Keeping a food diary

[Judy K.]

I'm not sure where to post this question so I'll start here . . .

I want to start a food log to get a handle on my diet (pounds beginning to creep on :( . I am looking for an easy way to do this. I use MasterCook software and was thinking of using that, with each day being a new recipe and each item of food being an ingredient. I would do this because it would make it easier, I thought, to calculate the calories and other nutritional information about the food. I just tried a sample and the calories were way off (I hope!).

I am looking for ideas of how to do this, hopefully without too much effort. Do any of you have a spreadsheet or some other way of tallying your food intake that is efficient?

Thanks.

[Terri_A]

Judy -

This may not be what you want to hear, but I do it the old-fashioned way. I keep a small soft-bound journal in my handbag along with a nutritional info book. I use about a page per day and write down everything I eat. I've just started doing this about 5 days ago.

I think there are people on the forum who use some different online trackers and I'm sure they'll chime in with their ideas.

Good luck!

[Megan James]

Julie
What has worked best for me is using my palm pilot and a program called Calorie King. They have almost all foods in there and you can enter recipes that you make.


Megan

[memartha]

I've used www.fitday.com and that works pretty well. They have lots of foods and you can also enter custom foods (type in the info. from labels or recipes).

You can also keep track of your activity (walking, jogging, whatever), and it gives you a graph of calories in vs. calories out.

Good luck!

[krhm]

www.sparkpeople.com is another site, much like Fitday. I liked Sparkpeople because it could also track what nutrients I was eating, carbs versus protein ratios, etc. I don't remember if Fitday could do that? One issue I had with both sites is that they don't (or didn't, when I used them) a lot of information on "exotic" foods. Lots of processed stuff, but not always the type of stuff I was eating.

I will also say that I limited calories for a month using Sparkpeople and lost 2 pounds. I've been on Weight Watchers for 3 weeks now and have lost 7.5. Maybe my body just wasn't ready to lose weight before, or maybe Sparkpeople wasn't always accurate. I weighed and measured portions both times. I do wish I had a better sense of how well I eat with WW, though, which I miss from Sparkpeople.

[JenniferJJ]

I belong to Weight Watchers and every week when you weigh-in you get a fresh tracker for the week. I don't have to actually keep track of carbs and fat - I keep track of points. If you do the "flex" program, you get a certain number of points a week. My perspective is that items with higher carbs and fat get more points. When I am working out a lot, I do keep track of carbs and record in this tracker: I think some weeks I have done Atkins by accident and I want to make sure I have enough for working out. Each day also have a space for you to check off your daily required water, dairy and fruits/veggies.

If I wasn't doing WW, I think the best idea would be Terri's suggestion of a small notebook.

[abbot]

Unfortunately nothing helped in my case, and for this I have no one else to blame but myslef only. Being overweight I have tried a variety of methods so that I can keep a watch on the daily food intake but unfortunately my craving for sweetmeats always seem to get the better of me. There have been days where I have experienced abrupt mood swings just because I was deprived having those chocolates at my disposal. So rather than keeping a food diary I would like to ask from the other posters here if they are aware of a way to diminish my sweet cravings.

[lbd]

For about 5 weeks last summer, I kept a spiral-bound notebook in which I listed every single thing I ate with each item's calorie and fat count. In the back of the notebook, I had a page of the data for common foods/ingredients that I could use to calculate. I basically had a total calorie and fat gram allowance for each day (1800 cal, I forget the fat) and once I reached it didn't eat any more. Period. Lost 10 pounds in 5 weeks. Would have kept going but got a positive PG test. Was very low-tech but worked for me. I got lots of my data from nutritiondata.com.

[Judy K.]

Since posting this message, I've looked on the internet for free forms. I found a food log (http://bloombikeshop.com/articles/healthfitness/foodandtraininglogs.htm) on this website that is similar to what I was looking for. It is an Excel spreadsheet with the formulas included. I have modified it to add columns for fat, carbs and protein.

I just looked at nutritiondata.com. That looks like a really useful resource. I only want to drop 5-8 pounds. I think that I will be able to do that just be increasing my exercise and watching what I eat, similar to lbd's experience.