No matter which diet expert you chat with or which nutrition blog you read, you can’t escape those two dreaded words: calorie counting.

Who wouldn’t be turned off by the idea of sitting down and writing every little thing that you ate along with the calories and macronutrients. No one has time for that. Lucky for you, there’s an app for that. Let technology do the work for you with one of several incredible caloric tracking tools like MyFitnessPal.

Armed with your new app, it’s going to be important to make meal logging a habit. Let’s review 5 quick tips for helping you get better at typing in those meals.

Importance of Counting Calories

Yes, we know that it’s not the most glamourous or the sexiest part of striving after your goal weight. However, it is absolutely one of the most important steps. Why?

If you are striving to burn body fat, you need to be expending more calories than you’re consuming. For example, if you are eating a standard diet of 2,000 calories, then you need to be consistently burning around 2,100 calories to start moving toward successful fat loss.

Want fat burning success with your food logger? Try these action steps:

5. Keep Your Phone Near You When Eating

This shouldn’t be too hard, right? It’s already attached to your hip. The important thing is that when your phone is near you, the app is also open to help you remember to log your next meal.

4. Log While Eating

Since you’ll be on your phone anyway, this is the perfect time to log your food. As mentioned above, while you’re cooking or preparing your meal, keep the phone near you and the app open. Once you sit down with your plate, immediately start punching in the meal you have in front of you.

3. Set Reminders

All of the caloric counting apps that you’ll find on your phone come with daily reminders that you can set so take advantage of them. Set a few throughout the day around the time you normally eat.

2. Pre-set Your Most Common Meals

One of the greatest things about food logging apps is that they allow you to save your most common items and meals. This will drastically reduce the amount of time you spend logging food.

1. Go Easy on Yourself

Yes, life is going to happen and you may miss a few meal logging opportunities. It’s okay, don’t beat yourself up over it. This is a long-term process so the important thing here is consistency, not perfection.

Tell Us What You Think!

Do you use a food logging app?

What benefits have you noticed since you started using it?