Manuel Scheu is a personal trainer with a Master's in Sports Science and a Master's in Business, living on the Gold Coast, Australia. With his manuXtrain training program, he successfully trains his local and international clients in functional fitness, weight loss, hypertrophy and rehabilitation.
You probably under-report your tracked calories
Manuel Scheu • June 18, 2024
Are you tracking your Calories?
Looking at the results of this study shows that even professional dieticians, who know their food, under-report their daily consumed calories by over 100 Calories.
The control group under-reported their calories by over 400 Calories per day. I don't believe there is the intention of lying or trying to cheat. It's just that subconsciously we're very prone to overestimate our healthy behaviours and underestimate how much we actually end up eating.
These results are also supported by this systematic review where they investigated the validty of reported food intake of adolescents who are overweight or obese.
If you currently track calories, don't take this personal when I say, it's very likely that also you might under-report your daily consumed calories. Even if you're just off by a 100 Calories a day, this could massively impact your weight loss goal and really slow your progress down.
So what should you do?
Double check your tracked calories. Be self critical. No one is perfect. Also Apps like
MyFitnessPal
often have entries that are quite wrong. If I'm in doubt, I usually do a quick google search to double check the calorie content.
Do I personally think calorie tracking is necessary?
I'm not a friend of tracking your calories everyday. It's just unsustainable, no one has that much time. But tracking for maybe 2-3 days a week or for a certain period of time? Absolutely yes.
It will empower you. Because you suddenly learn all the different calorie and nutrient content of the food you consume on a daily basis. Most of us eat the same diet which means you'll be able to easily guess the calorie content of future meals without even tracking and be able to avoid all the calorie pitfalls of high calorie dense food.
Need more help with recipes, how much exactly you need to eat to lose weight or gain muscles?
Join the manuXtrain crew and we'll prepare your personalised workout and meal program.
About the author:
Sources:
Champagne, C. M., Bray, G. A., Kurtz, A. A., Monteiro, J. B., Tucker, E., Volaufova, J., & Delany, J. P. (2002). Energy intake and energy expenditure: a controlled study comparing dietitians and non-dietitians. Journal of the American Dietetic Association, 102(10), 1428–1432. https://doi.org/10.1016/s0002-8223(02)90316-0
Walker, J. L., Ardouin, S., & Burrows, T. (2018). The validity of dietary assessment methods to accurately measure energy intake in children and adolescents who are overweight or obese: a systematic review. European journal of clinical nutrition, 72(2), 185–197. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41430-017-0029-2
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