How to Calculate Food Consumed for the Day

A calorie is simply a measure of energy, and the body stores excess energy as fat. Making your calorie intake lower than your calorie consumption is at the core of every effective weight-loss plan. In order to effectively make the choices that will shape informed habits of healthy eating, you must start by gathering information about how many calories you gain each day from the food that you eat. Calorie charts that list the calories per serving of typical foods are available online and in many dieting books.

Things You'll Need

• Calorie calculator
• Calorie chart
• Notepad
• Pencil

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Instructions

• 1

  Calculate your target daily caloric intake using an online calorie calculator. These calculators use your height, weight, age, gender and daily activity level to determine approximately how many calories you should eat in order to maintain, increase or decrease your weight.

• 2

  Create three columns headings at the top of the next page in your notepad: "Food," "Quantity" and "Calories."

• 3

  Write down each food you eat on a new line in your notepad, with the approximate quantity in the second column. Leave the third column blank for now. When you eat meals with separate components, write each visibly different component or ingredient on its own line. For example, if you eat a parfait you might list yogurt (1 cup), raspberries (1/4 cup), sunflower seeds (2 tbsp) and granola (1/4 cup). For a slice of apple pie a la mode, you could list pie crust (1/8 of a pie), apple pie filling (3/4 cup) and low-fat vanilla ice cream (1/2 cup). If you are unable to separate the components, simply list foods by their obvious names, such as "apple pie (1 slice)" or "fried chicken (3 drumsticks)."

• 4

  Look up each food item on your calorie chart at the end of the day and calculate how many calories were in each serving. For example, if you recorded 4 oz. of low-fat yogurt and the chart says that an 8-oz. serving of low-fat yogurt contains 145 calories, divide the calorie count by 2 and record the resulting 73 calories (rounded to the nearest calorie) in the third column.

• 5

  Total up the calorie counts for the day and record the total in the third column below the last line for the day. In the first column, write "Total for" and the day's date. Leave a blank line between the total and the first line of the next day's record to make it easier to see the end of each day.