How to count calories?

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The process of calorie counting is an effective dietary control tool that helps understand the real amount of energy consumed and form proper eating habits. At the initial stage, this process may seem tedious and complicated, but over time it turns into an automatic skill that allows you to determine the energy value of portions and the composition of dishes by eye.

To make the calculation as accurate and effective as possible, you should follow a certain sequence of steps.

1. Install one of the specialized nutrition tracking apps on your smartphone, such as MyFitnessPal or FatSecret, whose databases already contain thousands of ready-made products and dishes.
2. Buy a kitchen scale and weigh each ingredient in its raw or dry form before cooking, as this method gives the least margin of error in calculations.
3. Record absolutely every meal in the program, including even the most minor snacks in the form of a candy, a spoon of sugar in tea, or a drop of vegetable oil when frying.

The first two or three weeks of keeping a food diary require maximum concentration and discipline, but soon the brain gets used to matching portion sizes with their calorie content. Once you learn to visually estimate the amount of proteins, fats, and carbohydrates on your plate, the strict necessity to weigh every gram can be stopped, moving on to intuitive eating within the framework of already mastered norms.

How to count calories?

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