Become a Food-Log-a-holic

As I'm melding together ideas for future informative and comprehensive posts for you fine people, I realized that I can't continue without mentioning livestrong.com. If you are serious about getting healthy/losing weight/training for an event/taking responsibility for your health or nutrition-related illness, this site is your first step. As you read health magazines or books, or listen to your buddies, or talk to trainers at the gym, this is what you can tangibly go home and use. Now. We like instant gratification. You can track everything you eat, in the portions that you eat it, and get an unbiased, detailed report of many important factors. I've been tracking my food on livestrong's TheDailyPlate for a good 2 years now, and while I'm kind of a nut about it, it has been immensely helpful. As a matter of fact, I don't know how I would have done with weight loss without this crazy tool.


First of all, it is easy to use. All you do is search for the food you ate and click 'I Ate This.' They have more foods listed on their site than the ADA has on their online food tracker, so you can be very accurate with your log.

Second of all it is free. FREE. I mean, you can pay for Gold membership but I have done just fine with the free membership - it is a detailed enough account of your day's nutrients to make sure you are hitting the numbers you need to hit.

What numbers? What is she talking about? There are basic nutrional goals that you want to achieve on a daily basis. So again, the instant gratification thing. It's not complicated, you just start to tailor your day to make sure you are doing ok on basic intakes. In later posts I intend to discuss actual behaviors to help with these counts, but for now, here's the what's and how much's...

Macronutrients: Like I said, I have the free version of TheDailyPlate, which does not give you micronutrient - aka vitamin and mineral - breakdowns, but you do get a nice macronutrient - carbs, protein, fat - breakdown, in a lovely pie chart nonetheless! The Daily Plate will show you, based on total calories, the amount of calories you are getting from carbohydrates, proteins, and fats. Remember, you get 4 calories from each gram of carb or protein, and you get 9 calories per gram of fat. The free version doesn't tell you further specifics such as simple vs complex carbs or saturated vs MUFA's, but you get a nice general picture. If you haven't been tracking your food (naughty!), you haven't had any kind of breakdown yet, so start here and rejoice.

Fiber: Fiber is your friend. But, if I say one thing about fiber and never speak of it again, please gradually build up your fiber intake. If you haven't been consuming the recommended 25 grams/day for women and 40 grams/day for men, and you launch into it fully on the 1st day.. hmm.. how do i put this gently?... you are going to poop your brains out. And probably also be gassy. Neither attractive nor painless, but props to you for your zest to reach your fiber goals. Drink a lot of water to help the fiber do its thing and move through your system.

Sodium: 70% of Americans salt their food without tasting it first. Sound familiar?? Quit that. Given our intake amounts of processed foods, plus our general lack of originality in the herbs & spices department, we take in too much sodium. (Keep in mind everything I say is generalized here. There is always a salt-conscious individual exception here and there. Cheers if it is you; if not, keep reading.) To keep from aggravating our blood pressure, swelling our systems, and messing around with our potassium levels, we need to keep our sodium intake below 2300mg/day. Those with HBP should keep it even lower, around 1600mg/day. (Hardworking athletes sometimes require more sodium, because they sweat out so much during workouts.)

Cholesterol: A hot topic these days. Hopefully you know by now that you want to keep your dietary cholesterol below about 300mg/day. There are many who suggest that intake of saturated fat affects your cholesterol numbers more than actually eating cholesterol, but these people still suggest keeping it at or under 300mg. Cholesterol is found only in animal tissue. (Plants have other kinds of sterols.. a possible topic for later posts.) Keep in mind that one egg with yolk, though chock full of vitamins, minerals, and complete proteins, also just about gets your daily number to the 300mg mark.

Sugar: TDP will give you a total amount of sugar for your day. What we in the nutrition field would love is to see more people looking at cutting back added sugars. Sometimes this gets a litle tricky, because a lot of great foods contain natural sugar, like milk, yogurt, fruit, tomatoes, etc. Ideally, the numbers should be no more than 100 calories' of added sugars for women, and 150 calories' for men. (Because men tend to need more overall calories.) Remembering that there are 4 calories in a gram of sugar (a carb), that is about 25 grams of added sugar for women, and 38 for men. Get used to looking at food labels for sugar disguised by other names: High Fructose Corn Syrup, Dextrose, Fructose, Juice Concentrates, Glucose, Maltose, Malt syrup, Molasses, etc.

So, go join! Picture me cheering for you when you click 'Sign up.' You get out of your food log what you put into it. If you don't track something you ate, or lie about the portion size, you're only lying to yourself. Go ahead, be responsible. Your body will love you for it.