I suspect most calorie counting methods that are disruptive (require effort and attention) to making the food will have a high failure rate.
I'll briefly describe my workflow, with the caveat that I have not been using it for long.
I have a digital kitchen scale with a "tare" button. Just put the plate on the scale and press "tare". This resets the scale to zero. Then put on some bread: the scale now measures the bread only. Press "tare" again, and spread some butter on the bread: the scale now measures the butter only, etc.
In this way, measuring each ingredient requires very little effort.
MyFitnessPal makes logging easy. I scan the bar codes of the food I buy and the nutrient content is automatically downloaded from the web.
Ingredients that are used before are easily available from a list (your local database), so you don't need to scan bar codes every time you eat. (With vegetables and fruits, the bar code is only available in the store.)
It's also possible to bundle the ingredients into "meals" (a set of ingredients and amounts). So that you can add whole meals to your log with a single click.
Since you can log entries in advance, it's also possible to "budget" future calories, and it's easy to make changes to it.
E.g.: having oatmeal for breakfast. I click the meal "Oatmeal" from the app. The individual ingredients of the meal are automatically logged (80 grams Oatmeal, 300 grams milk, 30 grams strawberry jam).
I put my cereal bowl on my scale. Press tare, and measure out 80 grams Oatmeal. Press tare again, and measure out 30 grams jam. And press tare and measure out 300 grams milk.
If I use something else instead of jam that particular meal, it's easy to change single ingredients. E.g., delete the jam and add nuts.
It's not a perfect method, since it does not work for food bought in a restaurant or from the cafeteria at work, etc.
I tried diligently for quite a few weeks to log calories. I generally avoid pre-packaged foods, so no barcode to scan. I do eat out fairly often, but prefer non-chain places. It's hard to figure out how to break down everything in the Turkey Sandwich. I cook at home often, too. I just found it very difficult and time consuming to log all of the ingredients to a recipe and portion it out (if I made a recipe for my girlfriend and I, and I had 60% and she had 40% there wasn't really a way to convey that). I crave variety and I found that makes this way more difficult.
I feel like I make healthy choices, and those can be harder to log.
I also wasn't very confident about what I found in their database or online. Something like an apple can vary greatly in size and while number vary on the Internet, it was hard to correlate that to get a confident result.
I suspect most calorie counting methods that are disruptive (require effort and attention) to making the food will have a high failure rate.
I'll briefly describe my workflow, with the caveat that I have not been using it for long.
I have a digital kitchen scale with a "tare" button. Just put the plate on the scale and press "tare". This resets the scale to zero. Then put on some bread: the scale now measures the bread only. Press "tare" again, and spread some butter on the bread: the scale now measures the butter only, etc.
In this way, measuring each ingredient requires very little effort.
MyFitnessPal makes logging easy. I scan the bar codes of the food I buy and the nutrient content is automatically downloaded from the web.
Ingredients that are used before are easily available from a list (your local database), so you don't need to scan bar codes every time you eat. (With vegetables and fruits, the bar code is only available in the store.)
It's also possible to bundle the ingredients into "meals" (a set of ingredients and amounts). So that you can add whole meals to your log with a single click.
Since you can log entries in advance, it's also possible to "budget" future calories, and it's easy to make changes to it.
E.g.: having oatmeal for breakfast. I click the meal "Oatmeal" from the app. The individual ingredients of the meal are automatically logged (80 grams Oatmeal, 300 grams milk, 30 grams strawberry jam).
I put my cereal bowl on my scale. Press tare, and measure out 80 grams Oatmeal. Press tare again, and measure out 30 grams jam. And press tare and measure out 300 grams milk.
If I use something else instead of jam that particular meal, it's easy to change single ingredients. E.g., delete the jam and add nuts.
It's not a perfect method, since it does not work for food bought in a restaurant or from the cafeteria at work, etc.
Btw, congrats on sticking it out for so long! :D