Nutrition Health Center

Printable Food Diary, Finding the Best

By Terry Dunkle*

A printable food diary can be a great help when your doctor or dietitian asks, “What on earth have you been eating?” People’s memory for food is notoriously faulty. Keeping a diary keeps you honest and provides valuable evidence for diagnosing and treating your ills.

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I used to keep a diary on paper and photocopy it for my doctor – but that was way back in the 1970s. Today, it’s best to keep a food diary on your computer, using either a website or software that you install on your hard drive. Besides being faster and neater, this method can show you a lot more about your nutrition.

Here’s what to look for in a printable food diary:

Large Selection of Foods

A computer- or web-based printable food diary usually works by letting you choose the items you’ve eaten from a large database of foods. If it doesn’t offer at least 20,000 foods, you may have to spend a lot of time adding foods to the database yourself, by keying in nutrition facts from the labels.

Broad Array of Nutrients

One of the main uses of a printable food diary is analyzing your intake of nutrients. Are you getting too much saturated fat? Too little folic acid? Enough water? These and other questions offer clues to your diagnosis or ways to make your diet more healthful. Choose a diary that monitors at least a dozen nutrients. Two dozen is preferable. And of course make sure the nutrient list includes those of particular interest to you.

Based on 20 years of research by DietPower, Inc., this calculator is accurate to 5 percent for most users. (It's not for people who are pregnant or have metabolic disorders. Always see a doctor before starting a diet.)

Birth Date

Sex

Tobacco user?

Height

Weight

Goal Weight

Target Date

Email Address

- -

?

ft. in.

lbs.

lbs. ?

- - ?

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Close Goal Weight
Your Goal Weight is the weight you want to achieve. (If it's a lot different from your current weight, you might want to set a goal that represents only the first step. Even a 10-percent weight loss will significantly improve your health.)
Close Target Date
Plan on losing no more than a pound or two per week.  Otherwise, you may eat too little for good nutrition and your weight loss may be temporary.
Close Lactating?
If you are breastfeeding, check this box and the calculator will add calories for producing milk.
Close Tobacco User?
Nicotine speeds your metabolism, making you burn calories faster. (That's why people who quit smoking gain weight.) Check this box if you average more than one cigarette, one-half pipeful, one-quarter of a cigar, or one dip of snuff or chewing tobacco per day.
Close Email Address
Once a month, DietPower will send you the most important nutrition news of the past 30 days, selected by national award-winning editors covering hundreds of medical journals. You can cancel this free, no-obligation service anytime with a single click. We produce it only to promote our weight-loss software. It won't put you on other mailing lists—We're Not That Kind of Company™.

Versatile Printing Choices

At the very least, your diary should let you choose whether to print your food list and nutrient analysis day-by-day or for the past week, month, quarter, or year. You should also be able to choose between pie chart and table formats.

Email Capabilities

Instead of carrying a paper printout to your doctor or dietitian’s office, your food diary should let you email the report – ideally, at the click of a button.

Extras

A good printable food diary will not only keep track of what you’ve eaten and its nutrient balance, but also let you make notes about your emotional state, physical symptoms, or other conditions at the time of eating. These can be helpful in diagnosing eating disorders or allergies.

Founder, CEO, and Editor-in-Chief of DietPower, Inc.