When food logging does not match estimated (thus perceived) deficity, it is essentially impossible for anyone to accurately record foods even if they weigh all foods and use label counts because:

• Labels are rarely accurate (up to 300% off)
• Same food calorie counts often vary between sources
• It is impossible to accurately estimate restaurant meals
• Incomplete recall (missing items including sauces, dressings, etc.)
• Generally people underreport 20-40%
• You cannot account for LBM gains as the program can (only a measurement in body mass can determine this) and therefore part of a human calculated deficit may have been deposited in LBM, lowering the perceived deficit (i.e. client records a 500 avg. calorie deficit but gained one pound of muscle; therefore the deficit was 200).

Your scenario in not uncommon, which is why we have two different calories-consumed modes: "Based on Food Logged" (your estimates of what you ate) and "Based on Measurement Changes" (true calories consumed). The latter is the accurate count because it's based on body mass changes validated by measurements.

The "Based on Measurement Changes" view is based on your mass change and thus over time can never be wrong. In other words, the mass change determines the true deficit, where recording is subject to many potential flaws (see above). By you recording food intake and having your mass changes correct you, the bodybugg  is serving as a tutor in order to improve your ability to eventually "automatically" recognize how much food allows you to reach and maintain your goal.

For example, your target deficit is 500 calories to lose one pound per week of body fat. Your bodybugg  captures your true calories burned at an average of 2000 calories (c) for the week and you recorded that you consumed an average of 1500c for the same week. Therefore if your recording was accurate, you would have lost one pound of fat (this is a fact of life based on the laws of thermodynamics). But let's say that your weight did not change and there are no other compounding factors such as water retention at this weekly weigh-in. The true unchanged body mass means that you actually consumed what you burned (2000c per day on average for the week). Your reporting was off by about 25%. Therefore we tell you to add about 25% to most items that do not have an exact published calorie count (printed on the package) such as home and restaurant cooked meals. Keep in mind that an individual weekly measurement may be skewed by an unusual circumstance, but by the second or third week you will always have the truth.

To estimating calories when counts are not available:

• Average breakfast or lunch from restaurant is between 400 and 600 calories; the average dinner (salad, entrée, 1-2 glasses of wine, no dessert) is between 700 and 900 calories.
• If you completely "pig out" at a meal and your weight is less than 140 pounds, enter 1000 calories for the meal; if your weight is greater than 140 pounds, enter at least 1000 calories depending on how far you went (2000 is entirely possible for one meal).

And just one final reminder, the bodybugg  program will correct you based on body mass changes. Because of this, you will eventually be able to identify calories with easy. This program automatically educates you so that calorie control becomes intuitive or permanently "wired"-and that's the goal!