

Too Lazy To Count Calories? Now You Can Just Take A Picture Of Your Meal - greattypo
http://www.mobilecrunch.com/2011/04/05/too-lazy-to-count-calories-now-you-can-just-take-a-picture-of-your-meal/

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tzs
This is OT, but I have a couple tips that can help people who are counting
calories.

1\. You don't have to be exact on any given meal. It's OK to make errors that
will be canceled out by other errors.

For instance, if you buy a can of soup, and it says it contains 2 servings of
200 calories each, and you are going to have half for lunch today and half for
lunch tomorrow, you do not need to carefully measure out exactly 1/2 of the
soup. Just eyeball it and count it as 200. You'll be off today, but you'll be
off tomorrow in the opposite direction by the same amount.

2\. Once you've got into reasonably good eating habits, consider tracking
calories by weeks or even months, rather than days. For instance, instead of
aiming for about 2400 calories/day, aim for 16800 per week, or 73048 per
month. (This works best if you are single, or at least if you can keep your
food separate from that of other people).

If you do that, you can switch to accounting for your calories when you buy
them, rather than when you consume them. For example, if you buy a carton of
milk (8 servings x 160 calories/serving), just record it as 1280 calories.

3\. If you are trying to lose weight and you intend to remain at your new
weight once you reach it you need to change habits. If you go on a diet, reach
your goal, and go back to your old eating habits, you will go back to your old
weight.

When you start begin by eating just like you normally eat but track everything
for a couple weeks. You'll probably find some things that surprise you there.
(My biggest surprise was just how many calories were in a #2 from Burger
King).

You'll probably find several places where you can make an _easy_ adjustment
and knock a lot of calories off. E.g., if you get lunch every day at fast food
joints, you might find that you can downsize one item each day (single burger
instead of double, regular fries instead of large, medium soda instead of
large) and not notice any reduction in your satisfaction with the meal, but
you'll save a ton of calories.

Once you have an understanding of where your calories are coming from, you can
then slowly work on changing habits. The key is to go slowly. Make a change,
become used to it, let your body recalibrate to where that is what it
considers normal, and then make the next change.

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gte910h
One thing I was astounded at was when I counted calories (instead of of the
weird food change diets like atkins/southbeach that I've done before) how MUCH
I could still eat.

I started nutrisystem (which sells you a bunch of shelf stable, high protein,
low calorie food to add to all your meals for the month for about 240). While
I still feel like I'm constantly eating (all good diets seem to have this), I
am astounded how much food ( in a good way ) 2000 calories is.

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bunchesofdonald
The ranges are way to wide for this to be anything but a toy. 150-614 calories
for a handful of cashews? That's a difference of nearly 25% of a 2000 calorie
diet, that's very significant, to the point of it being useless.

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dglassan
I had an idea of something exactly like this a few years ago.

I wonder if it just calculates calories or if it can calculate carbs too? My
brother is diabetic and I can see this being extremely helpful for anyone
needing to calculate their insulin.

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warrenwilkinson
In theory, if it could identify the food & quantity, it should be able to
produce every useful food statistic. From daily nutrition, to calories, to a
map showing which regions of the earth commonly grow the fruit and vegetables
in it.

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Hominem
According to the screen shot of the app, I am probably better off eating a
chocolate bar than a handful of cashews.

I'm no nutritionist but that doesn't seem quite right.

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gte910h
Fat is incredibly calorie dense. Nuts have tons of fat. If you're trying to
lose weight (which is the primary reason people look at calories), chocolate
is often a better addition from a pure calorie standpoint.

Nuts have the added advantage of helping with curbing hunger, but if hunger is
already under control chocolate can do quite nicely.

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daemin
I would imagine that by chocolate you mean some 70% cocoa chocolate with
minimal sugar, not a king size snickers or similar?

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gte910h
A snickers bar is not chocolate. It has chocolate as an ingrediant in it, but
it is mostly nuts with other items.

I do mean, chocolate, or that stuff Hershey's calls Chocolate even.

Gross fact: Inside of oreos: Crisco and Confectioner's sugar.

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there
if the developers are reading this: integrate this with fitbit.com's api and
you'll get a bunch of new users.

i've seen a lot of fitbit users asking for a way to scan barcodes to track
calories on the site, but being able to take a picture of the actual food
would be pretty neat.

<http://www.fitbit.com/forums/forum/4NSMKM6MNV3M6>

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greattypo
I think this is a really clever idea and would be massively successful IF it
worked well.

My questions is: How accurate could this ever possibly be? The ranges in the
screenshot are far too wide to be very helpful (150-614 calories). For the
people I know who count calories, that's not going to cut it.

Still, love the idea.

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greattypo
It's really interesting to me that comment count > vote count for this story.
Haven't seen that before here.

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warmfuzzykitten
Just what dieters need: a calorie count estimate with no significant digits!

