How To Count Calories I How To Count Calories Using My Fitness Pal I My fitness pal tutorial
In this instructional video, Eric Roberts explains why precise calorie tracking is essential for achieving body‑composition goals such as fat loss, muscle gain, or weight maintenance. He emphasizes that the only reliably controllable variable is calories consumed, and that accurate measurement starts with weighing food in grams rather than using volume measures like cups or tablespoons. Roberts walks through reading nutrition labels, demonstrates how to use a digital food scale with real‑world foods—dry oatmeal, peanut butter, and raw chicken—and shows how small deviations (e.g., using a half‑cup instead of 40 g) can add hundreds of hidden calories each day. He discusses the raw‑vs‑cooked weight issue for meat and advises weighing raw whenever possible. The second half of the video transitions to the MyFitnessPal app, illustrating how to scan barcodes, set serving sizes in grams, and log foods accurately. Throughout, Roberts stresses that many people fail to lose weight because they underestimate intake, and he provides concrete steps to avoid that pitfall. The video concludes with a call to action for viewers to comment, like, and subscribe.
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What is going on, YouTube? Welcome back to the channel. Hope you're doing amazing. In this video, we're gonna talk about how to accurately count your calories. We're gonna talk about how to accurately measure your calories. We're gonna talk about how to weigh your food out on a food scale. We're gonna talk about why you should be weighing in grams versus why you should be not weighing in cups or half a cups or tablespoons. We're gonna cover all things calorie counting today. All right, so what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna take you into the kitchen. I just cleaned, so don't worry. I'm gonna take you into the kitchen and kinda show you how to actually, like, hands-on, how to actually count your calories, what that would look like, what that would look like, and then in terms of your phone, how you would count your calories with certain apps and stuff like that. So we're gonna cover all that today. Before I dive into that, we're gonna talk about why calorie counting matters and why you and I both care about it. If you're watching this video, why we care about it. All right, so basically, in order to change your body composition, whether it's lose fat, whether it's gain muscle, whether it's maintain your weight, in order to affect your body composition, It all comes down to this energy balance equation of calories in versus calories out. Calories in is how many calories you eat, and calories out is how many calories your body burns. Now, most people ask me, how do I know how many calories my body burns? And I tell them it doesn't matter because you can't accurately track that. Most people try to go by their Apple Watches or their phones or the treadmill and like, oh, I burned this many calories during my workout. Don't worry about any of that. And again, I have a whole separate article on why you should not worry about that, which I'm gonna link here in the show notes, in the description of this video here below. But today we're gonna be covering why you should be worrying about how many calories your body's eating. 'Cause you can accurately track how many calories you are eating, which is going to then in turn lead to positive effects in your body composition. Again, whether it's lose fat, gain muscle, whatever. So that's number 1. Number 2 is whether you are brand new to counting calories and you have no clue, or whether you've been counting calories for a while, but maybe not sure if you've been doing it correctly, and/or even if you are sure you're doing it correctly, I'm sure there's one or two things in this video you're going to learn that's probably going to flip a switch for you. Because I said earlier how to count calories accurately, and the number one thing I hear is from people who have been counting calories but maybe say, I've been eating 1,200 calories but not seeing results and not losing weight. Why is this happening? Well, in this video I'm going to show you why that could possibly be happening, and there's going to be a few takeaways you can take with you. In order to then put it into your life and start seeing your results that you deserve. All right, so now without further ado, let's kind of go into the kitchen and kind of see what I'm talking about. All right. Alrighty, so first things first, before we do anything else, you are going to want to get a food scale. All right, you're going to ask me what foods— what food scale should I get? I don't care. This is— I got this from Target. It was like $14. Just get any digital food scale that weighs in grams. All right. You wanna make sure you are able to weigh in grams, and we're gonna talk about why here in a second. All right, so before we actually go into a bit more, I wanna talk about why you need to weigh your food in grams. Weighing your food in grams, grams is a unit of measurement of weight, right? As opposed to a, you know, as opposed to using a tablespoon, or as opposed to using a half a cup. Those are measurements of volume. Those are for like liquids, right? So in terms of weighing your food on a food scale in grams, If you wanna be the most accurate, the most concise, you need to be weighing your food out in grams. And we're gonna talk more in depth about this, but if you are not doing that right now, that is a big mistake you are making. I just had a conversation with one of my online coaching clients before I made this video, and we talked about— she thought she was eating 1,200 calories. She was not weighing any of her food in grams. After one day of weighing her food in grams, she realized she was actually eating 1,850 calories, not 1,200 calories. And she was getting so frustrated as to why she was not losing weight. We then found out she wasn't actually eating 1,200 calories because again, she was not counting calories accurately. If you want to be the most accurate with what you are doing, you need to be weighing your food out in grams on a food scale. All right, so that's that. Now let's get back into the kitchen. Now I want to talk about how to read a nutrition label on a, on a food. Okay, so let's look at, for example, let's look at these Quaker Oats. I'm going to flip it over. We're going to go to the nutrition label back here, nutrition facts right here, right? So When you're looking at this label, I'm gonna zoom in here. When you're looking at this label, it'll tell you what the serving size is for this particular food, right? So again, this could be on any food, but we're talking about the oatmeal right now. It says about 57 servings per container. Serving size is 1/2 a cup dry, 40 grams. Notice how I talked about grams with the food scale, 40 grams. So that means when you weigh your food on a food scale, This serving size, when you put this food on here, it has to be 40 grams of dry oatmeal. That is going to lead you to eat this many calories. Okay? And notice I said dry because it's pre— it's before you cook it, right? So when you have 40 grams of dry oatmeal that we're going to use right here, you need to make sure that you aren't consuming this many calories, this much fat, this much carbs, and this much protein from 40 grams of dry oatmeal. Now let's see what that looks like on the food scale. So I have my half a cup here, okay? Because we talked about in this serving size it is going to be half a cup, right? So I have my half a cup right here. What you're going to want to do is make sure the food scale is on zero. And then what you're going to want to do is you're going to put whatever you're— whether you're using a half a cup, whether using a random bowl, a random cup, you're going to put it on here on the food scale. It's going to, it's going to read as however many grams it is, and then you're going to want to zero it out because when you put for For this example, the oatmeal. When you put the oatmeal into this container, it's obviously going to add more weight, but this 18 grams that it's currently using, 17 grams it's currently using, is not a part of this oatmeal we're about to use. So you're going to want to zero it out. So obviously just go on there, click zero, it'll go right to zero. Okay. Now I'm going to show you something that I talked about earlier. I said weighing your food in grams is the most accurate way. You can see right here, I filled my half a cup up. And we're going to weigh it. Let's go back to right here. A serving size is half a cup dry, which is 40 grams. So this food scale needs to be sure it reads 40 grams. Let's see what happens. Again, I just randomly poured this into this half cup. 54 grams. Wait a minute, it says half a cup, so why is it not 40 grams? Well, again, You cannot be weighing things in half cups. You need to be weighing things in grams. Even though this is half a cup, this is more calories than what it says right here because it is not 40 grams. Okay? So what we're going to do is we're going to make it weigh 40 grams and then we know this is how many calories we are eating. So again, very quickly, this is why I say you need to weigh your food in grams on a food scale because so many people just say, oh, I put it, I used a half cup of oatmeal. That's what it said on the container. That's not right because it has to, it has to say whatever the grams is, whether it says a tablespoon, whether it says half a cup, whether it says ounces, it will have grams next to it. And we'll talk about more scenarios here in a second, but it has to come out to those grams. If it does not, you are eating probably more calories than you think, which is why people say, I'm eating 1,200 calories but can't lose weight. This right here is why. And you may say, well, Eric, it was only 55 grams instead of 40 grams. Number one, that's a big difference. But number two, that adds up throughout the day. So if you're using half a cup of oatmeal and not weighing it, if you're using a tablespoon of peanut butter, which we're gonna talk about, and not weighing it, if you're using 5 ounces of chicken but not weighing it in grams, all these things add up throughout the day. So whether it's 100 calories there, 150 calories here, 80 calories there, 90 calories here, throughout an entire day and throughout an entire week, this stuff adds up to an extra 300, 400, 500, 600, 800 calories a day. And that's why you can't lose weight, 'cause you're not tracking calories accurately. All right? Let's go back into the kitchen. All right, so now we are back in the kitchen. As you can see, 40 grams with my half a cup. You can see the big difference it has now from the last time. And again, coming back to our food scale— our food label, I'm sorry. 40 grams, 40, 41 grams, it's fluctuating, but 40 grams right there. You see, 40 grams. So that is gonna be what a one serving size of oatmeal is gonna look like right there. Now let's go over peanut butter. Okay, so let's talk about peanut butter. So let's look at our food label, our nutrition facts. A serving size of peanut butter is 2 tablespoons, which is 32 grams. And obviously 1 tablespoon would be 16 grams. That'd be half a serving. So 1 serving size is 2 tablespoons, 32 grams. Okay. And it has, again, has 180 calories, has 16 grams of fat, has 5 grams of carbs, has 8 grams of protein. That is 1 serving size of this particular peanut butter. Now let's look at it on from a, food scale perspective. So again, what we're gonna do is we're gonna zero out our food scale first. So I have my tablespoon, I have my tablespoon thing here. I'm gonna put it on here. It is going to then say 9 grams. We're going to zero that out to make it say 0 grams. So when we put the peanut butter in the tablespoon, we will know how many grams it is. All right, now again, for the purpose of this video, let's do what most people do and let's just take a, take a tablespoon and Scoop it out of the peanut butter. God, that looks good. Let's scoop it out of there and then let's just put it right on the food scale and let's see what it says. So remember, before we even look at it, let's remember that 1— I'm sorry, 2 tablespoons were 32 grams. Whoa, 46 grams! But wait a minute, that's just 1 tablespoon. What, what's going on? Again, you have to make sure 1 tablespoon is supposed to weigh 16 grams. But when you just scoop it out and don't actually weigh it, you'd say, oh, I'm eating 1 tablespoon of peanut butter. But in reality, you're eating more than 2 tablespoons and more than 1 serving. You're almost eating a serving and a half size of table— of peanut butter, which again, this one little peanut butter which weighs 46 grams has more than 180 calories in it. But again, you think you're just doing 1 tablespoon of peanut butter. This is where this stuff starts to add up because again, these calories are gonna start to go up very, very quickly. If you think you're gonna use 2 of these things, you're using way— you're having way more than double of these calories that are in this peanut butter and you don't even know it. Now let's come right back and remember, 1 serving size is 32 grams. That is 32 grams is 180 calories. Let's go to our food scale. 31 grams, right about at the 32-gram mark. 31 grams is this much peanut butter. You better even view of it here. That much peanut butter, 31 grams, that would be now 180 calories. Not the one we saw before. This is gonna be 180 calories. And last but not least, let's talk about meat. And I think you've got it, kind of gotten the concept of using the food scale now. Now let's quickly talk about meat because I get a question a lot of whether you should weigh it raw or whether you should weigh it cooked. Normally every single serving— and again, this is an unopened package— normally every single thing you see on these nutrition facts are going to be the raw serving, right? So it's going to be the raw serving. And again, you can see 4 ounces of raw meat, 112 grams. So again, when When you would weigh out on the food scale, you would have to make sure it says 112 grams. And that again, that would give you 130 calories, 24 grams of protein, 3 grams of fat, 0 carbs. That is what 112 grams of raw chicken breast is going to give you. Now the question is going to be, should you weigh it raw or should you weigh it cooked? The most accurate way is going to be weighing it raw because again, When you talk about the calories, that's what the nutrition label says. So what I would do is, if you want the most accurate way, I would weigh it raw. If not, what I would do is simply input— when you input your calories, say as a fact, hey, I have 112 grams of cooked grilled chicken, I have 100 grams of, you know, sautéed chicken. Put the way you cook it and put that it's cooked because it will change. So because, for example, if you have 4 ounces of raw meat and you cook it and it goes down to 3 ounces, well, you still have 4 ounces of raw meat that you were eating, which is still, again, on this nutrition label, you would still be getting that fat. But if you put in 3 ounces, you're undervaluing the calories and the protein because 3 ounces would obviously be less, right? So you have to make sure That if you can, weigh it raw. If not, clarify you are weighing it cooked. All right, so listen, I hope those examples in the kitchen helped you, whether it was the oatmeal, whether it was the peanut butter, whether it was the chicken. You've seen that you have to weigh your food in grams on a food scale because if not, you can vastly overestimate how many calories you're eating. The peanut butter, for example, that could be right there just in that one sitting That could be a difference of 200 calories. The oatmeal could be a difference of 120 calories. The chicken could be a difference of 80 calories. And just from that, you're having 500, 600 calories you don't even know about that you think you're eating 1,200 calories, but you're actually not. So that being said, now let's dive into— there's certain apps you can use to track your calories. You don't have to write this thing down on a piece of paper and do all the math. These, these apps do it for you. So I'm going to take you into MyFitnessPal and show you how you're going to track calories. And again, I use MyFitnessPal for myself and all of my online coaching clients. I don't use it for how many calories you're supposed to eat because it's going to tell you the not right number. So I'm going to tell you, if you want to know how many calories to eat to lose weight, I did a YouTube video here on YouTube. It's totally free. I'm going to link it here as well as below. Feel free to go watch that video to find out how many calories you need to eat to lose weight and/or I wrote an article as well. I will link that article here as well, but let's dive into MyFitnessPal now and see how you would track your calories from these foods. What we're gonna do is we're gonna talk about how to actually input the food, input the calories now into your MyFitnessPal app. Okay, so I'm gonna click start here. I'm just basically gonna go through what we would do. So we're gonna go to the add food menu. You know, you go to your diary, we're gonna click add food. That's what we're gonna click. And then we're gonna click scan the barcode. This is very important. Click scan the barcode. You're gonna get whatever food you have, whether it's oatmeal, peanut butter, whatever. You're gonna find that label and you are going to scan that. If you scan that and nothing comes up, pick the closest thing possible, but it should come up. And then what we're gonna do is go to serving size. You're gonna go to, if you can, grams, because we wanna weigh our food in grams. And then what you do is go to decimal and you will type in however many grams you are eating of said food, okay? So again, serving size and then go to grams. We're gonna do it for the peanut butter as well. So again, we're gonna scan barcode and then we're gonna get the peanut butter. We're gonna scan that puppy. All right, so listen, right there, scan it, bam. And then again, we go to serving size. It already has in grams for us, so we're gonna keep it as that. Actually, let's change— we'll go to 1 gram and we'll type in again, we'll type in 32 grams. So we'll type that and then we'll type in 32 grams. And again, that will bring us to what the serving size should be. Okay, so we're gonna do that. And listen, that's basically how to input the food in there. All this should save for you and it should be super, super, super relatively simple. So let's continue on with the thing now. But again, you should see it's not that complicated. It does not take that much time at all. Input your food into MyFitnessPal. All right, so again, you would scan the barcode. Make sure you scan the barcode. You would then input it in grams. Now there's gonna be some times where it will not allow you to input in grams. If you can, I would make sure you go to serving size, input in grams. If it does not, it only allows you to say a half a cup or whatever, Again, this is where going back to for the oatmeal, for example, a half a cup was 40 grams. So what you would do is still weigh it out on the food scale in 40 grams, and when you input it into your MyFitnessPal app or whatever app you're using, you can put a half a cup, but this way you now actually know it's 40 grams. That's the serving size. So you can confidently say, yes, I have a half a cup, because you weighed it out on a food scale. So listen guys, that was the entire video. I hope you enjoyed it. I hope it helped you a ton because again, The number one thing I've seen coaching literally thousands of people at this point is not tracking calories accurately is one of the most surefire ways to get upset, get frustrated, quit because you think it's not working. You need to make sure you're doing these things accurately. If you have any questions or concerns, let me know. Drop a comment below. If you enjoyed this video, please, please, please leave a thumbs up. That would mean the world to me. If you enjoy these types of videos, feel free to head to my channel, subscribe to the channel because there's plenty of videos on here that teach you a bunch of things. So beyond that, guys, thank you so much again, and we will talk soon. All right.
