How To Make Your Own Diet Plan

I agree. This kind of analysis is too time consuming and too "anal." It's certainly good to do to check your getting all the nutrients you need -- by entering an occasional day, but everyday?

Best work out a "model day" using tools such as this and then just stick to your model. Very simple and easy way to do it.
Cheers
~Mike

I'm anal-retentive enough for something like this, and do tend to calculate calories/macro-nutrient ratio when eating things I'm not already familiar with, just to make sure I'm not way off-base in how much I'm eating in a day.

But two things make this very difficult for me to sustain as a full plan: the first is eating out. At my age in my city, eating (and drinking...) out are integral parts of most people's social lives. Were I to give that up completely, there'd be no casual lunch chats with my office-mates, no dinner to catch up with friends, and no Saturday night out. When thinking about what changes I'd be willing to make for the rest of my life, that was not one of them. I'll make healthier choices, but I won't prepare everything I eat.

The second is that while I'm anal enough for this, I'm probably *too* anal for it. I find that when I calculate exactly how much I eat (and not just to see what one serving of cereal looks like), I get exceptionally picky over hitting the ratio I want and the exact calorie tally I want, to the point of wrapping up immense pride and guilt in it. When my friends (and even my nutritionist) catch me logging, I get in big trouble because they see it as a path from careful eating to disordered eating. In my case, I worry they might be right.

I actually made a "food diary" for myself using Excel - and I track durn near everything: calories, fat (total and saturated), sodium, carbohydrates, protein, cholesterol, fiber, calcium and sugar. I added iron later, when I started feeling "dauncy" (thank you Lucy Ricardo, for that word!)

In order for me not to have to bring a stack of cereal boxes, labels, etc., down to the computer with me every time I want to make an entry, I keep a second page (worksheet) in the document that lists everything I have eaten at least once, since I tend to go in spurts with favorites. This way, all the information has been added once, and all I have to do is copy the line from page 2, and paste it into the appropriate space on page 1.

This method, while time-consuming, and more than a bit anal, has not only helped me lose weight, but it's given me great insight to my eating habits, helping to pinpoint areas where I need to improve (like the addition of the iron).

I wonder if all this tracking would help me live longer, or if I'd find it all so boring and tedious that it would just seem that way...

Seriously, I am someone who finds noting where I'm at during the day with different food groups does help me to know when I've had too little of something or when I should stop before I have too much - but with help from a nutritionist I know how many portions I should be eating, based on my metabolism, for each of fruits, veg, protein, dairy, fat, grains, and I know how what qualifies as a portion for most of the foods I eat. And I find that just jotting down what I've had after a meal or snack is all I need to do. I think this is pretty much the same as Mike's idea of having a model.

I wish I had the commitment to track my food on a daily basis; I'm sure I'd be able to lose weight faster, but I just can't bring myself to do it (lazy).

Like Jim said, it's what keeps you interested. I'm like Laura. I also generalte least squares fit of weight and percent body fat over a (roughy) one-month window and generate graphs.

Anal? Yup! ^_^ But, it works for me...

Good post, but honestly, the best plan is to REALLY have a plan, and to follow it, change your habits and be strict with yourself on the long term.

Entangled said:
I get in big trouble because they see it as a path from careful eating to disordered eating. In my case, I worry they might be right.[...]

Listen to your inner voice of wisdom :) Like you said, you've got to have a life as well. We can't be counting every teeny thing. If you have a model day, you've got a very flexible mental map of where you are and if you're ticking enough health boxes.

One of my favorite maxims is "It's what you do MOST of the time that matters." Good basic habits are the key -- not analysing every last thing.

A good daily model can easily make sure you hit any calorie targets, fruit and veg targets etc so you can relax about food. That's important so we don't step over the line between health concerns and eating disorders.

Have a plan -- you know it makes sense :)

Cheers
~Mike

Laura said:
This method, while time-consuming, and more than a bit anal, has not only helped me lose weight, but it's given me great insight to my eating habits, helping to pinpoint areas where I need to improve (like the addition of the iron).[...]

I agree the tool is very useful. Just not everyday :) It's great to be able to enter a typical day and see if you're covering your basic nutritional needs. Very valuable.

~Mike

soozeequeue said:
but with help from a nutritionist I know how many portions I should be eating, based on my metabolism, for each of fruits, veg, protein, dairy, fat, grains, and I know how what qualifies as a portion for most of the foods I eat. And I find that just jotting down what I've had after a meal or snack is all I need to do.[...]

Sounds like a good idea... just watch those grains and dairy...!! Big issues with these food groups but that's another story :)

~Mike

I sort of did this when I first started recovering from anorexia/bulimia. It actually served a couple of purposes, first of all so my therapist and nutritionist could see that I was actually eating, and eating enough; second of all, there were also spaces for me to write where I was when I ate, who was around, how I felt afterwards, if I had the urge to restrict or purge, and if I actually did restrict or purge. The mental/emotional part is also important, especially if you have an ED or another food issue.

Thanks, Mike.

What I'm struggling with right now is actually more of trying to relax the guilt without changing the eating habits. I generally already had healthy habits (growing up without butter, bread, sugar or salt on hand and six years of veganism will make that pretty natural), so there wasn't really anywhere to go from there besides learning what a portion size looked like, being a bit more aware of hidden sugars, and dropping the alcohol and dinners out (the last one? I made a conscious decision it wasn't really going to happen).

I'm pretty sure I'm at what I want to weigh (5'2" ~127 - I have a large bone structure and a lot of muscle mass for my size), though, so I don't really need to be creating a deficit and sticking to super strict limits. Took me more than a year to get there from 140, mostly because I did it almost entirely through excercise and was unwilling to change anything I couldn't live with forever. (ie not drinking or going out. also crash diets. ew.)

Though it's hard to know exactly if I'm maintaining/losing/gaining since I threw out my scale somewhere in the process. That was definitely a moment of listening to what's right for me, impersonal statistical surveys be damned.

sparkpeople.com allows me to input my meal plans, works out the calorie total and also the calories per meal and shows me where my percentages are coming from. i prefer it to using an, imho, boring excel spreadsheet because it's easier, less prone to mess up, the "file" doesn't get corrupted or doesn't save, and foods are already in the spark people database. if something isn't then i just add it to my sparkpeople account.

i do use it everyday because it helps me be accountable and honest about what i'm really eating. without it, i'd probably underestimate my calorie intake. it helps having some structure of my meals otherwise i'd have food here and there throughout the day and would end up eating a lot of calories. i don't feel anal about it - weighing my food does that job. i have a history of restricting & bingeing and i dont feel obssessed with my macro-nutrient percentages or calories when i track them. the only thing that has truely made me "recover" from my ed was focusing less on food and more on exercise and viewing food as fuel and not so much as a luxury. when i start to think of certain foods as a "luxury" or "special" - thats when i want to over-eat them.

tracking my cals shows me just how much of my daily cal total unhealthy foods take up and make me realise that it's not worth it because i can eat more, feel fuller and healthier eating good foods instead of junk.

Wow... that makes my use of fitday seem almost lazy in comparison. I just stick to a minimum number of protein grams and a maximum calorie count and let everything else sort itself out. I can't stick to a pre-made plan, plus I like to be able to accomidate occasional treat without planning to eat junk food.

Any easier (free) way to do this is this website: http://www.sparkpeople.com

This website has been VERY helpful to me and I would highly recommend it.

In addition to tracking calories, fat, carbs, etc., for you, NutritionData.com also has some cool tools if you're interested in tracking things like macronutrient ratios, nutrient density, calorie density, omega-6:omege-3 ratios, inflammation factors, or other info about your diet. It doesn't require any more effort than logging in the foods--you just get a more comprehensive report when you click "analyze." You can also generate lists of foods that meet certain criteria. It's definitely for the detail-oriented (sounds better than "anal"!) but I find it fascinating.

As far as tracking every bite, I couldn't do it for more than a few days but if I'm struggling, it helps me get back on track.

I just want to second Becky J's suggestion -- in fact, it's what I came here (from my RSS reader) to post! Sparkpeople.com is a great website and it's totally free. Besides the nutrition tracker, they have forums and other motivational tools to keep you on track. With their help (and without any fad diets!) I've shrunk from 234 pounds and a size 20 to 180 pounds and a size 12 in ten months. I love SP, and I'd recommend them to anyone.

The point of this - is... It is NOT a food diary . It is a plan! You design it before you eat.

I find using Sparkpeople and FitDay far too time consuming - like scrolling thru about a zillion different versions of oatmeal. (great sites though).

Instead, I design a few plans, stick them on the fridge -- and that's it. No getting on the computer every day to update every single thing I ate.

I have to agree with Mike, I think this is quite labor intensive. The only way I could conquer my weight loss/healthy eat plan was to take everything in small chunks. One week I gave up sugar, the next week I stopped eating chips, the next week I stopped eating after 7:30...this simplistic approach was the one thing that helped me create success. I wish everyone well!

Yeah, the spreadsheet approach is a gigantic pain in the ass. I've tried it. The most effective thing I've done on my diet is find a tool that makes it easy to track everything I eat. TheDailyPlate.com is a good free one. I also used MyCalorieCounter.com. My favorite thus far is CalorieKing.com only because it has the best database of food items.

You dont need to track every calorie, just an entry for everything you eat. This will give you a really good picture of your diet progress. Its all just math... calories in vs calories out. If you don't have the information at hand, you wont know how to fix things if your diet doesnt work.

I cannot plan my meals. Drives me crazy.

I do try to eat healthfully and enter my food into a program (DietPower) that gives me my Calorie count as well as my nutrient count. I enter during the day and might tweak the rest of the day on what it says.

Planning my meals though, that makes me hate eating healthfully and is no way going to last.

Let me clarify.... I have my spreadsheet on my computer, and I'll use it for a week or two, religiously, if I feel myself getting off track, or if, like now, I'm training for an event.

Most of the time I eat logically - choosing fruits (or a tiny piece of dark chocolate) if I'm craving sweets. Drinking lots of water. Eating a balanced diet. It's when I feel myself spiraling out of control that the logging comes out, and it helps me regain that control that I so desperately need.

One of the posters mentioned that it's a good tool for those of us with an eating disorder - I'm a serious binger - so it's a useful tool for me.

Tracking my calorie intake in a food diary was the only thing that ever worked for me. Once I found out it worked well for me, I bought every single diet diary off the self. I have a big pile of them sitting under my TV. Everytime I stop recording what I eat I gain the weight back. I guess I must be pretty anal retentive, but there's something so satisfying about looking back on your day and seeing exactly how many calories you ate. It's like a mini vicotry at the end of each day.

What I found works for me is just to have a general idea of how much I should eat in a day. I know about what my daily calorie intake should be and I try to split it:

1/6 - breakfast
1/3 - lunch
1/6 - afternoon snack
1/3 - dinner

I can adjust on a daily basis. For example, if I know I'm going to have a big dinner I cut down at lunch and if I had a big lunch, I cut down at dinner.

GJ

http://www.60in3.com

The plan idea is quite interesting, actually. I'm of those people who tend to often eat the same things over and over, both because I like them and because it's easy (student + job = not much time to juggle around with cooking experiments and very different things regularly :)). I too have been using Fitday and, more recently, SparkPeople, but I always end up not doing it because it gets tedious--and because I need to spend extra time on it to figure out to what French foods do the US foods correspond to, in the case of brands! More than often, I just journal my food intake on paper, and since I know what I eat, I approximatively know how many calories that make. I leave it at that and try to not add junk like cookies etc. to the list. So far, it's been working, at least.

i have to say that i do not use spark people as a food diary, i use it as a plan. i plan my meals the day before to know what i will be eating so i dont end up eating more calories than i should. if i used it as a food diary, i would end up straying anyway and realising at the end of the day that i've eaten too much. so i plan my meals one-two days ahead of time.

additionally, i can save my favourite foods and input them into my plans at the click of a button instead of searching and selecting the item i want everytime i eat that food. i live in the uk and not all the foods i eat are on their database, yet it is very easy for me to use. i would assume it's way more easier for someone based i the states where lots of their foods are listed there.

i'd say people generally eat the same kinds of foods instead of trying totally different meals everyday - they most likely try variations of things they've had before. so adding those foods to your favourites list cuts out the search time. i cant see how selecting your saved foods from a drop down menu, specifying the amount you've eaten and clicking enter is more time consuming and difficult than opening an excel worksheet, scroll through all of the foods that you have listed, selecting that row/cell, copying it, going to your food plan worksheet (which i would assume is seperate to the one in which your food list is kept) and copying it into the appropriate position.

Jim said:
The point of this - is... It is NOT a food diary . It is a plan! You design it before you eat.[...]

Yep... good idea, sorry if I caused any confusion.

Just another plug for sparkpeople. I just find planning and keeping track of what I eat helps me to make better choices. I found it easier than other sites I'd tried, plus you can personalize it to make it increasingly easy and quick for you to use (i.e. adding your favourites and manually entering stuff you eat all the time).

I encourage Seniors to keep it simple with the 3 x 5 rule - five servings per day of each of the 3 food groups:
- protein (about 1 ounce per serving of meat and dairy)
- fruits and vegetables (preferably some of each, just one juice)
- grains (cereal, bread, pasta)

Yes, I know that isn't strictly how foods are grouped or what the food rules say, but this works pretty well for the Seniors that I'm coaching on Healthy Eating.

Having just a simple notebook and pen works for me and makes it easier than ever to keep track on what I am eating.

^^ i used to do what weight loss did a year ago and it worked for me for a while. i had to drop it when it became too obsessive. it turned into a diary/food-tracker, i think that was the main reason it was unhealhty - there were too many emotions tied up with planning the meal, tracking the cals, how i felt if i messed up etc. if people are going to keep a food diary, imo, have it strictly to plan food &/or exercise. dont use it as your weight loss journey journal too. it made food "emotional" for me.

dotm said:
I encourage Seniors to keep it simple with the 3 x 5 rule - five servings per day of each of the 3 food groups: - protein (about 1 ounce per serving of meat and dairy) - fruits and vegetables (preferably some of each, just one juice) - grains (cereal, bread, pasta)[...]

Loving the simplicity of this idea... nice one.
~Mike.

On a similar note to dotm lovely simple system... the Zone Diet block method is a good way to have a simple system... once you've learned it -- you can tweak the carb/prot ratios easily, you don't have to have equal blocks. And even easier is the eyeball method.

Just watch those grains and dairy folks... ouch :-)

speaking of diet-tracking websites/software, I have tried plenty and never found a decent, easy to use one that has a good DB of foods. I'd love to see a post comparing the various calorie-tracking sites!

I don't know why it never occurred to me before this that I could create my OWN plan.

I have used Weight Watchers and Sparkpeople, and have been successful on both for varying amounts of time, but I always used them as diaries, not plans. I always felt like I was going into the day blindly and catching up or making up at the end of the day, based on what I had or hadn't eaten.

I've often wished I could follow a set plan, but I've never found a diet with meal plans that I could relate to or that I could work into my family's routine. Why did it never occur to me before reading this post that I could create my own meal plan based on food my family and I actually eat?

What I think I am going to do is create 14 days worth of meal plans based on the food my family eats regularly. I'll probably keep a database of meals and calories, but I'll input information into Sparkpeople and mostly go with that. It will be "The Deirdre Diet." Maybe I can even market it, LOL.

Deirdre said:
I don't know why it never occurred to me before this that I could create my OWN plan.[...]

Hope it's of some use.

If you're not crazy about using spreadsheets there is a simple website that allows you to track calories as well. It is FitDay and can be found at http://www.fitday.com . I've been using it for over a year and it works great for me. Very comprehensive database of foods, the ability to add your own foods and best of all free.

Can somebody here please tell me a website that i can make my own diet plan.
Please sombody help me!!

One of the most important ways to stay on a diet is to write it down. As a personal trainer I notice a huge difference between those that write what they eat down and those that don't

I kind of did this. In two weeks, I've lost 2 kilograms. I made one spreadsheet where I record what I've eaten and the caloric value of the food as well as my 'Calories out' which are my base metabolic rate and the caloric value any activities I do. On the second sheet, I calculate my total caloric deficit and projected weight loss. On the third sheet, I record my weight (I only weigh myself once a week). The fourth sheet is a chart which plots my progress. I designed it as an experiment to test the formulas I used to predict weight lost versus my actual weight loss. Structuring it like a science experiment keeps it interesting for me.