Graham blog https://tellgraham.com/blog/ Writing from the person building Graham, an AI nutrition coach. en-us © 2026 Troxlabs LLC Tue, 06 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000 build-blog.mjs Should you eat back your exercise calories? https://tellgraham.com/blog/should-you-eat-back-your-exercise-calories/ https://tellgraham.com/blog/should-you-eat-back-your-exercise-calories/ Tue, 06 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000 support@tellgraham.com (Ryan) If your calorie target was built from an activity level, it already counts your exercise. Adding a workout's burn on top counts the same movement twice. You went for a run this morning. Your watch says you burned 450 calories, and your tracker has helpfully added them to your budget, so tonight there's room for dessert that wasn't there yesterday.

It feels fair. You did the work, so you earned the food.

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]]> Raw or cooked — which weight do you log? https://tellgraham.com/blog/raw-or-cooked-which-weight-to-log/ https://tellgraham.com/blog/raw-or-cooked-which-weight-to-log/ Mon, 28 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000 support@tellgraham.com (Ryan) Cooked chicken carries nearly half again as much per ounce as raw. Log a cooked portion against a raw entry and every serving comes out about a third short. You did the careful version. You put the chicken on the scale, got six ounces, searched the database, picked the first entry that said chicken thigh, and logged it. That's more effort than most people put into a lunch.

Whether the number you got is right depends on one word in the entry name that you probably didn't read: raw.

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]]> Why the scale went up overnight when you did everything right https://tellgraham.com/blog/why-the-scale-went-up-overnight/ https://tellgraham.com/blog/why-the-scale-went-up-overnight/ Mon, 21 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000 support@tellgraham.com (Ryan) A single weigh-in carries a pound or two of noise, so a jump overnight is usually the measurement moving rather than you. Here's what a week of them resolves. You were careful yesterday. You logged everything, you came in under your target, you went to bed quietly pleased with yourself. This morning the scale reads two pounds heavier than it did the day before.

The conclusion most people reach standing there is that something they did was wrong, or that their body is uniquely broken, or — most often, and most expensively — that none of this works and there's no point keeping it up.

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]]> Tracking when you're eating with other people https://tellgraham.com/blog/tracking-when-youre-eating-with-other-people/ https://tellgraham.com/blog/tracking-when-youre-eating-with-other-people/ Sun, 13 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000 support@tellgraham.com (Ryan) The cost of logging a meal in company isn't the thirty seconds. It's what the phone does to the table — and the table is not where tracking has to happen. Someone has cooked for you. You're four bites in, the food is good, and there's a small calculation running in the back of your head about when you're going to get your phone out.

You already know how this goes. Either you do it now and someone says something, or you tell yourself you'll remember and you won't, or you put the phone away for good and the meal just doesn't exist as far as your record is concerned.

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]]> What to do with a day you didn't log https://tellgraham.com/blog/what-to-do-with-a-day-you-didnt-log/ https://tellgraham.com/blog/what-to-do-with-a-day-you-didnt-log/ Mon, 07 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000 support@tellgraham.com (Ryan) You missed a day. The instinct is to rebuild it from memory or write off the week, and both of those cost more than the empty day ever would. It's Wednesday morning and Tuesday is empty. Maybe you were travelling, maybe you were ill, maybe the day just got away from you and you noticed at ten at night, when opening the app felt worse than not bothering.

Either way there's a gap in the record now, and before you've finished your coffee you're making a decision about it.

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]]> Why your calories and your macros don't add up https://tellgraham.com/blog/why-your-calories-and-macros-dont-add-up/ https://tellgraham.com/blog/why-your-calories-and-macros-dont-add-up/ Mon, 31 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000 support@tellgraham.com (Ryan) Multiply your macros by 4, 4 and 9 and you rarely get the calorie count on the label. Most of the time the label is right and the arithmetic is wrong. At some point you do the multiplication yourself. Fat times 9, carbs times 4, protein times 4, and the number you get isn't the number printed on the box. It's close, but it's out by thirty calories, or by two hundred calories, and there's no note anywhere explaining which figure you're supposed to believe.

The natural conclusion is that somebody made a mistake. Usually nobody did.

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]]> What to do when you don't know how big the portion was https://tellgraham.com/blog/what-to-do-when-you-dont-know-the-portion/ https://tellgraham.com/blog/what-to-do-when-you-dont-know-the-portion/ Tue, 25 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000 support@tellgraham.com (Ryan) Every guide says weigh your food. None of them say what to do when someone else cooked and nothing was measured, which is where most logs actually die. You're at someone else's table. They've made a casserole, you're on your second helping, and nobody weighed anything. Or it's a work lunch, or a burger you made without measuring the patty, or a handful of something out of a shared bowl.

Nearly every piece of tracking advice has the same answer for this, which is to weigh it. That advice is correct and it is useless here, because the food is already eaten and the scale was never in the room.

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]]> Why your calorie tracker made you quit https://tellgraham.com/blog/why-your-calorie-tracker-made-you-quit/ https://tellgraham.com/blog/why-your-calorie-tracker-made-you-quit/ Wed, 19 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000 support@tellgraham.com (Ryan) You didn't quit calorie tracking because the math was hard. You quit because logging an ordinary dinner turned into search boxes, guesswork and portion dropdowns. There's no dramatic moment when you quit tracking. You log breakfast, you mean to come back at lunch, and then you don't. A day turns into a week, and a few months later you delete the app while clearing out storage, which is how most of these end.

If you've done that, you probably filed it under willpower. I'd push back on that. The tracking part is easy — eat food, write down food. What broke was the gap between deciding to log dinner and having dinner logged.

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