How to Track Calories

Tracking without a target is just bookkeeping. Start by estimating your maintenance calories — our TDEE calculator does it in a few seconds using the Mifflin–St Jeor equation — then subtract 300–500 kcal for weight loss or add about 10–15% (roughly 300 kcal) for muscle gain.

• Kitchen scale — the gold standard. Weigh ingredients in the state you log them: cooked grains and legumes weigh 2–3 times their dry weight, and meat loses 25–40% as it cooks.
• Photo logging — photograph the dish and let recognition estimate weight and macros. Slightly less precise, but fast enough that you'll still be logging in a month.
• Barcode scanning — perfect for packaged foods: one scan pulls the label data.

The best method is the one you can repeat every day. Many people combine all three.

• Forgetting cooking oil — a tablespoon is ~120 kcal and hides in every pan.
• Not logging drinks, sauces and "just a bite" — they can add 300+ kcal a day.
• Logging cooked weight against raw nutrition values (or vice versa).
• Quitting after one over-target day. Weekly average matters, not a single day.

Compare your weekly average intake to the target, and your weight trend over 2–3 weeks — day-to-day weight is mostly water. If the trend doesn't match the plan after 3–4 weeks, adjust the target by 100–200 kcal and repeat.