For years, I kept complaining about not being able to gain weight. I thought I was eating a lot for my size, but my metabolism was so fast that I burned everything I ate without storing it. Over time, I realized that I was fooling myself and wasn't eating as much as I thought. Gaining or losing weight is entirely a matter of mathematics. If you consume more calories than you burn, you gain weight; if you burn more calories than you consume, you lose weight. This equation puts you in the driver's seat of your health journey. By tracking your food intake and weight, you're equipped with the tools to succeed. However, it's important to acknowledge that tracking what you eat can be a challenging process. It requires discipline and effort, but the rewards are worth it. To properly track your food intake, you need to be aware of the quantity of everything you consume. If you often prepare and eat simple, single-ingredient recipes, it might be easier for you, but that's not the reality for most of us. Sometimes, we eat at home, and sometimes in a restaurant where we eat meals with many ingredients and are prepared by estimation, making it hard to gauge their exact amounts. Don't be discouraged right away. Thousands of people record what they eat every day in one way or another, and I'm one of them. From my experiences, I've learned that there are three main components to effective food tracking:

1. 1.Getting a kitchen scale
2. 2.Reading nutrition labels
3. 3.Keeping a food journal

Get a Kitchen Scale

The first thing you should do is get a kitchen scale. It doesn't need to be extremely precise, but if you want to elevate your coffee game as well, go ahead. When serving meals, you can get accurate portion information by weighing each food item separately. I suggest estimating the weight of each item before you weigh it. It will help you better understand portion sizes, which can be useful when eating out. If weighing each food item separately sounds tedious, make smart choices based on your goals. If you're trying to lose weight, weigh the major calorie sources. The sautéed peppers or pickles on your plate will have much less impact on your calorie intake than 150 grams of pasta or 120 grams of meatballs.

Read Nutrition Labels

We consume many packaged products every day. Reading the nutrition labels on these packages can provide you with a lot of information necessary for making smart decisions about your diet:

1. 1.Calorie content
2. 2.Macronutrient values like protein, carbohydrates, and fats
3. 3.Micronutrient values like vitamins, calcium, and magnesium
4. 4.Recommended serving sizes

Some products, like chocolate or boxed milk, are typically consumed without processing. You can calculate the nutritional value of the amount directly from the label. For items like pasta or rice that are consumed cooked, you should calculate based on the weight of the raw product you use. For example, adding 100 grams of raw pasta will weigh around 300 grams when cooked, but the nutritional value is calculated based on the 100 grams of raw pasta.

Keep a Food Journal

Measuring and tracking what you eat forms the foundation of food tracking. With tracking, you can calculate the nutritional values you intake and start tracking yourself daily. The practice itself is more important than the method you use. Calculating the nutritional values of what you consume is crucial for making diet decisions. The Meel database contains thousands of foods and recipes for this purpose. If you don't want to keep a paper journal romantically, you can record what you eat on Meel. This way, you can benefit from the graphs and insights we generate from the data you record. If you have your recipe, you can create it in our ingredient database. For example, here is my Grandma's Lentil Soup recipe: You can create collections of foods you frequently eat together. The items and quantities for my weekday breakfasts are usually consistent. I've created a collection for my favorite dinner on Meel, and I can track all the foods I eat in one go: You can also use collections to create your meal catalog. For example, here are some items my spouse and I frequently eat: Eating well doesn't have to be a constant battle with yourself. If you don't want to battle with yourself, you need to act smart. Remember, you can't improve what you don't measure. If you know what you eat, it is much easier to indulge occasionally. You can create a calorie deficit at lunch and enjoy your favorite dessert in the evening without feeling guilty.