Tracking what you eat is a lot like budgeting: You have a certain amount of calories or nutrients to “spend” throughout the day. Planning is key, which can be a little nerve-wracking: What if I spent too many calories on breakfast? Will I be hungry at dinner?
So here’s a tiny hack that applies no matter what your goals are (including if you want to eat more of something and are afraid that dinner will have to be a monster portion): Track dinner first.
Instead of counting each day in your tracking app as going from morning to night, consider it a 24-hour period that goes from afternoon to afternoon. Say you start tracking on a Monday:
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Ignore breakfast and lunch. Log your dinner on today’s (Monday’s) entry.
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Wake up the next day, eat breakfast, and log it on yesterday’s (Monday’s) entry.
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At dinner time, start tracking on today’s (Tuesday’s) entry. You’ll fill in the rest of that entry tomorrow, on Wednesday.
Now, lunch becomes the easiest meal to budget: you know how many calories or macros you have available. If you mess up and end up having to eat a smaller meal than you planned, you won’t be hungry for long—you’ll reset to the next day’s entry in a few hours.
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