I lost almost 50 pounds by calorie counting back in 2015, then stopped counting and spent the next six years slowly putting it all back on. I've used Libra to track my weight, and you can see the half-hearted attempts over the years to halt that upward progress.

I've been sick of being overweight, of feeling sluggish and unattractive, and of having a hard time doing things l love like hiking and rock climbing. I stress eat a lot, and not to jinx things, but I've finally reduced the stressors in my life where I'm feeling really good about this latest weight loss spree.

Fingers crossed I'll be posting here sometime in the new year about having hit my goal weight!

[Image description: a line graph with the x-axis from 2014 to 2023, and the y-axis from 108 to 160lbs, the charted line showing a steep drop, and a jagged climb, with the last couple years hovering over an "overweight" demarcation.]

A scale that connects to a calorie tracker app, working as follows:

1. Pressing a button on the scale transmits the current weight to the app (although obviously, not the actual name of the item, at this point).
2. This can be done repeatedly, until I’m ready (usually, after sitting down) to annotate the items, where I’ll see a list of weights and timestamps for un-annotated items
3. For each item, I can then assign a food to it (and meal), populating the calories

Absent this, I find it extremely annoying and tedious to add an ingredient, wash my hands (depending on what it is), find an appropriate food in the app* and log it, then add the next ingredient, etc. The alternative is try to remember both the ingredient name and the weight, in order**.

If this does exist, or something sufficiently similar, I’ll be thrilled; I looked a fair amount and it didn’t seem like it, however.

*related, but different— I should be able to filter for foods that have a weight unit; it’s extremely annoying to have to; one by one, open entries for “New York pizza” and find that they have the useless unit of “1 slice” (and commensurately varying calories between 200 and 700).

**my ideal workflow above does involve remembering the ingredient still, but that’s much easier than also remembering the weights, especially when the number of weights in the inbox will be a good mnemonic to not forget any ingredients. ___

I posted 2 weeks ago and didn’t expect to see the scale move again so much so soon, but today I hit 8kg lost (~18lbs) or 8% of my body weight.

3 months ago my starting weight was a little over 100kg, I’m 173cm and in my late 30s. My interim goal was 90kg by the end of September (I’m going on holiday!) and I feel pretty confident in achieving it.

My partner and family said you could see my weight loss once I reached 4kg but I couldn’t really. Now I definitely can! My face looks less puffy and I’ve dropped at least one dress size. It’s been so hard, especially as my doctors doubled my steroid dosage recently, so I’m really proud of myself.

I’m still eating about 1400 calories a day but I’ve mixed it up a bit now. I have a couple of low cal (1200) days, a couple of 1400 and a couple of 1600. I have one or two 2000 days a month. Although my overall calorie intake is roughly the same, my body seems to respond better to the variation.

I’m not going to adjust my 90kg-by-October target, I’m just going to continue and see where I end up. Once I’m home from holiday I’ll reset and aim to lose another 10% by next spring.

I only used to lurk on the CICO sub but as I hit a milestone today I thought I’d do my bit and post to lemmy.

Some info on my situation if anyone is interested, I have multiple chronic illness. I gained weight rapidly once I started to steroids and it’s been a battle to a) keep my weight down and b) get any of my doctors to take my concerns out the weight gain seriously.

Earlier this year I ticked over into the obese category (although tbf I’ve always been much heavier than I looked, I’m not sure I truly would have been obese if muscle was taken into account). On reaching my obesity milestone(!) my doctors finally put me on the waiting list to see a dietitian. That was 7 months ago, still no appointment and I’m not convinced they’ll be very useful anyway.

I started properly logging my calories 22nd April to get a baseline of how much I was eating. It wasn’t a lot: 1700kcals was my daily average (but remember I was barely getting out of bed). I weighed 100kgs (220lbs) at 173cm tall (5’8”) I’m female and 37 years old.

I dropped to ~1400kcals a day and the weight come off fairly quickly initially. I’d lost 5kg in a month and then nothing. Absolutely nothing for an entire month. I went away last week and had a cheat week. I was close to 2000kcals a day but my Fitbit informed me I was burning at least 2000kcals as I was moving a lot more.

Finally today the scale budged! I’m 94kg exactly so I’ve lost 6kg or 13.2lbs, or 6% of my body weight. My interim goal is to lose 10kg by October (I’m going on holiday for the first time in a decade!). My big goal is to reach 85kg (overweight but not obese). The max healthy weight for my height is 75kg but I can’t see that ever happening while I’m still on steroids etc tbh. Anyway, I’ve lost 6kg in just over 10 weeks and I’m pretty happy with the myself!

Got MyFitnessPal all set up. Tracking and making good decisions. What app do you use?

If you’re a beginner at CICO, and you’ve already read our post about how it works, it’s time to learn how to determine how many calories you want to eat in a day - and how to measure how many you’re actually eating.

Determining your daily caloric intake

The amount of calories your body burns in a day varies due to many different factors. We can summarize it roughly as the sum of: the calories it takes to keep you alive (this is the minimum amount of calories you’ll burn, even if you sleep all day everyday) plus the amount of energy it takes to digest your food, and to move your muscles and pump blood in response to your exercise level.

To get a pretty good estimate of how many calories you need, you can use tools like the Mayo Clinic calorie calculator. There are calculators with more precise control over what model is being used to predict the caloric expenditure, or more realistic data about the daily fluctuations and projections of your habits - but for beginners, this pursuit of precision is not relevant and will get in the way of your goals. Ultimately, even a basic calorie counter is more than enough and will work.

If you want to lose weight, you need to take your calculated caloric intake and eat around 500 calories below it. If you want to gain weight, you need to eat around 500 calories above it. As long as this is true, your body will store or burn fat - energy can’t be destroyed or created and, therefore, it’s impossible to do CICO and not have results.

It’s important to note that if you have medical conditions that affect your metabolism, if you’re a heavy athlete, suffer from an eating disorder, diabetes or similar conditions, it’s important to consult an expert in order to calculate a good deficit or surplus for you. Be advised that no human being can eat less than around 1100 calories per day without profound medical tutoring, and you shall never eat this little just to make the process faster.

How to track calories

Determining how many calories to eat in a day is only half of the equation: you need to know how many calories you eat in a day. In order to reliably and effectively do that, you’ll need two tools: a kitchen scale and a calorie tracking app, like MyFitnessPal, FatSecret, Lose It! and alternatives.

For each food you eat, measure the exact weight and log it in your favorite app. Include everything - little snacks, the tablespoon of olive oil you added to your salad, the candybar you had after coffee, and so on. This might be tedious at first, but it quickly becomes a mindless habit and you’ll get familiar with your serving sizes and average weights, so you can eventually skip measuring certain ingredients. Volumetric measurements (one tablespoon, one cup, one bottle) can be used if weight is unavailable, but they're less precise.

Apps can read the barcode of your packaged foods and automatically add a serving, making things easier. If you’re cooking your own food, a good recommendation is measuring your raw ingredients - the final weight on the plate will change due to water evaporating or being absorbed, but the number of calories doesn’t change, making measurements easier when ingredients are raw.

Welcome to /c/cico@lemmy.world!

The goal of this community is helping users achieve their fitness and dietary goals in a healthy, science-based way, through counting the calories in their daily life.

How does calorie counting work?

While many diets will offer different strategies, there’s one fundamental aspect that every single weight loss (or weight gain!) mechanism shares: the number of calories you eat in a day, minus the number of calories you’ve burned, will determine if you gain or lose weight. This means that if you want to lose weight, you need a calorie deficit - you need to eat less calories than you consume, and if you want to gain weight (be it as fat or muscle) you need to eat more than you consume.

In theory, this means you could eat a McDonald’s hamburger or deep fried chicken everyday and - if those calories were below your expenditure - you’d lose weight. While this is indeed true, it’s important to divide your calories taking into account the amount of protein, fats and carbs you need for a healthy life, sustain muscle growth, and get a good amount of all auxiliary nutrients like vitamins, minerals and so on.

Why is calorie counting so good?

Many studies suggest calorie counting is the most effective tool for achieving a sustained weight goal, while fad diets tend to work momentarily but burn people out, making them relapse into old eating habits. There are two aspects of calorie counting that make it particularly good: flexibility and precision.

Calorie counting diets are flexible by nature, because you’re mostly worried about the total calories at the end of the day. This means that if today you’re feeling like having pure protein, go for it. Tomorrow you crave carbs and want to take a bite out of some pizza? Sure thing. You crave candy and need a diet where you can fit 2 to 3 little pieces of chocolate a day? We can make it work. Calorie counting isn’t here to offer you a religion, lifestyle or cult - it’s just fitting the math of how your body loses or stores fat into your routine. CICO is also precise - by directly calculating your necessary caloric intake, your deficit or surplus, and how much you've eaten in a day, you can predict how your weight will change regardless of everything else going on in the world.