Tracking mistakes

The biggest problem people have when losing weight is that they are tracking incorrectly. They very often they think they are eating much fewer calories than they are actually eating. It's very common and very easy to mistrack your food.

Estimating food

Many people try to estimate food by looking at it, this is widely, widely inaccurate unless you have thousands of meals logged. Always track your food.

Measuring in cups

Measuring in cups is pretty popular in the US, but it's not very accurate when tracking solids. Always measure it in grams or oz.

Not tracking everything

Often certain foods are not tracked because people don't think they do. Everything that goes into your mouth, unless it's calorie free, should be tracked. Generally speaking, almost nothing is calorie free except water.

Oils

Oils are particularly problematic because since they are not a "food" part of dish, many people don't think about tracking it. And to make things worse, they are incredibly calorie free. Always track any oil that you use. This applies to both oil used for cooking, for example before you put food in your pan, and also using oil in things like salads. Everything counts.

Sauces

They have the same problem as oils, often caloric dense and often not tracked. Popular ones are dressings, BBQ sauce, mayo, and so forth. Any condiment that you use needs to be tracked.

Low-calorie foods

Some people don't track low-calorie foods, sometimes called calorie-free foods. Popular ones include calorie-free jello, pickles, and diet soda.

Yes, some are such low calories that they do deserve a calorie-free label, for instance, most diet sodas are less than 5 calories for an entire can. However, some are not as low as you may think. Especially since when people know that they are caloric free, they tend to eat a lot of it, and it adds up. If a specific food has 15 calories per serving, that's pretty low, but if you're having two servings a day twice per day, at the end of the week, that's 420 accounted extra calories.

When starting out, I recommend tracking absolutely everything that you eat or drink. After doing so for a while, you will know (rather than guess) what foods truly deserve a calorie-free label or not.

Forgetting to track

Sometimes people don't know how to track correctly, but sometimes people just forget. I've been tracking my food daily for almost 10 years and from time to time I still forget to log either a snack or some part of a meal. And of course, this tends to happen much more when I'm on a caloric deficit compared to maintenance or a caloric surplus (very coincidence, right?).

The best way to prevent this is not to rely on the promise that you will track later. Eventually, there will be times when it just slips out of your mind. If you're eating a banana as your afternoon snack, track it before you eat it, not after. Same with the main meals. It's a very good habit that will prevent a lot of unaccounted calories in the long run.

Raw vs cooked

Many people don't think too much if they are weighing their food raw or cooked. In a few cases it doesn't matter, but in many, it does. Sometimes the food soaks up water, affecting the weight/calorie ratio. For example, pasta gains 2.5x its weight after cooking, and rice 3x its weight.

Although most often, the water loses water through cooking, making it denser. The foods don't change in terms of caloric content, but their weight does. For example, generally speaking, when cooking meat, it loses around 25% of its weight in water. So a 100g chicken breast is now 75g.

Should you weigh food raw or cooked? It doesn't matter, as long as you track it with the respective nutritional information. In any food app, it will have separate entries for both raw and cooked, which accounts for the weight difference. If you don't see an option for the raw version, look for the cooked version and vice-versa. Sometimes one is considered the default and doesn't have the raw or cooked label, but its opposite does.

Net carbs vs total carbs

Carbs can be tracked as net carbs or total carbs, the former takes into account fiber, which is poorly digested and, therefore, we don't absorb most of its calories. Some people track net carbs to account for this, meaning that the fiber content is reduced from the carbohydrate content.

Generally speaking, it doesn't matter too much if you count net carbs or total carbs, as long as you do it consistently. Pick one and always track with the same method. Calorie wise, I always recommend tracking the calories stated in the nutritional label.

Supplements

Some supplements do have calories, and so they need to be tracked! The most caloric ones are things like protein powder and fish oil, but many others have calories as well: always double-check! This includes "green supplements", multivitamins, pre-workouts, etc.