Does weight loss seem to stall even though, on paper, everything should be perfectly in order? A familiar feeling. From my own journey I remember several weeks when I tracked the calorie counter very carefully, yet the number on the scale wouldn't budge at all. According to the app I was perfectly on target and my daily calorie deficit was exactly what it should be. Still, nothing happened — which was, of course, extremely frustrating and demotivating.
While losing nearly 40 kg over a couple of years, I had to relearn many things the hard way. One of the most important and eye-opening lessons had to do with so-called "hidden calories". It's not rocket science — simply the foods, drinks and little bites that, for one reason or another, we leave unlogged in the app.
At first I too thought that small deviations don't matter for the big picture. In reality, it's exactly these small, unnoticed things that can be the underlying reason the weight stubbornly stays put.
So how do those hidden calories build up in everyday life?
Many of us log our main meals very precisely. We weigh the rice, the chicken, the potatoes and the salads. The problem usually arises around the meals and during cooking. Those are the situations where eating or drinking happens so quickly, in passing, that you don't even think of it as a separate meal.
From my own process I recognise at least these classic pitfalls, where I slipped up myself:
- Cooking oils and fats: I dutifully counted the chicken fillet, but forgot to count the tablespoon of rapeseed or olive oil poured into the pan.
- Coffee milks: A few splashes of oat milk or regular milk in the cups of coffee drunk over the day felt like a completely trivial thing.
- Tastes while cooking: A spoonful of sauce, a piece of cooked pasta from the pot, or the last bits of grated cheese from the bag straight into your mouth.
- Small snacks in passing: A handful of nuts from the bowl on the kitchen table.
In that second, those moments felt so negligible that I couldn't be bothered to dig the phone out of my pocket — because I didn't even notice them. Only when I started double-checking and weighing absolutely everything did I realise how badly wrong I had been.
The numbers speak for themselves: many small streams make a mighty river
When you look at calorie intake purely from a numerical standpoint, you quickly notice how easily those little bites cancel out a hard-earned calorie deficit. Energy-dense foods weigh little but contain a huge amount of energy.
Let's look at a practical example of how the things mentioned above affect the daily energy balance:
| Food / situation | Estimated amount | Calories (kcal) |
|---|---|---|
| Cooking oil in the pan | 1 tbsp (approx. 12 g) | approx. 110 kcal |
| Low-fat milk in three cups of coffee | 150 ml in total | approx. 70 kcal |
| A handful of nuts | approx. 20 g | approx. 120 kcal |
| Cooking tastes (e.g. cheese) | a small handful | approx. 70 kcal |
| Total | approx. 370 kcal |
This example calculation shows in black and white that, completely unnoticed, our daily energy intake can be exceeded by nearly 400 calories. If the goal was a moderate 500-calorie deficit, this unlogged amount eats up almost all of it. Then you're actually eating close to your expenditure, and weight loss hits a wall — even though everything looks perfect on the app's screen.
Our body doesn't work by following the balance on a phone screen. It doesn't know which calories you have logged and which you have left out. Biologically, every bite and every splash is processed as energy, regardless of whether we consciously register it or not.
Why do we fool ourselves? (Completely unintentionally)
It's usually not that we want to consciously deceive ourselves, but purely a human tendency to underestimate our own eating. We humans have a strong tendency to underestimate the amount of energy we eat and, correspondingly, to overestimate our own activity.
There are a few clear reasons for this:
- The burden of calorie counting: Logging every little thing takes effort. When everyday life is busy, the threshold to open the app for a single bite rises high. It's easier to think this one thing doesn't matter than to start weighing it and searching the database.
- Avoiding unpleasant facts: Sometimes we know we're eating something that doesn't fit the day's goals. Leaving it unlogged is a way to protect yourself from the feeling of failure. If it's not in the app, it feels like it didn't happen. This is short-sighted, however, because the scale and your own body react to reality, not to the app's numbers.
- Autopilot on (habitual eating): A large part of our eating happens entirely on routine. We may not even notice grabbing something on offer, because our thoughts are somewhere else entirely — for example while watching television or scrolling the phone.
How to get rid of hidden calories without turning everyday life into a prison?
So how do you get rid of these hidden calories without making life too complicated or obsessive? It's not about starting to monitor every crumb, but about making routines clearer and more workable.
These five practical tricks helped me keep my records up to date and make the whole thing easy:
- Always weigh energy-dense ingredients: Eyeballing almost always fails when a product packs a lot of energy into a small size. Oils, nuts, cheeses and nut butters should always go through the scale. A tablespoon of oil poured by eye is, in reality, often two.
- Create standard products in the app: If you drink the same amount of coffee with the same amount of milk every day, make it a ready-made recipe or a favourite in your app. Then you can log the whole day's coffee milks with a single tap — say, first thing in the morning — without having to think about it separately for each cup.
- Log foods in advance: This is one of the most effective methods! Plan and log the day's main meals in the app the evening before or first thing in the morning. Once the framework is ready, you only need to make small adjustments during the day, and the threshold to stay on plan is considerably lower.
- Make a conscious decision about tastes and leftovers: If you want to taste food while cooking (which is completely allowed and even recommended!), account for it in the final portion size. And if extra food is left at the bottom of the pot or pan, move it straight into a storage box for later or, coolly, into the bin. Decide that your body is not a place where extra food gets disposed of just because you can't bear to throw it away.
- Keep the kitchen scale always in sight: If the scale is at the back of a cupboard under a drawer, it won't get used. Keep it on the counter, in the spot where you cook. When the threshold to put it to use is zero, it becomes a natural part of the process.
Honesty brings peace of mind and predictability
When you shift your thinking about what calorie counting really is, you notice that complete honesty with the app isn't a restriction after all. It's freedom. It removes needless guessing, uncertainty and stress from everyday life.
When the weight stalls but you know you have logged absolutely everything down to the gram, you have reliable data at your disposal. Then you know it's not about eating too much — the background could be, for example, temporary water retention, poorly slept nights or stress. In that case there's no need to panic or guess.
Weighing food and logging even the small things is ultimately just one tool among others. It's entirely comparable to tracking your own finances: if you want to save money, you have to know where even the small euros go. When you take responsibility for every bite, you also take the reins into your own hands in your own project toward your own success.