Do You Still Count Calories While Eating Clean?
Personally I think eating clean alleviates some of the hassle of counting every calorie. Since you are not consuming junk, you knock out a ton of calories by default. There are still many people who do the calorie counting thing regardless and if you have ever counted calories, you understand how tedious and annoying it can become.
Luckily there are some cool programs online that take the hassle out of calorie counting and makes it actually kind of fun. The two I am going to talk about are both web based which is great for those of us who work in front of a computer most of the day. It makes logging our meals that much easier.
FitDay
www.fitday.com
I’ve used FitDay before and loved it. It has awesome reporting features that produce charts track your calories eaten and calories burned from your activity that you log throughout the day. It’s a really robust meal and fitness tracker and the best part is that it is free. The only downside - at least back when I used it, was that you have to manually enter the calories of certain food items but once you have them in there you’re good to go.
The Daily Plate
www.thedailyplate.com
I have not tried this site out so the information I am giving is second hand but reliable! My sister gave this program a try and she really liked the fact that when someone enters the calories for popular food items, everyone can share it. Unlike Fit Day where it is saved for each account. Like Fit Day, it is easy to use and has good reporting. She did mention that the reporting isn’t as nice as Fit Day but I think they offer more reporting features if you upgrade.
There are several other meal and fitness trackers on the web and you can do a quick search to find many of them. If you don’t care either way about counting calories but do like keeping a food journal, these web based programs can help if you’re not into carrying a notebook around.
image credit: stock.xchng
I do still count my calories while I am eating clean just to make sure I am eating enough. The higher I bring my calories, the harder it is to make sure I am getting them all in without tracking. I use sparkspeople.com or figwee.com to track my cals!
I used to use both of those but then I found this great and better free alternative:
Fatsecret
I track using Calorie King it has a cost but it is minimal. It has a huge database which is nice for looking up food. I have used both Fitday and Daily Plate they are both good programs. I do track my calories mostly because my eyes don’t have good portion control.
I’m generally quite good with healthy eating. I occassionally let myself have the odd treat but usually I cook my own healthy meals. I don’t count calories but I try to make sure I eat similar amounts each day and make sure that portion sizes are not too large - just satisfying. If I feel really hungry but it isn’t mealtime I usually just have a banana or apple for a snack which keeps the calories under control.
I suppose if I was looking to get really ripped I would look to counting and reducing my daily calories but this method helps me maintain a weight I am happy with.