Proven Food Tracking Tips to Save Time and Calories

When it comes to the daily routines of fitness goal-based eating, I’m always looking for ways to save time without sacrificing accuracy. Not just for myself but for my clients, too. While food tracking is a highly effective method of collecting the data we need to make results-driven changes, it is an added step to the day. These are the food tracking tips that I use to get the most out of my time and my effort.

Why Food Tracking?

The idea of food tracking isn’t just about calories. It’s a tried-and-true strategy for:

• improving healthy eating habits
• disrupting unhealthy patterns
• building awareness and mindful eating strategies
• supporting weight management
• improving diet quality
• eating to reach your goals
• identifying allergies
• managing health concerns

By logging everything you eat and drink, you can more easily make the necessary changes that will help you reach your goals. This is true if your fitness goal is building muscle, improving athletic performance, losing body fat, or improving overall health.

The Most Common Challenges of Food Tracking

Of course, to recognize the full spectrum benefits that food tracking has to offer, accuracy and consistency over time is key. These are the most common challenges I find my clients facing:

• It’s time consuming. Logging every bite and sip can feel tedious, especially if you already feel short on time. That said, even if it takes you 3 minutes to track a meal, that’s really only 15-20 minutes a day.
• Questionable accuracy. Not only is estimating portion sizes difficult (studies find that most people under-report by 20-50%!), food labels aren’t 100% accurate and food tracker databases often allow for personal entry (talk about user error).
• Consistency. This is a task that most people feel excited and enthusiastic about at first, but that can lose it’s glamor over time. *This is especially true if you don’t use the data you collect.
• Meal complexity. How do you track a Bahn Mi Sandwich? What about when you go out to eat on Friday night? And what about that casserole dish you meal prepped?
• Emotional dependance/self-judgement. It’s not unusual for my clients to tell me “That day went to crap so I stopped tracking“. There’s a certain stigma to acknowledging eating or over-eating certain foods. *Note: I like to remind my clients that we’re collecting DATA, not counting perfection points. And in this case, truly, all data is good data.

Food tracking is a skill. And there’s a definite learning curve. But with practice, you can overcome the most common challenges in a short time.

Food Tracking Tips to Save You Time and Calories

My hope is that with these food tracking tips you can not only save time and calories, but enjoy the process of collecting pertinent information that can have a real impact on your health and fitness. Here’s how to make food tracking a positive, sustainable habit.

Use an Food Tracking App

I’m a traditional, pen-and-paper kinda girl for a lot of things, but not for tracking my food. Using an online app such as My Fitness Pal, Lose It!, or Cronometer offer easy logging features and extensive databases which makes not only tracking, but analyzing and adjusting much easier.

Most of these apps have a free version that provides everything you need to get started. Premium and paid versions offer perks, but they aren’t a necessity.

Use Saved Meals on Repeat

One time-saving feature that I love is the option to Copy/Paste a previous days meal. I frequently eat the same breakfast multiple times a week (or month, or let’s be real, year). Using go-to and saved meals, I can save time but tracking all 10+ ingredients once, and reusing multiple times.

For example, I eat avocado toast in some form 3+ days a week. So I’ll create the meal once: sourdough bread + avocado + smoked salmon + sesame seeds + etc. Then I will simply hit “use yesterdays breakfast” again and again!

Frequently Used Food Lists

Frequently used food lists work in much the same way saved meals work. Most of the food tracking apps track and keep a database of the foods and portions that you used last. Using these lists is a great way to save yourself the time of searching through the database for a food item that looks accurate.

A great example of this is my lunchtime tracking. I almost always have a salad as part of my meal. Those basic salad ingredient: greens, tomatoes, cucumbers, are always at the top of my frequently used foods list. It’s quite easy to check off the boxes and hit “add all”.

Don’t Nit Pick the Minutiae

Meaning: don’t get too picky about selecting the EXACT food item that you’re eating every single time. This food tracking tip works especially if you’re more interested in hitting calories or macros. If your main goal with tracking is to look at your micronutrient intake, this particular food tracking tip is one you should ignore.

Lots of foods and/or cooking techniques provide similar macronutrient counts. Good examples include:

• 1 cup of spinach = 1 cup of arugula = 1 cup of mixed greens
• 1 grilled filet of cod = 1 roasted fillet of cod
• 1 cup of roasted mixed vegetables is going to cover a wide variety of mixes, so don’t sweat the details
• 1 cup of fresh fruit can cover a mixed bowl of berries, or a fruit salad just as easily and accurately

Use a Scale to Get Started

Unless you work in the food industry or you’ve been tracking for a long time, correctly guesstimating portion sizes is difficult. I highly suggest spending a bit more time at the start of your food tracking journey (or in the middle if you still struggle with this), measuring and weighing the foods you eat to get a true understanding of what portion sizes look like.

Once you know what a 4 ounce portion of chicken breast looks like, that’s never going to change. Or how about 1 tablespoon of peanut butter? A cup of cereal? Measure very accurately a few times and you’ll quickly get better at accurately estimating.

They even make scales that can link directly to your phone so that the data you collect automatically updates!

Barcode Scanners

Barcode scanners are a feature of the premium/paid version of these apps. I mentioned before that you don’t necessarily need to pay for these food tracking apps to get everything you need out of them. And that’s still true. But if you’re looking to save time – this is a game changer!

At least in My Fitness Pal, all you have to do is scan the barcode and the app auto-crawls through it’s entire database of foods to bring up the exact food item, including manufacturers nutrition data, that you’re eating. It’s so easy!

Log Immediately!

I know I’m getting old over here, but I honestly would have to think really hard about what I had for breakfast two days ago never mind how much of it. Get into the habit of tracking your meal as soon as, or even before, you eat it. This practice ensures the utmost accuracy and detail. Plus, if you save all your meal logging for the end of the day, it really does take up some time.

Pro tip: in a social situation and can’t log immediately? Snap a quick picture of your plate so that you have something to record off of later.

The bottom line with food tracking: although it can feel time-consuming and even intimidating at first, the value you get out of practicing these food tracking tips and honing in your accuracy far outweighs the few minutes a day you’ll need to commit.

And remember: if you ever find that tracking calories or macros is impacting your enjoyment of food, making you feel a bit to data obsessed or causing mental burnout, it’s okay to take a break. There are other ways!