nutrition tracking

[dragonlady7]

So I joined this website about a month back. Spark People. I don't really understand the name, but whatever. It's a fitness and diet and weightloss and what-have-you kind of website. But what I really wanted was the nutrition tracker. You enter in what you ate, it tells you the calorie content, it figures out the nutritional info, it tells you your totals for the day, the week, etc. Which is a hell of a lot easier than figuring it out yourself, even if, of course, it's not totally accurate.

What really gets to me, though, is that the vast majority of things entered into the tracker (you search, and if it's in there, you click on it; if it's not, you pick something close, as far as I can tell-- I don't know how to enter in a new thing, much less how to figure out the nutrition content if it's not right on the box)-- the vast majority of foods in this database are from fast-food restaurants.
I can't find a setting for "coffee with cream and sugar". There's either "coffee", or a whole list of restaurant coffees. I always pick "Dunkin Donuts coffee, cream and sugar", because it's the closest one I can find that doesn't have some weird specialty ingredient when I search for "coffee". Because I don't drink my coffee black, and I know if I have several cups, the cream or milk or whatever I put in it can add up.
Another weird one? No whole milk. It's just not an option.
I drink my milk whole. But whole milk isn't in the database.

Arby's, Subway, McDonald's, Denny's, Campbell's, Lipton, Kraft, etc. All of the foods have brand names.

Nobody fucking cooks anything from scratch anymore? I often have to pick the nearest restaurant equivalent. I had homemade chicken and rice soup last night, and had to just pick "Campbell's chicken noodle soup, 12 oz can" because nothing else was even close. So I figure, my fat and sodium content is probably way lower in my homemade soup, because I barely salt to taste, if that, and I can't see grease floating on top of my soup the way I can on Campbell's. And the potatoes and rice in this soup probably have less refined sugar than the noodles in Campbell's. But I don't really know.

Just thought I'd share that. Does nobody else make homemade stuff?
But it's the homemade stuff I need the info for. My soup doesn't come with the calories listed on the can. That's why I need a dang website to tell me.

Hmph.

I'm also somewhat annoyed by the fact that, well, of course, the main thing the site's geared toward is weight loss. I don't want to lose weight. What I'd love is to be able to *gain* about ten pounds, while losing a couple of inches from my waist, boobs, and hips. If I had the time and energy for serious weight lifting, I would do it. I would love to be 200 pounds and a size 12. I want 22" thighs and a 30" waist and a 41" bust. I want biceps and trapezius muscles and triceps and deltoids and all that.
I just haven't the time for it.
And the website doesn't have settings for that. But it has some good basic stuff, and it's fairly inoffensive, helps me calculate my BMI but tells me it may not be quite accurate and is just a guideline, lets me set my own goals, and generally is pretty open-ended so I can adjust. It's just that the default is that it kind of assumes I'm some fatty who never gets off the office chair and is looking to fit back into her high school pants.

Which just makes me glad I'm not, I guess, so it's just as well. :)

Comments

[mmmbamboo.livejournal.com]

i use myfooddiary.com... it's a pay site though (only $9 a month though) and i like it a lot. it's really easy to manually enter items. it's aimed at weight loss, but it's really customizable, so it might even be possible to aim for weight gain. i haven't done it yet, but you can put in all of your measurements and track that.

a lot of people also like thedailyplate.com which is free. i haven't used it though.

[tehta.livejournal.com]

I think one reason why they focus on brand names *is* that that info is readily available. Because, really, how can they know the nutritional content of home-made soup unless they know the recipe used? These things vary widely.

On the other hand, there is no excuse for not including staples like whole milk. If you had all of those, you could estimate the nutritional value of whatever you make by just adding up the value of whatever you put in there. (I say estimate, because of course preparation can change a lot.)

[that-redhead.livejournal.com]

I love SP, but you're right, it's rather difficult to enter foods into. I figured out how to add foods that aren't in their database, but it's a pain in the ass.

Btw, I'm 'girlon8wheels' on SP!

[soulofbuffalo.livejournal.com]

If they're only using commercial packaged foods and other things that are easy to calculate (medium-sized apple, 100 calories, that sort of thing), it's no wonder it's free because that's pretty easy ... and anyone could sit down and estimate it for themselves if they really felt like it.

Your soup is probably *healthier* than Campbells but it might not be lower in calories. They pour in tons of salt but kind of skimp on the actual ingredients so it's pretty low cal.

[lenine2.livejournal.com]

You might like fitday.com better. It's free. You can make up your own entries by choosing ingredients. So if you want to put in your home made soup you'd just have to remember what you put in it and about how much, and select it all, and save it as "My Home Made Chicken Soup". It's a pain at first, but I'm a repetitive eater, so once I had a dozen or so custom things in the system I was pretty much set.

I just did a search on "whole milk". I got four pages of results, including whole goat's milk. Ick.

[ithilwen.livejournal.com]

I think one reason why they focus on brand names *is* that that info is readily available. Because, really, how can they know the nutritional content of home-made soup unless they know the recipe used? These things vary widely.

Plus, a lot of people no doubt want the brand name information for restaraunt food for those times when they must eat out, and that info (while available) isn't always easy to find. Heaven knows the restaraunts don't go out of their way to provide it to you!