

Ask HN: How and when do you log your food? - aismail

Hi HN,<p>I&#x27;m a quantified self geek. I have been logging my food for 7 months now (almost daily), and I would like to hear more about your experience doing that.<p>How are you logging the food? When do you log your food? How do you manage through weekends or vacations? What about estimating the quantity of food?
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auganov
I'd use cronometer.com everyday and try to always get the calorie counts right
(didn't care so much about other metrics). My margin of error was around 50
calories/day (figured out by comparing with expected weight loss). The thing
is after around 2 months I developed a fairly good intuition and just didn't
need to use the software anymore.

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aismail
I personally use MyFitnessPal + some techniques to do food logging and get the
calories burned from BodyMedia. How do you get your own calories burned?

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auganov
I don't exercise, slightly adjusted BMR x 1.2 pretty much worked.

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aismail
So you prefer not to exercise to eating more and exercising?

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auganov
It's kind of hard (if you're not into exercise) to burn more than 400 daily.
So given that I burn ~1580/day by default an extra 300 is not such a big
incentive to exercise. It's just an extra small meal/snack.

~~~
aismail
Using [http://www.myfitnesspal.com/tools/bmr-
calculator](http://www.myfitnesspal.com/tools/bmr-calculator), it seems that
"by default I burn around" 1.9kcal per day. However I've found it quite easy
to hack 700 of them into a day just by exercising for 10 minutes and having
more walking meetings. In your case, do you consider walking exercising?

~~~
auganov
So you burn a total of 2600 kcal day and 700 is from the 10 minute exercise
and walking meetings? Sounds like the exercise has to be super intense? Or
tons of walking. Well I consider all non-bmr' burn exercise. I rarely even
leave my house and when I do it's usually 3 blocks away, so under 20kcal.
Fidgeting would probably contribute more lol.

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aismail
I actually burn more than that (I average somewhere above 3000kcal), but the
2600 that I mentioned is from mostly passive activities. Did you know that
Nelson Mandela walked 7 miles in his cell every day? I don't think working at
home should stop us from being more active.

~~~
auganov
The thing with me is that I'm not so bullish on health (or other) benefits
inherent to exercise. So if I was to go out of my way and exercise i'd only do
it to eat more. And yea walking around a room is fun, especially if you're
locked up in a cell :-D I do that once in a while when I get excited about a
new concept.

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jordsmi
I use myfitnesspal to log food.

Lately I haven't been logging as much since I just eat between the same 2-3
things everyday.

I usually log my day again if I eat something new.

For estimating food I weighed things out in the beginning and how I just
eyeball it to be the same amount.

~~~
aismail
Which moment of the day do you use to log your food(s)? How did you learn to
eyeball your food?

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jordsmi
When I log, I log before/during cooking of the meal. I'll usually plan my meal
on myfitnesspal so I know what all to make so that it fits my macros.

And for eyeballing after making the same things over and over and weighing
them out, you start to get a feel for how much it is you need. Every once and
awhile I'll weigh out what I eyeballed to make sure I'm not going too low or
high.

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MalcolmDiggs
My Samsung phone came with some "S Health" software preinstalled. Has a
pedometer, an exercise tracker and a food log. Not the most complete food
database, but seems to work fine.

I used to use mypyramidtracker but I'm not sure if that exists anymore.

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aismail
Apparently that one was replaced by
[https://www.supertracker.usda.gov/default.aspx](https://www.supertracker.usda.gov/default.aspx).
So what is your daily routine around that? When do you log your food?

~~~
MalcolmDiggs
As far as routine: When I was serious about calorie counting I carried a small
notepad (about the size of an index card) and pen in my back pocket at all
times. I'd jot down every single thing I ate, right when I ate it (or else I'd
forget).

When I'd get home for the day, after I had my last meal I'd pull out my
notepad, go to the tracker and tediously enter everything. Just once a day.
This worked for me because I snacked a lot, and pulling out the laptop/phone
for every single snack just seemed ridiculous. But the notepad was easy and
nobody seemed to notice.

~~~
aismail
Very interesting! I've noticed that some people can just "keep it in their
head" (including snacks) for 1-2 days. I guess their memory is much better
than ours, heh! I enter it immediately after eating as well. But I use the
mobile phone since I don't snack that much.

Why did you care about other people noticing the notebook?

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FlopV
I pick a macro plan (protein/fat/carbs), then eat according to my macros for
each meal. So I set them prior, then just count them via the labels.

~~~
aismail
What do you do when labels are not available? (e.g. eating out)

