It is basically impossible for anyone to accurately record foods even if they weigh all foods and use label counts. Here’s why:
- Labels are rarely accurate (can be up to 300% off)
- Same food calorie counts often vary between sources
- Impossible to accurately guess restaurant meals
- Incomplete recall (missing items including sauces, dressings, etc.)
- Generally people underreport 20-40%
- You cannot account for LBM gains as the program can (only a measurement in body mass can determine this) and therefore part of a human calculated deficit may have been deposited in LBM, lowering the perceived deficit (i.e. client records a 500 avg. calorie deficit but gained a LB of muscle and therefore the deficit was ~ 200)*
- Water – occasionally due to uncontrollable circumstances you may have gained some temporary water weight and therefore at this point in time the scale may not represent your body mass change, thus deficit accurately.
- If you believe you have lost fat or weight and your scale does not confirm it, wait another week until your next weigh-in. Weight gain due to water retention will quickly subside or stabilize and within a 2-week timeframe you will receive a more accurate accounting of your combined food intake, deficit and body weight. Additionally, our body fat or circumference measurements (bi-weekly) will capture the true progress trend and match it to the weekly loss goal.
*LBM – you may have gained LBM since your last weigh in, off-setting a weight reduction from loss of BF – this is a desirable situation but fat loss will soon surpass the LBM increase when weight reduction is the primary goal. Therefore simply use the body fat reading as the current trend indicator.
Bottom line: all program short-term discrepancy issues go away over time – the true trend will emerge generally by the end of the 2nd week but certainly by the 3rd and no more excuses by the end of the 4th (after 2 follow-up BF & WT measurements), meaning the program numbers are correct and you must adjust accordingly.