General Discussion Triathlon Talk » Why is logging food so Hard? Rss Feed  
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2010-12-30 9:55 AM

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Subject: Why is logging food so Hard?
Hi all,I just started back training full time for the new season and had two good weeks of training and I feel thing are starting to come back together. I still do not have the same fitness level as I did in Aug, but I see some small improvements. I started to log my workouts again, so I think that will help me stay accountable for them. I just need to find an EASY way to log my food, so I can keep accountable for that as well. Writhing everything out by hand just takes too long. I wish I could set up a bar code on food so that I could scan it and it would log all of the calories and fats etc.. for me automatically. Then when I hit my limit it would beep and shut off. Now I just need to find a way for restaurants to have bar codes on there menus. So you can scan them when you order.Has any one heard of something like this that already exist? PS Sorry about the lack of pargraphs. for some reason my work computer will not post threads correctly.


2010-12-30 10:33 AM
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Subject: RE: Why is logging food so Hard?
2010-12-30 10:46 AM
in reply to: #3267918

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Subject: RE: Why is logging food so Hard?
www.sparkpeople.com

They have a food tracker, a meal planner, will work out your calories, fat, carbs etc AND they have an app for Iphone.

Have been using it for a while now. Easy peasy.
2010-12-30 11:04 AM
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Subject: RE: Why is logging food so Hard?
fitday.com

Takes a little bit to get "custom" foods entered but once you do you're set.
2010-12-30 12:58 PM
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Subject: RE: Why is logging food so Hard?
Thanks for the quick responce. I will look at all of your suggestions and see which one works best for me.
2010-12-30 1:16 PM
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Subject: RE: Why is logging food so Hard?

Am I the only one that logs their food on BT?  I actually really like it.  There's no cool ap, but I don't have a cool phone, so whatever.  I like that your most common foods are saved, so they're easy to pick from the drop downs.  I figure I log my workouts on here, might as well keep it all together. 



2011-01-05 2:28 AM
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Subject: RE: Why is logging food so Hard?
www.livestrong.com is another option.  I find the nutrition logger on BT to be clunky so I prefer Livestrong.  It's got an iPhone app as well.  I used to use Sparkpeople but for some reason I prefer Livestrong.  
2011-01-05 12:12 PM
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Subject: RE: Why is logging food so Hard?
I've started using BT's nutrition tracker and now that I've worked through the "how to" stage which isn't long, I'm finding it to be very useful. The difficult thing is finding the nutrition label that most closely matches what I actually ate. Not all labels have accurate or same information as the label I may have in hand. Slick program
2011-01-05 12:35 PM
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Subject: RE: Why is logging food so Hard?

I'll second the spark people, it's a lot like the BT one, but just a little bit easier to use, plus the android app keeps me accountable when i'm not eating in the vicinity of my computer.  They have a recipe calculator that lets you put in all kinds of things, divide by number of servings and save them in your recipe box.

I'd also say that for me it's been planning my meals out at the beginning of the week that's made the biggest difference.  Knowing that I have a handful of snacks, breakfasts, lunches, and dinners at the right cal levels means I can just pick a breakfast, lunch, dinner and two snacks and meet my nutrition needs for the day.  It also means that if I put the meals into the recipe calculator at the beginning of the week I can simply check off the boxes for them in my food log.

Hope that helps!

2011-01-05 2:08 PM
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Subject: RE: Why is logging food so Hard?
lots of good suggestions.  Just throwing mine in, since I love it an no one's mentioned it yet.

LoseIt on the iPod (or IPhone if you have that).  I found it to be really accurate when I need to look up foods/exercises that I don't have data for (no HRM right now) - and it tells me how much I have left to eat, and I can customize how it breaks down my food (I show fat/carbs/protein).
2011-01-15 8:19 PM
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Subject: RE: Why is logging food so Hard?
COSkiGirl - 2011-01-05 3:28 AM www.livestrong.com is another option.  I find the nutrition logger on BT to be clunky so I prefer Livestrong.  It's got an iPhone app as well.  I used to use Sparkpeople but for some reason I prefer Livestrong.  


I really like Livestrong as well.  Been tracking there for about a year now.  Very easy and huge DB of food to use.


2011-01-15 9:12 PM
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Subject: RE: Why is logging food so Hard?
love livestrong's daily plate.  I have learned so much about my eating habits since using it!  Check it out. 
2011-01-15 10:03 PM
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Subject: RE: Why is logging food so Hard?
www.nutridiary.com is good along with www.dailyburn.com.

I've looked at both and they work fine.  

The real problem is that I just haven't taken the time to sit down and do the data entry.
2011-01-16 12:53 PM
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Subject: RE: Why is logging food so Hard?
I cant recommend "my fitness pal" enough but i havent tried the others
2011-01-16 1:51 PM
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Subject: RE: Why is logging food so Hard?
chmoore2 - 2011-01-15 8:19 PM
COSkiGirl - 2011-01-05 3:28 AM www.livestrong.com is another option.  I find the nutrition logger on BT to be clunky so I prefer Livestrong.  It's got an iPhone app as well.  I used to use Sparkpeople but for some reason I prefer Livestrong.  


I really like Livestrong as well.  Been tracking there for about a year now.  Very easy and huge DB of food to use.
 I highly recommend livestrong as well.  The database of food is tremendous, and at times ridiculous- the most obscure foods can be found in it.  I love the "facebook" type search feature, with the drop down results.... I can't imagine using any other website for tracking.
2011-01-16 6:41 PM
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Subject: RE: Why is logging food so Hard?
One system that has worked well for me is the weight watchers "points" system.

You can log your food on the web site and they assign a points value for whatever you eat. There's a negative points value for exercise. The points system is not just straight kCal; foods that are high fat or "empty" calories cost you more points, and more whole foods cost you less.

I don't actually subscribe to the web service any more. I have a calculator that helps me check the points value of foods I'm not familiar with. At this point, I pretty much know the points value of anything I'm supposed to be eating. If I don't know the points value, it's probably junk food and I shouldn't be eating it.

The thing I like best about this system is that it makes it easy to balance food and activity. I have a tendency to under-eat on heavy exercise days - when I add up my points sometimes I realize I need to get some more nutrients in me. Conversely on rest days or less exercise days it helps me avoid eating too much for my activity level.


2011-01-20 2:11 PM
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Subject: RE: Why is logging food so Hard?
I've made an effort to log nutrition a few times using BT's tracker and once with fitday. Never did I make it past a week. Now I'm using myfitnesspal.com (MFP) and have been for almost 3 weeks. When I started up this last time, I was actually logging in BT, livestrong, & MFP for the first week. I found BT just a bit clunky and livestrong & MFP about on par with each other. I feel livestrong has a couple more bells & whistles mainly with regards to reporting, but I have an Android phone and only MFP has an app that syncs. I credit the phone app to me keeping up with the logging.
2011-01-20 2:30 PM
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Subject: RE: Why is logging food so Hard?
The phone app has made all the difference for me.  I use Livestrong because they have a BlackBerry App.  $2.99 - a bargain IMO.
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