it's a FREE website where you can read articles about wellness, nutrition, exercise, and so much more! They have FREE exercise logs and food diaries. It has a variety of health related goals you can choose from. Once you choose a goal it will create an individualized plan for you to help meet your goals!
One great feature of Sparkpeople is their nutrition logger. It's basically a food diary. It has a huge database you can search from and you can add food items that aren't included. It tallies your total calories and calculates whether you meet your targets for calorie consumption, fat totals, carbohydrate totals, and protein totals. It gives you tips to stay on track or improve. An extra special feature is their easy to read graphs that show calories by food (for example, the majority of my calories so far today came from the cheddar cheese in my salad 31%), calories by meal (my lunch is weighing in at 62.9%), and a carb fat protein breakdown.
The last graph is important because you need to be aware of where your calories are coming from. You want the majority of your calories to come from Carbohydrates and protein and fat to be less.
- 45% to 65% of calories from Carbohydrates
- 20% to 35% of calories from Fat
- 10% to 35% of calories from Protein
Following these recommendations will ensure you're getting a sufficient intake of essential vitamins and minerals. The way to calculate these totals is easy once you know how! All you need is a calculator and food labels.
For Carbohydrates there are 4 calories per gram. Look at your food label and see how many grams of carbohydrates there are. Now times this by 4. The total is how many calories come from carbohydrates.
For protein there is also 4 calories per gram. However, fat totals 9 calories per gram! That's more than double the calories compared to carbs and protein! It's no wonder when you eat fatty foods you gain weight! But we can use food labels to see how the calories are broken up between carbs, fats, and proteins and make smart food choices following those recommendations.
Long story short-there is so much good information available on the internet. Check out http://www.sparkpeople.com and see if it will work out for you! or Google "food diary" and find something that fits your lifestyle. Keeping a food diary can bring awareness to what you're eating and why. By doing this we can develop strategies to overcome bad eating habits!
Happy Dieting!
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