Guest Post from registered dietitian, Kat at Eating the Week.
When Erin asked what one thing we guest bloggers do daily to be healthy, I instinctively gave my iPhone a little squeeze. No, I’m not going to argue that playing Angry Birds will lower your cholesterol (although, technically, I have yet to see any research to say it doesn’t). Rather, I’d like to share how using a simple app helps me track my daily energy balance, maintain my weight, and more recently, retool my diet to help fuel my training to run a half-marathon.
After my first 5K run! (Gateway drug to half-marathon madness)
First, what does “energy balance” mean? In short, it’s the energy (calories) you consume, minus the energy (also calories) your body uses. When you’re trying to lose weight, you want a negative energy balance – eat less than you use, and your body will have to burn excess weight to make up the difference. Need to gain? A positive energy balance is what you need.
And if you’re like me, a neutral energy balance is ideal. I’ve been at a weight that suits me fine for several years, so I try to eat no more and no less, on average, than my body uses. For me, it’s one of the most important things I do to maintain my health, and it all boils down to some basic math. Sounds so simple, right? Well, it would be if I didn’t have all this pesky work, parenthood, school, hobbies, and general life clamoring for my attention every day. More often than not, I barely have time to brush my teeth, much less to scrutinize the minutiae of every speck that passes between my lips.
Enter my not-so-secret weapon: the calorie-tracking app and website. I use LoseIt; there are several similar apps you could use for the iPhone and Android, as well as many web-based options like Self’s Nutrition Data or Livestrong’s Daily Plate. With a few tippitytaps of my finger, LoseIt calculates my energy needs and provides me a huge catalog of foods from which to choose and track my intake. It also keeps tabs on my exercise, and then tells me how far under or over my daily budget I am. One of the best features: it creates personalized lists of the foods I eat the most, and lets me combine them into recipes. That makes entry even quicker because I can copy entire previous meals, or just pop in that “Pasta Bake with Turkey and Vegetables” recipe.
Example of a daily LoseIt report.
What’s great about this mobile option is that it helps people prepare instead of regret. At any given time of the day, users can calculate their energy balance to see what food choices they should make. That’s a whole lot more empowering than gearing up to a full-blown panic attack in line at Chipotle because I have no idea what fits in my budget. And much better than waiting until the end of the day to recount everything I ate, only to discover that I blew the day’s budget by 50%.
The reams of historical data in LoseIt came in handy especially during my recent training ahead of the first-ever half-marathon I’ve run. Mid-way through the regimen, I suddenly had a gnawing, constant feeling of hunger for days on end. When I eventually found myself wrist-deep in a jar of almond butter, shoveling spoonfuls into my mouth, I realized that my body was trying to tell me something (FEED ME!). When I looked back at my diet data, I saw why: I hadn’t adequately ramped up my calorie intake, so I was operating at a sizeable deficit. My body put its metaphorical foot down before I could put my real ones back on the road, and insisted that I feed it, NOW.
So I happily obliged, and snarfed down several hundred more calories daily to keep the inner beast sated. And I do it all with the help of a little math and a simple tracking tool. What about you: do you track your daily balance (food in, energy out)? If so, what methods or tools do you use?
[...] food/nutrition bloggers to guest post about one thing we do daily to maintain our health. In my guest post, I describe how I use the LoseIt app and website to track my daily energy balance, and how the data [...]
Kathleen, the apps certainly are great but I bet many of the web-based options would work great for you. Check out a few that I linked above!
I wish I had a I-Phone!!!! Those apps sound so cool!
Emily, I know what you mean (“Awesome! I’m not hungry but maybe I’ll eat 217 calories of baking soda!”). That’s on my wishlist for LoseIt – food-group reporting. For now, I do that by hand: see the chart pictured in this post http://eatingtheweek.com/2011/04/15/diet-tracking-data-nerds-unite/.
I love the Lose It app, but don’t really use it anymore. For me, (and I wasn’t training for any races) it made me focus on the caloric number and I found myself eating because I “had more calories” and/or not wanting to eat, even if I was hungry because I “was out of calories for the day.”
It is though, so easy to use and I think fun!
Victoria, love your blog’s name. And good point about what “data points” are of most interest, since that will vary for people based on their goals. Recently, I’ve been eyeing my % calories from carbs – I needed to increase it in the days following the half-marathon to rebuild my glycogen stores.
Elizabeth, sorry, I misattributed your photo comment!
I also track my daily balance, but focus more on protein and fiber intake goals because those two things help me feel best for training. I use livestrong’s dailyplate and enter what I eat and my exercise almost immediately, unless I’m not at a computer. Then I log what I eat in a memo in my blackberry and enter it later. I have a pretty good idea of calorie/protein/fiber counts of most foods I eat so I am still basically tracking real time.
One minor correction: I’m not yet an RD, but I am a MS/CPD student. If all goes well, I’ll be licensed in ~3 years!
Elizabeth & Samantha – It’s great to hear from others who take the two-pronged approach (web + mobile). I think platform flexibility makes diet-tracking much easier for users.
Samantha, I’m pretty sure Miles (my son) helps boost any photo’s cuteness by a factor of at least 10
Thanks for the compliment!
I am really enjoying tracking my food using an online tool and Blackberry application. I find that it helps me make better choices and keeps portion sizes in check.
Adorable photo of you and your son!
Great post! I LOVE that your favorite kitchen gadget is your iPhone. Haha. I just discovered MyFitnessPal (have it on my Droid and my laptop). I was surprised when it told me I hadn’t eaten enough calories one day. I do think it overestimates my calorie burn when running, but I also agreed that I hadn’t fueled properly that day.