Buzz
Monitoring your daily food intake is similar to managing a budget: you have a set number of calories or nutrients to allocate each day. Effective planning is crucial, as it can be stressful to worry about overeating at breakfast or feeling hungry by dinner.
Here’s a simple yet effective strategy, regardless of your dietary goals—whether you aim to eat more or fear ending up with an oversized dinner portion: Begin by logging your dinner.
Rather than viewing your tracking app’s daily log as morning to night, think of it as a 24-hour cycle from afternoon to afternoon. This approach was introduced by Reddit user u/woodsea. For example, if you start tracking on a Monday:
Skip logging breakfast and lunch. Instead, record your dinner under Monday’s entry.
The next morning, log your breakfast under Monday’s entry as well.
When dinner arrives, start a new entry for Tuesday, which you’ll complete the following day, Wednesday.
Lunch then becomes the simplest meal to plan: you’re aware of the exact calories or macros you can consume. Even if you slip up and end up with a lighter meal than intended, hunger won’t last long—you’ll transition to the next day’s log in just a few hours.
