How to track and record

daily intake
Jason Armanous

HOW TO TRACK AND RECORD DAILY INTAKE

 Why we track food
• To monitor nutrition & energy in our food/drink
• Just like we manage money by budgeting, we can also manage our nutrition by
tracking food
• When we don’t manage our nutrition;
• It can be more difficult to achieve our fitness goals
• It can be unclear as to whether we are eating too much or too little
• We can use tracking/recording as an educational tool to improve our
understanding of nutrition and fill in any gaps in knowledge
• This is a critical component for long term diet success
• To improve performance
• To manipulate body composition
HOW TO TRACK AND RECORD DAILY INTAKE
 Do you need to track/record food?
• Monitoring nutrition means achieving various body composition goals
can be a more straight forward process as a result of:
• Less guess work due to more objective data
• Improved education around nutrition
• Greater nutritional consistency
• Although not a necessity, tracking/recording can be a great tool to
help achieve fitness goals

HOW TO TRACK AND RECORD DAILY INTAKE

 Methods of tracking
• Food Journal
• Meal Plan
• Calorie/Macro tracking
• Food tracking apps;
• MyFitnessPal, MyNetDiary, MyPlate Calorie Counter.
• Behavior tracking checklists
• Guesstimating

LEAST ACCURATE MOST ACCURATE

GUESSTIMATING FOOD JOURNAL BEHAVIOR FOOD TRACKING

MEAL PLAN
TRACKING/CHECKLIST APP

HOW TO TRACK AND RECORD DAILY INTAKE

 How to – food journal
• All you need is pen & paper!
• Record before or after each meal
• There may be a larger margin of error if we try to remember all the food we ate during
the day - try to write meals in as you go for greater accuracy
• Make your own meal plan;
• Designate a 2-3 options for each of your meals this can help with decision fatigue and
improve consistency
• Set daily targets/goals
• These can be;
• Macronutrient targets
• Meal Frequency
• Meal times & so on..

HOW TO TRACK AND RECORD DAILY INTAKE

 How to - MyFitnessPal
• MFP has many similarities to a food journal with the added benefit of
• Providing nutritional info of your food
• Daily/weekly summaries of Calories, Macros
• Keeping track of bodyweight along with photos
• Less time consuming when you get good at using it!
• When tracking;
• Aim to be within 5-10g of macro targets, it does not need to be perfect
• When cooking in bulk you can weigh and track all of the food as one meal then divide it as needed
• Tracking food raw vs cooked
• Track foods in the same way you weight it, there can be pros/cons to both just keep it consistent
• Weigh foods in grams rather than; tbsp, cups, serves,
• their can be large variance in these serving sizes – use a food scale!
• Can be easy to build your own meal plan

HOW TO TRACK AND RECORD DAILY INTAKE

METHOD PROS CONS

FOOD JOURNAL -
-
Time effective
Easy to track
- Can be less accurate, people tend to forget foods they’ve
consumed
- Can be more flexible - Not the best method to improve nutritional
- Small knowledge base needed knowledge/understanding
- Easy to audit

MEAL PLAN -
-
Straight forward
Easy to follow
- Little amount of flexibility can make it hard for some to
adhere
- Not much thinking/deciding required - Can be a poor tool for education if not used well
- Can be very effective - Can leave a person confused if they consume something off
- Great way to build good eating habits the meal plan
- Can be more rigid
- Little knowledge base needed

NUTRIENT TRACKING -
-
Most accurate
Great way to learn about nutrition in food
- Takes a fair bit of competency to use things like MFP
accurately
- Often most reliable when done correctly - Larger time & effort than other methods
- Easy to collect data - Can be ineffective for some populations eg. Those with
- Can be both more flexible or rigid poor eating behaviours
- Decision fatigue
- Can be difficult when eating out

BEHAVIOUR CHECKLIST -
-
Time effective
Great way to build good eating habits
- Can be vague
- Less rigid, can lead to decision fatigue
- Not much additional work -
- Can be more flexible
- Small knowledge base needed
 Takeaways
• There are lots of different methods of tracking/recording;
• This should be tailored to individuals depending on their goals, preference,
sustainability & knowledge
• There are pros/cons of each method
• Combining methods is a viable option & can fill in any gaps/limitations
• Tracking our nutrition gives us the opportunity to learn from and
manage our eating behaviors for better outcomes.
• Can be a useful education tool

HOW TO TRACK AND RECORD DAILY INTAKE

 Frequently Asked Questions
• Which method is the best for fat loss?
• The method that is most likely adhered too although some methods like calorie tracking can be more accurate than
say a checklist its not without its limitations! Priorities adherence over what you believe to me most “optimal” and
progress to more accurate forms of tracking if appropriate

• What if I don’t record/track?

• It will simply be more difficult to manage nutrition as it is not being monitored, this just means it may be more
difficult to achieve health/fitness goals, its not necessarily an issue if we’re not always tracking/recording but it can
mean less progress in some cases

HOW TO TRACK AND RECORD DAILY INTAKE