How effective is calorie counting?

[Clynester]

Looking at the calorie intakes of various meals and I see that a completely homemade bolognese is nearly double the calorie intake of a microwave curry meal.

Surely the key to losing weight is not to dine each night on these ready meals instead of a homemade meal with mince, vegetables and pasta? What are the best options?

[gerysek]

Well the pasta you describe is inherently high in calories. No matter if its home made or store bought. The key is to have an idea of how caloric your food actually is, even though you made it, which is a really useful thing to know. Balance it with a really low carb breakkie or dinner and you will be OK.

For me personally, calorie counting is always the only thing that works. I can never outexercise what i eat and sometimes I am shocked how caloric some of my meals are. So I try to make sure I do not under-report when counting my calories.

[Bill_k]

Exercise more to compensate for eating more.

[MagsOnTheBeach]

Of course you can't go by calories alone - eating 1000 calories of apples is going to be very different on a body than 1000 calories of lard.

Chances are your microwave meal is bad food with a ton of sodium, little fiber and a lot of ingredients not found in the average person's kitchen.  

You can eat a sensible amount of the homemade sauce, choose to have it over zucchini instead of a pound of pasta and modify the sauce recipe by not using extra oil, draining the beef, etc.

[Esya]

The best option is to learn by tracking calories what is high in calories and what is lower in calories. Then you can start adapting recipes and/or portion sizes to fit your calories budget. Tomato sauce can be very low in calories as are vegetables. I prefer to use wholegrain pasta and I am not sure, but I think it might be lower in calories than the white pasta. Maybe the recipe is ok, but their portion sizing is not. The more you log the more you learn what works for you.

[Goober5]

Counting your calories...or being a bit focused on what and how much you're eating is a big factor in how I have managed to lose weight.  I suggest taking full advantage of the Fitbit food log on a daily basis... make a habit of weighing yourself once a week... and unless you are blessed with a decent metabolic rate, attempt to find an activity or activities that you can either enjoy or at a minimum tolerate in order to burn some calories (if not to improve your health).    

So endeth the sermon.

   good luck

[emili]

calories in vs out is the only way to really manage weight. you can not outrun a poor diet. it all starts in the kitchen. you have to have an understanding of how many calories each uncooked item is before you start cooking so you have some benchmark to go by. When I was losing weight, I actually did not cook high ingredient dishes because I couldn't be as accurate in counting. I chose to make weight loss my priority for a bit of time and hold off creating amazing dishes. I actually liked the simple cooking so much, its been three years since I killed it in the kitchen excluding holidays and parties. And please please stay away from anything that comes in a microwave dish. its easy sure, but the sodium and mysteries surrounding the ingredients is not worth it,

[souper]

I have done both. (Counting calories and Weight Watcher points. I find counting calories far more effective for me with Fitbit because it's all about calories in, calories out. When I want to make something homemade which I do a lot, I take the recipe to my log and log each item in the recipe to get the calories. Then I just delete the item from my log. I can then add the # of calories in each item and divide it by the # of servings and "voila" I know how many calories for each serving of my wonderful homemade dish. Sometimes you have to make some adjustments to your recipe to bring down the calorie count,but there is usually a way to make it work.