If you are serious about your diet: check your food numbers

Tutorial

 

This is a step by step tutorial which shows you how to use foodnumbers. Just click and you’ll have it down in a few minutes. You can open two windows and put the tutorial and the actual site next to each other.

The best browser to use with the site is Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0 on a PC. On a Mac, Safari or Firefox work as well. Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.2 on a Mac will give error messages, and can not be used. Microsoft has not yet come out with the Mac version of 6.0.

The resolution of the screenshots on some machines will not be as optimally detailed as the site itself, but side by side with the real site it enough to teach it to you.

So let’s get started. Here’s the home page, the one you were looking at when you originally came to foodnumbers.com.

You clicked on Tutorial and that sent you here but to use the site you will have to buy tokens. You can do this at anytime from now on by clicking on "Get tokens," and you will purchase 60 tokens. This purchase was automatically charged to paypal, or any credit card, and the charge is $30 for 60 tokens. Each token is used to run the counter system for one day. The cost is merely 50 cents a day.

You also created a user name which is your email address and a password.

It will be listed on your credit card as a “subscription to foodnumbers.com.”

when buying tokens you will see this screen:

 

 

Now you have your tokens, you click on “Nutrition Log” and it takes you to this sign-in page. Yes even though you just bought tokens, you have to sign in to use them. You sign in with the same user name and password you used to create the account. Retrieve password is available for convenience.

It asks for your email address and your password that you just created. Type them in once, and most computers will remember them with the type in of only the first letter.

I’ll show you. All I have to do at this screen is type in the letter “l”, a small L.

My email pops up and so does my password.

Then select it. All of this is automatic after the first time you use this web site. Then your password should be automatically remembered by your computer, too.

It will also remember different accounts on the same computer!

Once you’ve signed in, it will take you to a screen that asks you to activate a date. This is the place you control what date you are working on. You click on activate date to begin logging your foods.

If you want to go back and add foods to the day before you just click on the applicable date and hit ”change date.” You’ll not be charged another token.

Once you have activated a date, you will come to the Nutrition Log below, and will need to add your first personal food to your personal food list. Adding a food to your food list, prevents you from having to look it up again, and can be added to your daily diet by literally two clicks. So in the beginning build up your personal foods list.

In order to build up your personal foods list, you first have to select a food. Let’s assume that you began the morning with some chocolate covered raisins, 10 of them. You’d go to "Search for a Food" type in "raisins," and hit "search."

You can leave the keyword blank and when you hit search you will see the entire database, all 103 pages of them. 7,000 foods in all.

 

After you click on "search" after typing in" raisins," you see a list in blue. Search for the exact one that corresponds to what you ate. As it turns out chocolate covered raisins are in the database. Select “add to personal foods.”

Click on "add to personal foods list." "Add to log" is for one time foods, and for checking out foods before you eat them. You can always delete either later if you want. So click on "add to personal foods."

It will then ask you to put in the portion that you normally eat. Since 10 chocolate covered raisins happened to be this patient’s portion, only 10 pieces were necessary and so he selected that. Click on 1 cup to see the other portions in a drop down menu.

Then select 10 pieces, and one portion and hit “add food.”

Good, you have successfully added a food to your personal foods list.

The screen shown below shows the new entry on your personal foods list. If you need to delete one, then click on personal foods to the upper right and hit “delete.”

Then to actually add that personal food to today’s menu, you hit “add to the nutrition log,” from the "Personal Foods List."

The “create a food” is used when you do not find a particular food in the database, and the label you have on the item from the store includes most of its nutrients. In this case, you click on “create a food” and it will allow you to enter a new food in your own personal foods list. Practice it, you can hit back without saving it. We'll go over that soon.

Click on "Add to nutritional log." You will see the next screen below.

Notice below the chocolate covered raisins and click on “Add.”

After you click on "Add" that is all you'll need to do to add a food from your personal foods list. You will then see your nutritional log for today.

The “Personal Foods List” is always accessible at the top of the home page, you will see the total list, and see how easy it is to delete any one item at any time.

You also can search the database for a new food, or "create a food." I'll now explain what "create a food" means. Often you buy foods with nutrient labels on them. Although not as extensive as our database, they have all the information on their label to accomplish all diets except PKU. Calories, Protein, Potassium, Fat, and Sodium are on every label. If protein is not zero, the phenylalanine is not zero, so PKU patients must not use labelled foods because the phenylalanine content is not required on a label.

I'll show you create a food. Click on "create a food."

After finishing your input, you hit "insert," and you see the next screen. The new food has been added. I have added a protein powdered drink here. Don't worry if you can't fill in all the rows. Anything not filled in becomes zero. In dieting, except for PKU patients, the important items are calories, protein, sodium, fat, carbs (carbohydrates), potassium, and those are on all labels. Phenylalanine is not on food labels. PKU patients can not use "create a food," for this reason.

You input all the numbers from the label. Don't put in percentages of Daily Allowances, just raw numbers associated with the appropriate line. Then click on "insert," and it will part of your personal food list. The personal foodlist will look like this:

Now click on "Add" next to the Pharma powdered protein. You will see this screen:

 

The protein drink requires 8 oz of skim milk, so next we add that.

Type "skim milk" in the search box, and hit "search."

Follow through with a click "Add to Nutrition Log" as before and select the skim milk as before, and then you must Select at the top right "nutrition log, and it will look like this:

 

This patient was able to make it to dinner time with only these foods to eat, and so at dinner time the patient was able to eat a home made hamburger. To do that you must type in "hamburger." and hit "search." It looks like this:

When you do that you see these results:

Add one to your personal food's and notice that the McDonald's hamburger is on there, and in fact, the whole McDonald's menu can be accessed by typing "McDonald's."

Here we will select a large hamburger made at home, and you will see.

 

Click on add, you can check it later, even delete it, if you find it was the wrong choice.

You will then see:

 

 

And then this patient also drank a Coca Cola.

Here you must search under cola. Pepsi and Coke are the same nutritionally.

You can type in “McDonald’s” and "search" and it will give you the entire menu from McDonald's.. Investigate a Big Mac on your own.

Under Search for foods type in “cola.”

Hit “Search.”

Here’s what you’ll see.

 

He made his selection as "Carbonated beverage, cola, with higher caffeine," even though it was simply a coke. If you drink decaffeinated Coke, then select the line above it, Carbonated beverage, cola, without caffeine. Pepsi is the same calorie-wise. It is even has a line for cola, diet, with or without caffeine. There are no calories in caffeine.

Click on “Carbonated beverage, cola, with higher caffeine” and add that to your personal foods list, too. You’ll see:

Select 12 oz for the portion size, if its a normal can of coke. Plastic bottles are 16 or 20 oz, you must check the label. If it were at 18 oz, you would leave the portion at 1 oz and select 18 portions. Let's says its a 12 oz can.

A user could accept the 1 oz portion, and then in the number of portions put 12, or 20 depending on the size of the bottle.

You see it gives you the ability to pick one can 12 fl oz. Since this patient usually drinks the whole can, he selected that one. Then the portion became one.

The "Personal Foods List" became.

You are best compiling a personal food list, because most people tend to eat the same type of foods. Any one person will eat only approximately 20-30 type of foods only. It changes over time, but your personal food list is very valuable because it makes adding it to the daily total very easy, two clicks.

So now click on "Add to Nutritional Log," to add them both in to today's nutritional log. It will take two clicks for each item. Then in the upper right hit "nutrition log," and you'll see this:

So there you have a daily intake. This patient took in 809 calories, 596 mg of sodium, and 54 grams of protein. Unfortunately also 2.3 grams of phenylalanine, and so this would be unacceptable for PKU patient only. He did it with the help of a protein supplement., which was mixed with milk, and blended to a foam by a blender. Everyone can choose what works for them. Everyone will be different.

Of course this does not apply to phenylketonurics. No protein supplements may be used that might contain phenylalanine.

There you have your daily intake, and you repeat this daily for a week and I will now show you how to produce a graph, because losing weight, controlling intake of sodium, or whatever is the goal, must be done every day, so it is important to know that the gains made on one day, for example, are not lost on another.

So click on “home” at the top of the screen. And then click on “graphs.”

 

On the nutrition log, you have the option to change the date. If you go to a past date to change something, then it does not charge you a token, as mentioned above. This is especially useful when you ate and went to bed before adding in every thing.

 

Anyone who was able to get through the day with this amount of food would lose weight. Everyone will be different and so that is why seeing YOUR list is the key to weight management success, and 2 gm sodium diets.

What would work for one patient may not work for another. YOU must find what best suits you.

Finally by hitting “graphs” at the top right of the home page, you will see a graph of the calories eaten that day. You’ll also see the other days that you’ve filled in.
This one was done after logging food in for five days, and shows the calories per day. It was done in the middle of 7/9/2006 and so that is why that one is so low.

You can also get a graph of your protein intake, and others by selecting the drop down menu next to calories. Select “protein,” click “submit.”

You can do the same with sodium. Select “sodium” and hit “submit.”

Then hit "home" and "Nutrition log," and you are able to see all the foods you ate today, and study them. You will find that some foods that have high calories are really not worth eating when you see the amount of calories in them. Shape your diet until you are able to get numbers that are consistent with the diet you are trying to keep.

These are the caloric value of various exercises to show how many calories certain types of exercises burn. In a diet that includes added exercise this is approximately how many calories are burned.

Exercise counts: How much energy are you using? Check out the amount of
calories burned in an hour for some common exercises and daily activities,
based on a 150-pound person.

Activity	Calories burned
Aerobics	480
Bicycling ( < 10 mph)	290
Bicycling ( > 10 mph)	>590
Jumping rope	750
Light gardening/yard work	330
Running/jogging (5 mph)	590
Sitting	81
Sleeping	45
Stretching	180
Swimming (slow freestyle laps)	510
Typing	102
Walking (3.5 mph)	280
Walking (4.5 mph)	460
Weight lifting (vigorous effort)	440
Sources: CDC, American Heart Association, American Cancer Society