Tracking What I Eat
Jan 23rd, 2010 by Yoko
In case you’ve been wondering what I’ve been doing this winter, here are some images for you. I’ve been tracking my eating habits through an online program called FitDay. You type in what you eat every day, and it will compute calories, fat, carbohydrate, and protein intake, as well as nutrition information, as you can see above. You can also input the activities you do during the day, and it will also calculate the amount of energy expended:
The blue bar represents the average calories I’ve eaten in for the last two months; the yellow bar the average calories expended.
Why am I doing this? Initially, I signed up to get a snapshot of my eating habits, after my bout with diverticulitis. I was mainly interested in my fiber intake, and looking at the graph, you can see that I’m now doing a good job eating more than the recommended daily allowance for dietary fiber. However, I now see that my greatest deficits are in Vitamins D, E, and calcium, so I’ve started taking a supplement for calcium/Vitamin D. I will be taking a supplement for Vitamin E as well.
I also know, from past experience, that I tend to gain 10-15 pounds over the winter. I wanted to see if I could keep to within five pounds of the weight I usually maintain throughout the rest of the year, so I’ve weighed myself every day, and notice certain trends of what I eat. I have modified my eating habits somewhat, but not drastically. As you can see in the graph, my intake/expense ratio is pretty close to even, and my weight seems to reflect this. I’ve been pretty good about keeping within five pounds so far.
To be sure, it’s a pain in the neck keeping track of what I eat every day, and FitDay’s database has rather strange items in its database (who eats meats and beans raw?) and a clumsy search engine (soba is under “noodles, Japanese, soba, cooked”), which adds to my annoyance. I plan on ending the daily tracking at the end of March. It’s been a good learning experience being aware of what I consume.
