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Comment by SamPatt | Hacker News Reader

Counting calories correctly is really hard.

I've lost 90 lbs, achieved a healthy body weight, and kept it off for years, but I keep trying to lose just 10 more pounds. I only make progress when I'm religious about calorie counting, including weighing every meal or needing to do precise food prep beforehand.

That's such a pain in the ass that I inevitably fail and keep returning to my body's new average weight.

I think you're right about truly obese people. They're eating so many calories that they would lose weight if they could manage a better diet.

For people who aren't obese, the same principle may apply, but it's now a matter of much tighter margins and much greater precision, and it's remarkably difficult.

Natural bodybuilders seem to manage their weight with precision, so it's not impossible with knowledge and effort. But I suspect very few people are capable of managing that if they tend towards obesity to begin with.

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Strange, I've found doing meal prep one day a week that you partition into fixed quantities for each day to be way easier than making a meal every day. I'm surprised you found it such a pain in the ass. It's a pain to setup and do the calculations that first time, but once you do it's fairly easy to maintain the routine.

I have a family. I could do meal prep for only me and eat separately, but I value eating the same meal with everyone. And I'm not doing meal prep for our entire family.

I do this sometimes for lunches, which we eat separately anyway. But that's only 1/3 of my meals.

This indeed makes it harder. If I wok some dish for 4 people and use 1 tbsp of olive oil, did I consume 1/4th tbsp? What if 2 of those 4 were kids, so I ate slightly more than 1/4th?

Over time it will even out. Also if you weight out the whole dish it's easier.

I'm assuming we're talking about e.g. rice dishes or stews, curries, etc. "one pot" dishes. Otherwise if it's like steak and vegetables, you can weigh each steak and the vegetables, do them in different racks of a steamer etc.

Sure, there are other ways. For instance using different dishes than the rest of your family to limit portion size. You can share most of a meal, but have a specific side for yourself, etc.

>Strange, I've found doing meal prep one day a week that you partition into fixed quantities for each day to be way easier than making a meal every day

I can't stand eating the same thing multiple days a week. Are you preparing multiple different meals for each day, one day a week?

Not to mention that it's never going to be as nice as a freshly-cooked meal anyway.

> I can't stand eating the same thing multiple days a week. Are you preparing multiple different meals for each day, one day a week?

There are some things I can eat multiple times, some things I can't. Chicken breast is one of my repeat foods. I'll do a few different dry rubs and bake a bunch at once, then all I have to do is pick which rub I'm feeling on the day, cut and reheat when making a meal.

You could see it as a half-prep plan: pre-cook and prep a bunch of base ingredients in approximately equal quantities, and when ready to eat, create some permutation in a few minutes so you have a half-freshly cooked meal that's semi-unique. My gotos were: eggs, chicken breast, tuna, permuted with quinoa, rice, kale, broccoli all sliced and/or diced in various ways to make one of a stir fry, salad, plate, or wrap, with varying hot sauces or oils to keep it interesting.

One day I'll do a wrap, another day chicken salad, another day I'll eat it as is on some quinoa or something, and I'll cycle through options like that that are easy to mix up on the fly. Making a meal to eat usually takes about 5 mins. Apply your programming mind to this like a permutation/optimization problem!

I liked most of the meals because they were tasty and hit all the macros, and with the work put in the gym I could see the results, so there was a great positive feedback loop.

Every meal doesn't have to be a culinary masterpiece, just like every coding session doesn't have to be a symphony of mathematical elegance. Some coding is just glue, and food is primarily just fuel.

i don't know... we don't deviate much from what we eat so it's really about that initial tracking and seeing the results. after that you can kind of "eye-ball" what you are eating. the hard part is just being brutally honest with what you are actually eating and tracking at the beginning.

tbf it's like any learned skill, it sucks at the beginning but over time it gets easier. when i started getting serious about my fitness i was tracking it meticulously but now i rarely do.

I somewhat agree. The issue though, at least for me, is that I can only "eyeball" somewhat reliably when I know what I'm looking at. So, when I eat something "new", meaning that I've never measured, all bets are off.

I'm thinking restaurant / takeout mostly. Because you never know what they put in the food. And the usual suspects of carbs and fat loaded with salt can easily throw you off if you don't pay attention.

I find when I begin eyeballing things I inevitably start to get them wrong.

For example, apples with peanut butter is my favorite snack. I initially measured out and weighed the peanut butter, then used the same entry for calorie counting and eyeballed it for a while.

I eventually measured again, and I was eating nearly 50% more peanut butter than my initial entry! I imagine I probably added just a little bit more each time, because my brain really loves peanut butter.

I don't think I do this with proteins, but with carbs and anything sweet I definitely do. So I have to be very careful.

This is the insight of the day. I have to save your comment for later reference.

> Counting calories correctly is really hard.

Why? My sugar-free protein bars say exactly how much calories they are. I also eat some zero-calory fiber (psyllium), vitamin and minerals pills, a spoonful of fish oil, feel great and loose weight :-)

It is harder to count calories when you make your food at home from fresh ingredients, or go out to restaurants. Not that you can't, but it is both harder and less accurate.

You only eat protein bars?

Mostly. I believe the other things I eat per month account for the caloric intake an average person takes in a day or two and can this way be ignored.

I used to eat a lot of cookies until November but stopped as soon as I noticed (at the clothes store) I gained some belly fat. I don't want to switch my clothes size. I firmly believe any visible increase in waist size (unless attributed to muscle growth) is a strong sign I must lose some weight (by reasonably healthy means - I would hesitate to take incretin mimetic drugs, they seem risky).

For how long are you doing that? I'm skeptical that could be healthy as you would be missing a lot of essential nutrients like fiber, vitamins, minerals. Also the palm oi in the proteins bar being the only source of fat will imbalance your lipids. Concentrated whey protein powder (without added carbs) are cheaper and better than protein bars though it still is a supplement and not a replacement for real food. But you can mix it with oats, nuts, chia, fruits to improve taste and nutrition.

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