alt Hacker NewsCounting works for people because it quantifies their food intake. For many people, that's an effective way to overcome a learned idea that portions should be huge, or that feeling hungry has to be addressed immediately, or that feeling "full" has to be constant. It's not perfect, and I don't recommend it to people with an ED history; however, after about a month or 2 of doing it, it can really change how you look at your meals, and snacking in particular. I don't obsess over it.
> - sauces you make yourself?
I don't count them. I keep my sauces simple and use them sparingly. I'm not trying to get down to sub-10% bf.
> - different cooking time in one receive : oignons going first, tomato sauce in the middle and parsley at the end (but still cook a bit with residual heat)
I count them raw, or if my tracker has them, count them as cooked. I don't care about them being super accurate.
> - Leftovers nutrients decrease with time
I don't care. The calorie counts are basically just estimates anyway. It's less a science than a mental game to control your ballpark calories in.
> - counting how much you take of a meal shared with others, especially when you serves yourself multiple time
If I'm making the meal, I count for the whole meal, then estimate for the share. See above for rationale (I don't care that much.) If my friend has cooked for me, I don't care at all, and just try to eat a "reasonable" portion.
> - different species/cultivation methods like the rustic small and dense cucumber from your neighbor and the spongy one from the supermarket in January
The differences are probably not going to matter all that much. By weight, a cucumber is a cucumber is a cucumber; I'm not trying to be perfect, just get a general sense of calories.
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Yep, it doesn't particularly matter if something that's actually 212 or 198 is entered as 200. Sometimes you'll be slightly over, sometimes slightly below - just try to be accurate and these small mistakes average out.
Typically I figure out the actual weight/volume once or twice to get a sense of how much it is, then just eyeball it most of the time and go for the same amount as last time I measured.
And: I think it is very difficult to gain weight by eating to many cucumbers ;-)
> I don't recommend it to people with an ED history
Your daily reminder that ED means more than one thing.
This is it. There will always going to be impossibly unpredictable errors even if you measure everything perfectly.
The point of measuring is to be * as accurate as possible *, not 100% error-free. It helps to better estimate portion sizes, calorie / macro amounts. This is enough precision to control weight gain / loss correctly.
A lot of people also get their maintenance calories estimation wrong, so it doesn't matter if you can measure your food down to the molecules but still eat too much / too little.