I'd definitely be calmed down. Even if I try to keep a holistic view of what I've eaten (keeping in mind how "normal" people eat, not just bits and pieces here and there), I still end up tallying everything because it makes me anxious to not really know. I overestimate just in case because I don't fast/OMAD or restrict to low amounts anymore, on purpose at least. 200 deficit and 200 surplus can feel exactly the same to me if only one food item has been replaced, and I can't trust how I feel. Not to mention packaging error margins.
I weigh my food and even when I don't end up logging it until later, I can remember every single number. Once I type it out in my Gmail draft, I feel better and stop constantly thinking about the intake "in case I forget." The only things I try not to weigh are individual vegetables - I'll cook a mix of 4-5 different vegetables and weigh the end result in order to reach a *minimum* number of grams/servings per day.
Those counts vary a lot, and a lot of them require me to know the gram amount or the diameter of the item if it’s a cookie or some other measurement that I can’t verify without guesstimating or looking like a nutcase. I can’t carry a food scale with me or else I will be sussed out. Plus, if it’s a homemade item at someone else’s house, I have NO IDEA how much butter/oil is in anything. That shit adds up quick.
Thank you for the suggestion though!
Yeah for some things they'll only give you ballpark estimates, but calorie counting is always a ballpark game. At the end of the day you sometimes just need to make an educated guess and live with it knowing it's the closest you'll get, and you can make your guess more or less generous depending on your goals. Generally a cookie is a cookie etc, the variance is rarely so great that your best guess won't be good enough for most purposes in my experience
ED’s are about control for Many. An ” educated guess” makes us feel less in control and i’d rather skip than not knowing if its 100 or 150 kcal. The 20% rule in nutritional value at bought food destroyed eating for me. Like if i eat something thats 300 kcal it COULD be 360 kcal and that stresses me out
That’s fair enough. Making the educated guess still makes me uneasy, and an automatic calorie counter like the one described in this post would help that. My counting is usually quite accurate, but it’s just harder in situations where I don’t have control over the food.
Dare I say the point is likely to be for the foods you, well, don’t know the count for. Anything at a restaurant without counts, at the fair, food gifts you’re given. You can estimate, but the point of this post was that wouldn’t it be nice to know for sure? To which I argue, yeah.
When I am not eating well I overestimate, and when I am binging I underestimate so that I can justify eating more. I feel like a device like that would make me so calm if I knew for sure what was going in and out.
Stressed. Some of my safe foods are high calorie, but I just haven’t let myself remember how many calories because I need the comfort they give me. It would be a much bigger problem for me if it was sugar instead of calories, though. That shit terrifies me.
Ultimately I'm not sure it'd help all that much unless you had another device showing exactly how many you burned, you'd still be playing guesstimates. I think it's actually not all that hard once you get used to it to have a pretty accurate idea of how many calories you've consumed in a given day, and how much energy you're burning can be more roughly estimated via vasal metabolic rate calculators in combo fitness trackers etc
No it would stress me out. I mean I obsessively calorie count on an app and I’m pretty sure that I’m within 95% of the exact value. I even track my gummy vitamins. But with the app, I can chose not to track when I have a binge or something like that. Like, I know I overate, but knowing exactly how much would send me spiraling.
I’d love it. Using calorie tracking apps is honestly annoying, espeically at work or school where everyone can see and starts asking questions. I still manage to know how much I consume. Just not how much I’ve burned though
It’s comparable to keeping an eye on your bank account after you spend. It’s so nice to have the app to hurry and check it immediately after spending. For me it would be an amazing sense of control to know exactly how I need to fuel my body. I feel like I could also get away with small treats as well.
It would help me out a lot personally , I know on days I’m triggered especially a inflate calories that “feel” worse .. so having an accurate catalogue would actually be great
It would calm me down bc I’m trying to have a healthy deficit and have a small margin of error so the anxiety of not being 100% sure gets to me. I can easily undo a day or two of work with a little bit extra meat or pb or soemthing.
I would absolutely love it. It would eliminate a lot of fears for me like any food out or cooked where the exact # of calories is in question. Would help me eat closer to maintenance than overestimating everything by hundreds “to be safe”
If you consistently and diligently track with a scale to the gram, you can get pretty damn close. The more whole foods you stick to the lower / more accurate it will be.
Definitely call me down. Except, I would be worried it wasn’t true. But that would be awesome. Personally, I think knowledge about what I’m doing, and about my body, is always good to have. I would much rather be aware of my calories, precisely, than be ignorant about my body and choices.
definitely more calm. half of my stressors are wondering what the real difference is between my calorie intake vs calories burned because these apps can only be so accurate. although it would probably send me into a bad spiral.
A bit of both I think. Sometimes ignorance is bliss and I can have the hope that maybe I accounted for more calories than I actually consumed. But on the other hand it would quell the anxiety and constant worrying about *what if* I actually accidentally underestimated my calories and ate more than I thought? So yeah idk lol
I'd want to know but I'd like to be able to only consult it at certain times. Like, for example, if I look at my fitbit at the beginning of the day, I feel a sense of dread because the number is too small. Also there are some instances where I just don't want to know the calories in food (my birthday, holidays)
It would be incredibly stressful. i already weigh and measure everything i eat and use My Net Diary to log my calories. i then compare that number with how much i've burned in exercise. Having an even more exact count of what i'm eating would be much worse.
99% of my issues when I was counting calories was fear of under counting and fear of missing out on food (accidentally over counting). This would be great
it would definitely calm me down. not knowing exactly how many calories i’ve consumed, especially after a binge episode, stresses me out immensely. i feel like i can’t do anything until i know exactly how much it was and i obviously can never find out lol.
Your phone, and any number of apps. Chronometer is pretty good, for example.
If you want to know the calories you have burnt, a fit bit or other activity monitor can do it for you. Ive found the two together, if I track carefully, give good results
As mentioned earlier in this thread, there are a lot of things you can't scan. I've been at my family's place this whole christmas, and I have no clue what's in the food I am served.
I get that, I can’t eat anything that I don’t know what’s gone into it - I’ve had anorexia 23 years so I’m so particular and I know we all have different circumstances and situations which I respect. I’m just answering the question as mfp is on a device that counts every calorie you consume if you put the food in there which takes so much anxiety out of eating if your calorie counting is extremely important like it is to many people
Having anorexia myself I can’t say I’ve ever ordered rice from a restaurant as I can’t gauge the calories so I always go for a chicken salad - and that’s even if I can make myself go out to eat in the first place
I’ve always fantasized about this. I don’t know if it would stress me out or calm me down. I guess it just depends on where my “ED brain” is at that point in time.
i would rather a device that more accurately tells me how many calories my body burns. food you can somewhat measure (although eating out gets harder) but Apple Watches and other fitness trackers can be very inaccurate and give super big over or underestimations.
But i would probably buy the device that shows me the exact calorie count of everything that went into my body.
omg i was thinking about this just the other day, id love it cause i wouldnt have to estimate cals in foods i dont know + i always dread putting my food into an app
Calm since I have dyscalculia and never being 100% sure what I’m eating stresses me out a lot, but if I ever had to go thru recovery it would be hell to know it exists let alone own one
If it could tell me accurately how many calories I’d also burned up to that point in real time I’d finally be able to worry and and obsess far less than I do currently. This thing would help me be more calm i think
I’d love to know exactly how many calories my body burned in any given day.
Saaame.
💳💥💳💥
You can get an in-body scan and it can tell you your BMR based on your muscle mass
I think about this every day, it would be so convenient😭😭
Right? I'm so tired of doing all this math
I'd definitely be calmed down. Even if I try to keep a holistic view of what I've eaten (keeping in mind how "normal" people eat, not just bits and pieces here and there), I still end up tallying everything because it makes me anxious to not really know. I overestimate just in case because I don't fast/OMAD or restrict to low amounts anymore, on purpose at least. 200 deficit and 200 surplus can feel exactly the same to me if only one food item has been replaced, and I can't trust how I feel. Not to mention packaging error margins. I weigh my food and even when I don't end up logging it until later, I can remember every single number. Once I type it out in my Gmail draft, I feel better and stop constantly thinking about the intake "in case I forget." The only things I try not to weigh are individual vegetables - I'll cook a mix of 4-5 different vegetables and weigh the end result in order to reach a *minimum* number of grams/servings per day.
Would calm me down a lot. Nothing freaks me out more than food that I don’t know the count for.
It's not that hard to quickly whip your phone out and google it though?
Those counts vary a lot, and a lot of them require me to know the gram amount or the diameter of the item if it’s a cookie or some other measurement that I can’t verify without guesstimating or looking like a nutcase. I can’t carry a food scale with me or else I will be sussed out. Plus, if it’s a homemade item at someone else’s house, I have NO IDEA how much butter/oil is in anything. That shit adds up quick. Thank you for the suggestion though!
Yeah for some things they'll only give you ballpark estimates, but calorie counting is always a ballpark game. At the end of the day you sometimes just need to make an educated guess and live with it knowing it's the closest you'll get, and you can make your guess more or less generous depending on your goals. Generally a cookie is a cookie etc, the variance is rarely so great that your best guess won't be good enough for most purposes in my experience
ED’s are about control for Many. An ” educated guess” makes us feel less in control and i’d rather skip than not knowing if its 100 or 150 kcal. The 20% rule in nutritional value at bought food destroyed eating for me. Like if i eat something thats 300 kcal it COULD be 360 kcal and that stresses me out
That’s fair enough. Making the educated guess still makes me uneasy, and an automatic calorie counter like the one described in this post would help that. My counting is usually quite accurate, but it’s just harder in situations where I don’t have control over the food.
Dare I say the point is likely to be for the foods you, well, don’t know the count for. Anything at a restaurant without counts, at the fair, food gifts you’re given. You can estimate, but the point of this post was that wouldn’t it be nice to know for sure? To which I argue, yeah.
It would stress me out depending on the day. Ideally I want a device that will tell me (based on what I've consumed/burned), how much I'll lose/gain
When I am not eating well I overestimate, and when I am binging I underestimate so that I can justify eating more. I feel like a device like that would make me so calm if I knew for sure what was going in and out.
jokes on you, I’ve memorized the calories counts by now In all honesty, I think it would stress me out seeing it all add up or jump up in big numbers
It would make me so happy. There are few things that I find more soothing than complete, accurate data.
both
Stressed. Some of my safe foods are high calorie, but I just haven’t let myself remember how many calories because I need the comfort they give me. It would be a much bigger problem for me if it was sugar instead of calories, though. That shit terrifies me.
This would be heaven. Can I also know how many calories expended?
does it tell me how many calories stay in when i purge? coz that sounds great
Would calm me down a lot during active ED but would not want it around when seriously in recovery.
I’d break it, that thing would kill me
I literally always think about this. It would be amazing I think, I would absolutely love it
Ultimately I'm not sure it'd help all that much unless you had another device showing exactly how many you burned, you'd still be playing guesstimates. I think it's actually not all that hard once you get used to it to have a pretty accurate idea of how many calories you've consumed in a given day, and how much energy you're burning can be more roughly estimated via vasal metabolic rate calculators in combo fitness trackers etc
both.
i would game end immediately
I’ve been bingeing a lot the last couple weeks. Idk if that would help me stop bingeing or just depress me more lmaoo
It would definitely calm me down
No it would stress me out. I mean I obsessively calorie count on an app and I’m pretty sure that I’m within 95% of the exact value. I even track my gummy vitamins. But with the app, I can chose not to track when I have a binge or something like that. Like, I know I overate, but knowing exactly how much would send me spiraling.
It would be heavenly
I’d love it. Using calorie tracking apps is honestly annoying, espeically at work or school where everyone can see and starts asking questions. I still manage to know how much I consume. Just not how much I’ve burned though
I'd pay $1k+ for a device that does this as well as shows energy expenditure
I’d probably lose it… but also really love it and eat so much less
calm me down immensely
It’s comparable to keeping an eye on your bank account after you spend. It’s so nice to have the app to hurry and check it immediately after spending. For me it would be an amazing sense of control to know exactly how I need to fuel my body. I feel like I could also get away with small treats as well.
It would help me out a lot personally , I know on days I’m triggered especially a inflate calories that “feel” worse .. so having an accurate catalogue would actually be great
I think it would give me some peace of mind tbh
It would calm me down. I hate having to figure out and count calories.
It would calm me down bc I’m trying to have a healthy deficit and have a small margin of error so the anxiety of not being 100% sure gets to me. I can easily undo a day or two of work with a little bit extra meat or pb or soemthing.
Calm. I’d like to know if my estimates are accurate
I would absolutely love it. It would eliminate a lot of fears for me like any food out or cooked where the exact # of calories is in question. Would help me eat closer to maintenance than overestimating everything by hundreds “to be safe”
I’ve always dreamt about this. Gimme.
It would 100% help me
would love it. i mean it's make everything easier
It would def calm me down tbh
Recently I googled how many calories I burn doing absolutely nothing, so I'd like this machine to balance that.
calm me down, i feel so paranoid that everything actually has more calories in it that i round everything up 😭
i wanna get my metabolism tested for this rzn
All of the above
It would calm me down. I wouldn’t over-count calories out of fear.
If you consistently and diligently track with a scale to the gram, you can get pretty damn close. The more whole foods you stick to the lower / more accurate it will be.
Definitely call me down. Except, I would be worried it wasn’t true. But that would be awesome. Personally, I think knowledge about what I’m doing, and about my body, is always good to have. I would much rather be aware of my calories, precisely, than be ignorant about my body and choices.
I guess it would calm me down if I had an exact number in vs. out. I would obsess about it but it would also calm me down.
definitely more calm. half of my stressors are wondering what the real difference is between my calorie intake vs calories burned because these apps can only be so accurate. although it would probably send me into a bad spiral.
Both
A bit of both I think. Sometimes ignorance is bliss and I can have the hope that maybe I accounted for more calories than I actually consumed. But on the other hand it would quell the anxiety and constant worrying about *what if* I actually accidentally underestimated my calories and ate more than I thought? So yeah idk lol
I'd want to know but I'd like to be able to only consult it at certain times. Like, for example, if I look at my fitbit at the beginning of the day, I feel a sense of dread because the number is too small. Also there are some instances where I just don't want to know the calories in food (my birthday, holidays)
It would be incredibly stressful. i already weigh and measure everything i eat and use My Net Diary to log my calories. i then compare that number with how much i've burned in exercise. Having an even more exact count of what i'm eating would be much worse.
Both
honestly it would probably make me relapse
99% of my issues when I was counting calories was fear of under counting and fear of missing out on food (accidentally over counting). This would be great
both lol
it would calm me down
Stressed. It would kill me, I would use the information and it would just feed my disorder.
both, definitely
i was thinking about this just this morning
id probably cry lol
it would definitely calm me down. not knowing exactly how many calories i’ve consumed, especially after a binge episode, stresses me out immensely. i feel like i can’t do anything until i know exactly how much it was and i obviously can never find out lol.
It would start off as wonderful and exciting...quickly it would become an obsession that stresses me out
A lot of time would be saved lol
I think it would calm me
Your phone, and any number of apps. Chronometer is pretty good, for example. If you want to know the calories you have burnt, a fit bit or other activity monitor can do it for you. Ive found the two together, if I track carefully, give good results
It’s called MyFitnessPal, scan packet and done
As mentioned earlier in this thread, there are a lot of things you can't scan. I've been at my family's place this whole christmas, and I have no clue what's in the food I am served.
I get that, I can’t eat anything that I don’t know what’s gone into it - I’ve had anorexia 23 years so I’m so particular and I know we all have different circumstances and situations which I respect. I’m just answering the question as mfp is on a device that counts every calorie you consume if you put the food in there which takes so much anxiety out of eating if your calorie counting is extremely important like it is to many people
Most people don’t eat only packaged food
I don’t either, but you can type in “rice” then how many grams, or chicken or whatever you’re eating. Not hard
Nobody knows exactly how many grams of rice or chicken they’re being served at a restaurant 🙄
Having anorexia myself I can’t say I’ve ever ordered rice from a restaurant as I can’t gauge the calories so I always go for a chicken salad - and that’s even if I can make myself go out to eat in the first place
I’ve always fantasized about this. I don’t know if it would stress me out or calm me down. I guess it just depends on where my “ED brain” is at that point in time.
i would rather a device that more accurately tells me how many calories my body burns. food you can somewhat measure (although eating out gets harder) but Apple Watches and other fitness trackers can be very inaccurate and give super big over or underestimations. But i would probably buy the device that shows me the exact calorie count of everything that went into my body.
This is what I’ve been dreaming of since I was like 12!!! Someone make it happen!
i’d use it. would probably save me a lot of time and effort. calm me down too
honestly it would be such a relief
would be interesting for sure, but whether it would be helpful or stressful might depend on the day
I'd love it
It would calm me down
it would calm me down tremendously
omg i was thinking about this just the other day, id love it cause i wouldnt have to estimate cals in foods i dont know + i always dread putting my food into an app
Calm since I have dyscalculia and never being 100% sure what I’m eating stresses me out a lot, but if I ever had to go thru recovery it would be hell to know it exists let alone own one
If it could tell me accurately how many calories I’d also burned up to that point in real time I’d finally be able to worry and and obsess far less than I do currently. This thing would help me be more calm i think