I count everything as raw. If I short change myself on calories here or there, I have enough money (fat) in the bank to make up the difference.

Yea... when it comes to meat that is high in fat if you weigh it raw and cook it and a lot of fat drips out, but count the calories in a raw state, you are overestimating. 5 ounces raw hamburger meat is going actually be less calories once it's cooked and on your plate (where it is now a, say, 3 ounce fried patty that's lost a lot of fat and water from cooking)

Conversely, if you weigh food cooked and then look up the calories for raw you are going to be under estimating. 3 ounces fried hamburger is NOT the same as 3 ounces raw ground beef.

My calories were way underestimated early on (which is why it seemed like I was on a "starvation diet" in reality I was just really bad at counting). I did stuff like that all the time... weigh an 8 ounce strip steak, look up the calories for 8 oz raw lean roast beef, LOL. I would have 2 extra large eggs fried in lots of butter (at least 300 calories), and I would look up the calories for 2 raw large eggs (140ish).

In the begining I didn't eat that much anyway thanks to ketosis, certainly ont enough to maintain my terrific weight. Still it really wasn't nearly as low as I THOUGHT I was eating. I mainly just tried to eat not that much and only when I was really hungry... it resulted in a real limited appetite.
So even though I was quite bad at calorie counting it really didn't make a difference, anyway, since I was so strict my appetite was totally gone and actually counting wasn't necessary. In fact early on I worried about not eating enough which was the main reason I counted. Honestly most of the problems I had early on weren't related to starvation as much as they were unbalanced diet. I lived off meat and cheese, and anything with "carbs" was more or less avoided. I certainly wouldn't go out of my way to eat food with carbs (even if it was something wonderfully healthy like avocado or salad). It was really the composition of my diet which messed up my minerals and electrolytes and caused the palipations and weakness and lethargy I had. .

Anyway, calorie counting is a skill, and like any skill it takes practice and education to get better at it. If you haven't had much practice at it odds are you're counts are going to be far off.


When it comes to stuff like bacon the way I do it is to cook it, once it's done blot it dry to get off as much fat as possible, and go by what the calories on the back of the carton say for a cooked portion.

If it's an unprocessed/unpackaged meat then I record the type (beef, lamb, chicken, etc), cut, grade (not always possible, if not then I just say "all grades" in fitday) and approximate the leanness (say 1/4" fat layer, 1/8, etc). I weigh it cooked, and look up the appropriate cooking method. I weigh in ounces, not grams, but I always try to "round up" instead of down (better to be too high than too low I figure). I figure that's reasonably accurate enough.

When it comes to stuff with fat added then I measure out the fat before cooking, and measure out the veggies (or whatever is to be added to the fat) raw. I then count whatever the total calories are and divide it by the number of portions. This may yeild a slight overestimation (since some fat is usually retained in the pot) but again it's better to err too high than too low.

Okay, thanks for clarifying, ItsTheWooo.

I was so curious about this issue I started a poll in the General LC subforum.

I do things pretty much the same way as you, except I've been good at counting calories all along. Nutrition has been an interest of mine for a long time.

BTW, why do you choose to weigh in ounces and round up? I'm a gram girl, myself.