I’ve recently started keeping a dietary journal, to keep track of caloric, fat, carbohydrate and protein intake. It seems like a great way to monitor my diet and help me lose a couple pounds before next season. I have a question, though, for those of you who do this as well. What do you do if you can’t get nutritional information for a meal? Say you go to the in-laws’ for dinner…what do you enter in the journal then? Can you estimate, maybe with the help of a website or table? Do you leave the calorie etc. fields blank? I haven’t encountered this yet, but I’m sure I will sometime in the near future. Thanks for your help!
I just guesstimate. I have a table of common foods in the front of my book and I go by that and just my own guessing. I have a pretty good understanding of protein, carb and fat content of things anyhow and when it all boils down one day of SLIGHTLY skewed numbers won’t be a big deal.
There is some good software out there to keep track of everything you eat.
Tracking is a great way to keep yourself honest and to account for all the little foods we tend to eat during the day and forget about. I’ve used the Calorie King software and like it a lot. There are a ton of pre-loaded foods in the database and it’s pretty easy to add your own. For meals at the in-laws, etc. the software allows you to get a pretty good approximation of what you ate by finding the food in the database and then estimating your portion size. It’s not perfect, but it really doesn’t need to be. If you don’t want to buy the software (even though it’s pretty inexpensive) you can find out nutritional information for free on their web site.
Aren’t all these food tracking softwares based on standard Western diets? What if I have Chinese food nearly every meal? I’ve tried one or two and eventually gave up. If I’m eating lots of fruit and veggies why should I track it, anyway?
I’ve only used one and it is indeed based on Western diet, but that’s what I eat so it works for me. As for tracking in general, some people (like me) occasionally benefit from it as a way to get back on track, but others don’t see the need. I’ve always been a larger guy who needs to get leaner for triathlon. From what I’ve seen on this forum, a lot of others are lean guys looking to get stronger for tri. The first group benefits from tracking, the second obviously doesn’t need it.