Food Journals

[Cliffhanger]

Fat loss and muscle gain are 70 per cent nutrition and 30 per cent muscle. While you never want to get too obsessive about food it's always good to have rough idea of your calorie, carb, fat and protein intake when you have any body goals.

Personally I find food journals very useful, especially when I'm cutting. But it's always good for ensuring I'm getting enough macronutrients.

Currently I use fitday, which has a huge selection of already stored foods and allows you to store your own custom foods.


You can also track your activities and how many calories you burned, however I wouldn't take the calories burned for different activities as gospel, even though they take into account your weight and intensity, there's certain things they cannot account for.

 

[The European Polynesian]

I just naturally get into a routine with my eating and eat the same thing everyday. So much easier when you eat like a robot, can just eat slightly less and know you are going to lose weight or slightly more and know you are going to gain weight.

If you want more freedom a journal is a good way to go.

 

[adamkungl]

yeah I just started keeping one to get an idea of what i need to do...its just an excel doc that adds up totals for me

 

[Danish]

I use an app called Shape Up on the iphone (I'm sure there is an android version too).

Been using it religiously for around 12 months, and find it the easiest way to keep my calories in check. You can also track all your body measurements (weight, waistline etc) and it graphs them all out for you.

The added bonus is that you can also treat yourself to the occasional bad food when you know you have x amount of calories left to eat in the day.

I doubt i'd have lost anywhere near the weight I have without it.

 

[Cliffhanger]

I just naturally get into a routine with my eating and eat the same thing everyday. So much easier when you eat like a robot, can just eat slightly less and know you are going to lose weight or slightly more and know you are going to gain weight.

If you want more freedom a journal is a good way to go.

I've tried eating the same thing everyday it's surprisingly easy, but then I found out it's best not to eat fish daily.

 

[redvscotty]

I hate it. So annoying, and I'm lazy, so there's that.

I had today:

Oats in milk
Handful of Almonds and apple
Big Salad + Tuna (baby spinach, mushroom, tomato, olives, red onion, feta, red capsicum, chili and lime dressing)
250g Cottage Cheese with a banana.
Chicken Breast + steamed vegies.

Try and stick to that most days. Often fail and goto fast food, but working on it. haha.

 

[Cliffhanger]

I find food journals lazy friendly as you don't have to do any calculations yourself but just find the food and add it to your food log.

It is easiest when you eat most

Unless you're bulking you shouldn't be eating almonds by the handful. The reason you'd fail to stick to that is because you wouldn't be getting anywhere near enough energy from that. Especially if you're doing any training.

Vegetables aren't very calorie dense and also high in dietary fibre so even though you're eating a good amount of vegies they're not going to give you the energy you need and when our bodies crave energy they will often make us crave junk food.

 

[adamkungl]

Today I ate

spagbol for breakfast
banana for a snack
6inch schnitzel sub for lunch
the other half of my sub a few hrs later
having 2 serves of spagbol for dinner
then some fruit and nuts

 

[Cliffhanger]

Today I ate

Raspberries and yoghurt for Breakfast
Then a hollumi cheese, capsicum, and cucumber in a multigrain wrap
100 grams of grilled salmon with lettuce
Cup of immune juice
HPLC bar
Later I'll have a broadbean salad, natural yoghurt, 2 eggs and 100 grams of firm tofu.

I usually wouldn't eat HPLC bars but I am waiting on a protein powder order and need to make up enough protein in meantime and they're 2 for 7 bucks at the moment.

 

[The European Polynesian]

Just letting you know Cliffy those HLPC bars, although they taste great (especially the chocolate one after 30mins in the freezer) have hidden carbs in them. They talk about "impact carbs" as carbs that spike blood sugar, but there is also things like sorbitol in there that have a caloric value but not included under the nutritional info. That's why if you add up the P/F/C in the bars it comes to quite a bit less than the number of calories in the bar.

 

[Cliffhanger]

Yeah low carb protein bars are the worst and they have an awful after taste. The aussie bodies ones especially suck. The only one's that taste okay are the lo carb mini ones, those taste good, the worst taste terrible.

The sweeteners they use don't have carbs, things like glycerine and malitol don't count as any macro nutrient which is why they don't come under a category. They aren't used by your body like carbs, it still isn't known exactly what they do to your body, but basically you're better off eating raw sugar than sugarine because at least it's more natural.


In 2010 I was convinced the nutritionist I was seeing knew less than me and she had told me to eat protein bars something I hadn't done before so I read everything I could on protein bars and those sweeteners are bad. But they're convenient and taste better than WPI mixed with water.

 

[The European Polynesian]

Look at the total calories in the bars and add up the calories manually from the protein, carbs and fat. There's other stuff in there with caloric value.

 

[Cliffhanger]

Yeah I know what you're saying, despite having calories, sorbitol cannot be classified as a carb, protein or fat though because it doesn't have the necessary qualities. It's strange.

 

[redvscotty]

I find food journals lazy friendly as you don't have to do any calculations yourself but just find the food and add it to your food log.

It is easiest when you eat most

Unless you're bulking you shouldn't be eating almonds by the handful. The reason you'd fail to stick to that is because you wouldn't be getting anywhere near enough energy from that. Especially if you're doing any training.

Vegetables aren't very calorie dense and also high in dietary fibre so even though you're eating a good amount of vegies they're not going to give you the energy you need and when our bodies crave energy they will often make us crave junk food.

I fail because I'm an alcoholic.

 

[Thomas]

I use www.calorieking.com.au mainly because it has Aussie brands etc. I don't use it religiously but it is good to use to check up on some items.