Anybody else who track their calories using sites like Myfitnesspal feel like they vastly overestimate the calories from a steak as consumed?

I trim every ounce of fat off of any steak I eat (huge part of the discrepancy, I get that), but even when I use "fully trimmed" listing, my body never "feels" the calories from steak that I tracked at the end of the day. I'm usually eating choice sirloins cooked over a fire pit with no added calories when I eat "steak" fwiw.

It's normally not a problem when I'm just "eating healthy", where it's pretty easy to lose a lb/week just on "clean"ish foods and not track. The problem lies when I try to take a calorie deficit to an aggressive number, which for me is like 1800-2000 calories. I'm hungry AF when I eat steak for too much of protein and go by my tracked #'s.

I know "real world" I can just eat more and throw a pair of middle fingers to the calorie counts, just wondering if anyone else notices this about steak or other foods when they track.

Are you weighing your steak and entering the grams of the meat? Or just "medium steak"? I feel it's pretty accurate if putting in weight based entries.

always precooked weight

I can't say I've noticed this with steak

When you say your body "can't feel the calories"...does that mean you don't feel as full when you eat steak as part of a calorie deficit? Or something else?

Yes, not feeling full due to the calories "feeling" much lower than they track.

Just spitballing, so feel free to tell me to pound sand….but on your steak days, the severe calorie deficit may not be working for you because you're feeling less full on those days

Your energy intake really matters more on a week-to-week basis, rather than day-to-day fluctuations. It might help to just keep the focus on overall food intake over the week- so some days may have greater deficits than others. If you've got those "clean-ish" eating days structured well, then it makes sense that those are your "severe deficit" days. And then you can have a couple "steak" days a week that aren't as severe a deficit. You could, of course, do steak every day- in which case then restructuring your eating overall may make sense

If the scale is going down, even at a slower rate than you'd like, then it's still working

And one last thing- diet breaks can be pretty helpful, even if for a week or two.

This might sound dumb, but would that much amount of steak normally make you feel full if you weren't in a deficit?

I have noticed that if I'm trying to cut/bulk affects how I feel about the same amount of calories. For example, if I'm cutting, and my target is 2200 calories, I struggle to feel full even if I go over that slightly. But if I'm bulking, and my target is 2500 calories, I feel stuffed at 2200 and sometimes struggle to get up to 2500.

Not sure if it's mental (although research shows it can be), of if it's the body's natural signaling saying "hey dude, you've been eating a surplus/deficit every day, we're getting tired of this."

May look at the Healthi app. I used MFP for many years and switched to the Healthi app because it allows to set up specific suggested macros based on meal plan intent (like low carb, better balanced, paleo, etc) or personalized macros you set up. It'll give you a number of bites based on that intent of the plan you picked and as you enter things the bites left a decrease. Has helped me not be consumed with individual contents but the overall day. Calories do show up if you want them to, but as prioritized less over macros.

For example, an apple in my plan (balance) goes against my macros but doesn't take from the bites allowed. Whereas if I had a low carb plan selection, it would.

Not sure it helps. But if you are tracking I thought I'd mention.

Not really. "normally" when I'm not tracking I probably eat 6 oz. or so more and continue to lose. (I'm eating about 12 oz at a time for a "meal" fwiw. Usually with green vegetables or like a small sweet potato.

The difference in not feeling full from the steak is when I compare it to how the same calories of say chicken thighs/breasts or non-fat, non-nutritive sweetened greek yogurt (I use the plain vanilla Oikos triple 0 fwiw) fill me up for the same calories that the steak may track.

In fact, the same calories of yogurt would damn near make me miserably full (even at a pretty extreme cut) vs what steak tracks as.

The way I use MFP I just totally ignore the goals they set. I check my nutrition towards the end of a day/week. Shoot for at least 200g protein, 30g of fiber, at least 15% of my calories from fat. Don't really care about the macros past that (even though I do make sure I eat enough carbs not to be in ketosis).

bigtruckguy3500 said:

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This might sound dumb, but would that much amount of steak normally make you feel full if you weren't in a deficit?

I have noticed that if I'm trying to cut/bulk affects how I feel about the same amount of calories. For example, if I'm cutting, and my target is 2200 calories, I struggle to feel full even if I go over that slightly. But if I'm bulking, and my target is 2500 calories, I feel stuffed at 2200 and sometimes struggle to get up to 2500.

Not sure if it's mental (although research shows it can be), of if it's the body's natural signaling saying "hey dude, you've been eating a surplus/deficit every day, we're getting tired of this."

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I feel every bit of this

My fitness pal lets you set % of calorie coming from protein, carbs or fat in the free version.