mean you need to be 100% crushing it every single day. Have some cake on your birthday, or a beer with friends. Enjoy it, track it, and move on.

What’s Next? Creating a Workout for ANY Goal: The Intensity Spectrum

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