The Healthy Programmer

Goal 6

Count your calories for one day

You can start by writing down calorie numbers next to each item on the list you created earlier. But there’s a good chance you’ll get it wrong. Studies have shown that most people are very inaccurate when counting calories. They don’t include snacks, they feel ashamed, and ultimately they underestimate.

In one case, two neuroscientists at Kennesaw State University in Georgia had people photograph their food before they recorded it in a diary.^[59] They found that the majority of participants had substantially underestimated their food intake—sometimes by an entire meal. Other studies have found that subjects underestimated their consumption by an average of thirteen percent.^[60]

These findings can probably ...