.KEYWORD dietlog
.FLYINGHEAD PRODUCT REVIEW
.TITLE Monitor your meals with DietLog
.OTHER
.SUMMARY If you’re experiencing post-Halloween guilt right about now, it might be time to try counteracting the effects of all those sweets with a good old-fashioned diet. Jen Edwards reviews DietLog, a handy application that can help you set your diet goals and reach them.
.AUTHOR Jen Edwards
In the good old days, people used their Palm connected organizers to keep track of appointments and contacts, write a few memos, or maybe play a game. All that has changed with the incredible proliferation of third-party add-on programs for the Palm device. One of my favorites is called DietLog, from HealtheTech.
DietLog is designed to help you keep track of exactly what you eat, for any number of reasons. You may be trying to gain or lose weight, or perhaps you have a medical condition that requires you to monitor your food intake. DietLog is available at http://www.dietlog.com/info.html at a cost of $49. It requires Palm OS version 2.0 or higher and 115K of free memory on your Palm handheld. I installed DietLog onto my Palm IIIc.
.H1 Enter your profile
When you first use DietLog, you’re presented with a brief User Profile to complete. The program asks for your height, current weight, and target weight (which can be the same as your current weight if you’re only interested in maintenance). You’re also asked to define your activity level, so DietLog can take that into account when calculating your target values.
As you can see from the example in Figure A, I would like to lose 15 pounds.
.FIG A In my user profile setup, you can see that I would like to lose 15 pounds.
.H1 Set your targets
After filling out the profile, you press Nutritional Targets to go to the Set Nutrient Targets screen. Here you can define what you want to eat by category, such as the amount of protein, fat, carbohydrates, sodium, etc. This is designed especially for those on fixed diets or for those who can eat normally but need to limit their fat or sodium intake. The Set Nutrient Targets screen is shown in Figure B.
.FIG B This screen allows you to define what you want to eat by category.
Please note that this process can be completely automated if you’re "nutritionally challenged" and don’t know a great deal about healthy eating habits. Simply tap the Calc button and you’ll be taken to a screen that allows you to choose the desired weight change per week. In my example, if I want to lose one pound a week and maintain my current "light" activity level, I need to eat no more than 1587 calories per day, as you can see in Figure C. It will take me 15 weeks to reach my goal.
.FIG C I can eat 1587 calories a day and lose one pound a week at a light activity level.
If I decide to exercise more (moderate activity level), the calculation changes, letting me eat 1926 calories a day and still lose 15 pounds in 15 weeks. This is shown in Figure D. The DietLog manual will help you decide which activity level you choose.
.FIG D By increasing my activity level, I can eat as many as 1926 calories a day.
.H1 Tracking your food intake
Once you’ve set up your profile, it’s time to start logging your food intake. This process is extremely easy. The icons at the top of the screen are for your meals and snacks. As you can see from my log in Figure E, I had Sunny Delight for breakfast today.
.FIG E My daily log shows that I had Sunny Delight for breakfast today.
That item wasn’t in the default food database, but it was easy enough to add it. I’ll tell you how to add foods in just a moment. DietLog comes with a fairly extensive food database, including beverages, condiments, dairy, meat, cuisine (restaurant food), and entrees (mainly Lean Cuisine frozen dinners). Though not all the listings are perfectly accurate and there are some strange omissions (nectarines aren’t in the fruit category), they do provide a good base for getting started.
.H1 Logging a food item
In order to log a food item, you simply tap on the magnifying glass icon at the bottom right corner of the screen. This takes you to the Find function of the program, as you can see in Figure F.
.FIG F The Find screen is where you go to look for foods to add to your daily log.
In this example, you would tap the down arrow by Category, choose Beverages, and then choose the particular beverage when the item list pops up automatically, as seen in Figure G.
.FIG G The Category screen provides you with a listing of every type of food in that particular category.
When you tap on orange juice, it provides a list of all the different options available in the food database. When you tap on Sunny Delight, you’re taken to the Nutrition Facts screen, shown in Figure H.
.FIG H Here are the nutrition facts for Sunny Delight.
All of the relevant information for this item is displayed. If you had a full serving of 200 ml, you’d just tap Add to Log. If you didn’t have that much, you can adjust the serving size accordingly by entering in what you did have and tapping the small plus sign just to the left of the amount. This will recalculate the values and then add it to your food log for the day.
.H1 Add foods, recipes, and menus
One of the best features of the program is the ability to add individual foods, recipes, and entire menus to the program. This means that although you might have to do a lot of editing and data entry in the beginning, if you find yourself eating the same meals over and over, you can add them to the database and make subsequent logging much easier. For example, when I first installed the program, Sunny Delight was not listed in the food database. Since I have it for breakfast almost every single day, it was important to me to be able to add it.
Fortunately, the process is relatively simple. First, choose Edit Foods from the Database menu or enter Command E via graffiti. As you can see from Figure I, from there you’re taken to the Add or Edit Food screen.
.FIG I This is the screen where you can add new foods to the database.
Choose the category and group in which you want your food item to be and name the food. From there, enter in the basic nutritional values for each of the listed categories, such as calories, fat, fiber, and protein. These can usually be found on the back label of any given package of food. Then tap the Add/Revise button.
Please note that if you edit a food, a duplicate entry is created, so you’ll then have to go back and delete the original entry. I have found this a minor annoyance, as some of the Lean Cuisine values are not quite right, and I have to go through and edit them all. I assume it’s because the recipe for the dinner has changed over the years. This problem is due to be addressed in a future release of DietLog.
.H1 View your progress
Once you’ve entered your food intake for the day, it’s time to view your progress. Throughout the day, you can see one area at the bottom of the screen. In the previous log example, the small horizontal bar graph told me that after breakfast I had consumed 6% of the day’s recommended value, or 110 of 1587 calories. You can change that graph to represent any of the main categories by tapping the down arrow and selecting another one, such as sugar or fat intake.
You can also get a full screen view of your entire intake by tapping on the Log icon at the bottom of the Daily Log screen. The view looks like a small bar graph. This screen will show you the nutritional values of everything you’ve eaten that day or just for a particular meal, as you can see in Figure J.
.FIG J The Log screen provides a nice summary of what you’ve eaten on a particular day.
You have the option of viewing the information by the actual amount logged, or as a percentage of your target. As you can see from my example, the serving of Sunny Delight I had for breakfast this morning was only 6% of my calories but 69% of my desired sugar intake for the day. This sort of visual reminder helps me to adjust my eating as I go through the day. In today’s example, I know now that I need to concentrate on eating more protein and fiber for the rest of the day. I also don’t have to worry all that much about calories or fat, though I still need to monitor myself carefully to make sure I don’t get too far out of hand.
.H1 Two last icons
The last two icons on the daily log screen deserve a brief mention before I round up this review. The target icon takes you back to the Set Nutrient Targets screen. This is helpful if your diet has been modified since you originally created your profile. Tapping the Cal button on that same screen (as previously discussed) allows you to change your pace of weight loss or gain. You might have been a bit too optimistic when you at first said you wanted to lose a pound a week and have decided that maybe half a pound a week would be more realistic.
The last icon on the right hand side of the Daily Log screen will take you directly back to your user profile, where you’re able to change your activity level and weight as necessary.
.H1 Summary judgement
I truly enjoy using this program for a variety of reasons. Perhaps the most important for me is the intake charting. I am a very visual person, and it wasn’t until I started logging my food intake that I realized that, though I don’t eat all that many calories, I do consume entirely too much sugar. The graphing also allows me to see what areas I have deficiencies in, such as protein and fiber intake. That makes it much easier for me to make changes in my diet. DietLog also makes dieting (or gaining weight, if that’s your goal) much easier, because it takes the guesswork out of what your nutritional targets should be.
Those 2000-calorie diet suggestions on food packaging today aren’t valid for everyone. Activity level is also a large part of the picture, and I’m glad to see that DietLog takes this into account. Some people may not be able to exercise all that much due to medical or mobility problems, and I appreciate the ability to alter nutritional targets accordingly.
The fact that DietLog doesn’t try to tell you what to eat is another strong point in its favor. So many diets are strict about telling you to eat certain foods, not eat certain things together, etc. Such restrictive diets can cause you to give up almost as soon as you begin. DietLog provides a completely different approach that can lead to overall lifestyle change. You can always look at a food’s nutritional information before you eat it to see if it fits in with your goals for that day. The emphasis is placed on getting a balanced level of the various nutrients and to avoid eating too much of certain problem items, such as those high in sugar, fat, and sodium. All of the decisions are left completely in the hands of the individual user, with DietLog acting more as an advisor or guide than as a dictator.
All in all, DietLog is an excellent choice for anyone who is concerned about food intake. When combined with two other HealtheTech programs, WeightLog and ExerLog, it’s possible to create a complete nutritional and weight management program.
.BEGIN_SIDEBAR
.H1 Product availability and resources
For more information on DietLog, visit http://www.dietlog.com/info.html.
For more information on WeightLog, visit http://www.dietlog.com/noname.html.
For more information on ExerLog, visit http://www.dietlog.com/exbetisher.html.
For more information on Sunny Delight juice drinks, visit http://www.sunnyd.com.
For more information on Lean Cuisine, visit http://www.leancuisine.com.
For more information about Palm computers, visit http://www.palm.com.
.H1 Bulk reprints
Bulk reprints of this article (in quantities of 100 or more) are available for a fee from Reprint Services, a ZATZ business partner. Contact them at reprints@zatz.com or by calling 1-800-217-7874.
.END_SIDEBAR
.BIO Jen Edwards is a student and Palm device enthusiast in Dallas, TX. She has written numerous reviews for Geek.com and BrightHand.com and can be reached at jen_edwards@yahoo.com.
.DISCUSS http://powerboards.zatz.com/cgi-bin/webx?50@@.ee6eaee
