Use CalorieLookup.com each day to compare the calories you are eating to the calories you are burning. Strive to burn more calories than you eat each day.
- Switch to the Food Diary by clicking on the Food tab.
- Use the search box to find each food that you have eaten. If you can't find a certain food, try shortening your search term. For example, search for “apple” instead of “apples” (leave off the “s”). If you still can't find a certain food, you can add the food to CalorieLookup.com. If you are getting too many results, try adding a search term, for example “fried egg” instead of just “egg').
- After searching for a food, choose a food from the list by clicking on it to select. The nutrition details will appear. Note that you can click on the link for the food to go to the details page for that food. To get back to the diary from the details page, click the Diary link.
- Some foods have different portions associated with them, such as large or small sizes. Choose the appropriate portion from the portion drop down. The nutrition information will update to reflect the selected portion.
- Set the number of portions that you ate in the amount text box. You can use decimals. For example, if you only ate half of an apple, you can enter “.5” for the amount. Hit the enter key, or click outside of the amount text box and the nutrition information will update to reflect the new amount.
- Click the “Add to Food Diary” button to add the food to the diary. Repeat steps 1-6 for each food that you eat in a day.
- The diary keeps a running total of calories eaten that day. Note that changes that you make to your diary are automatically saved. There is no “save” button.
- Switch to Exercise Diary by clicking on the Exercise tab.
- If you have signed up for an account, an estimate of the number of calories that you burn without extra exercise will already be visible in the Exercise Diary, listed as your BMR. By default t is set to a normally active day, such as a day when you have gone to work. You can change the amount of activity you got in a day by using the drop down.
- If you had a work out you can add the calories burned in the workout by picking it from the list. The calories burned information appears to the right. If you have an account your current body weight will already be set,
otherwise you will have to enter your body weight in the text box.
- Enter the number of minutes you worked out in the minutes text box. Hit the enter key, or click outside of the minutes text box and the calories burned will update to reflect the new amount.
- Click “Add to Exercise Diary” to add the exercise to you diary.
- The diary keeps a running total of calories burned that day.
- Note that chances that you make to your diary are automatically saved. There is no “save” button.
- You must have an account and be signed in to track your weight.
- Many people find that weighing themselves once per week at the same time per week works for them, but you can weigh in as often as once per day if desired.
- Try to weigh yourself about the same time of the day each time you weigh in.
- Switch to the weigh in diary by clicking the Weigh In tab.
- Enter your new weight in pounds and click the “Add” button.
- Your new weight will appear in the graph below. If you made a mistake, you can remove a weigh in by clicking the “Remove” button next to the weight.
- Your new weight will be used for calculating calories burned.
If you miss a day entering calorie information into the site, you can choose to simply skip that day. That day will simply be left out of the reports. If you want to enter calorie information for a day you missed, or even a day in the future, you can. This works the same for the food diary and the exercise diary.
- To move the diary back one day, click the “<” to the left of the date in the diary.
- To move the diary forward one day, click the “>” to the right of the date in the diary.
- The current date will stay set until you change it, even on other pages. So if you change the date on the food page, and switch to the exercise page, the exercise diary will be set to the to the same day, and visa versa. The weigh in page also gets set with the new date. The report pages, don't get changed.
- Switch to the calorie burn report by clicking on the Report tab. The calorie burn report will load by default
.
- The calorie burn report shows the calories you ate compared to the calories you burned for the last week.
- The top portion of the report shows your current net calories for the past seven days, including the current day.
- For each day that you entered information in your diary, you can see a bar chart that compares the calories burned versus calories eaten.
- To view the food diary for a particular day, click on the label “Eaten” for the day.
- To view the exercise diary for a particular day, click on the label “burned” for the day.
For days where you did not enter any information in your diary, charts for that day will simply be blank.
- Click on the Report tab. The calorie burn report will load by default.
- Switch to the sources of calories report by clicking on the link “Sources of Calories”.
- The top portion of the report shows the percentage of calories contributed to your diet from Fat, Carbohydrates, Protein, and Alcohol for the past seven days, including the current day.
- For each day that you entered information in your diary, you can see a bar chart that shows the percentage of calories contributed to your diet from Fat, Carbohydrates, Protein, and Alcohol for that day.
- To view the food diary for a particular day, click the date for that day.
- Note that not all foods in the CalorieLookup database have complete nutrition information. Foods with incomplete data are not included in the sources of calories report.
You can add new foods to CalorieLookup by copying nutrition information from a food label. After adding a food you and other CalorieLookup users can use the food in your food diary. You must be signed in to add foods.
- Click on the Food tab to go to the Food diary. Then click on the link “Create Food”.
- Add the name of the food to the description field.
- If the food is a liquid and the serving size is measured in fluid ounces instead of grams, change the serving weight drop down to “ounces”. Most foods are measured in grams, so you should normally leave the drop down set to “grams.”
- Enter the serving description in the Serving Description fields. The first text box is for the number of items in a serving, and the second text box is for the description of the item (such as 3 cookies). You can enter decimals in the number field. For example if a serving is “half a loaf” you can enter “.5” in the first text box, and “loaf” in the second text box.
- Enter the number of calories in the serving.
- If available, enter the rest of the nutrition information into the remaining text boxes. Note that if you do not dill in these fields, they will appear with a question mark in the food labels, and will not be figured into the sources of calories reports. You or another CalorieLookup user can add this information later by editing the food.
- Click “Save”. The page will navigate to the food diary, and the new food will set in the search results.
For foods that you prepare yourself, you can enter the recipe into CalorieLookup. CalorieLookup will estimate the calories in the recipe. After adding a recipe you and other CalorieLookup users can use the recipe in your food diary. You must be signed in to add recipes.
- Click on the Food tab to go to the Food diary. Then click on the link “Create Recipe”.
- The top of the new recipe form works just like the search on the food diary. Search for each ingredient and add it to the recipe. See Searching for Foods for help on searching.
- Add each ingredient in the recipe, and set the amounts in the same manner as setting portions in the food diary.
- Enter the name of the recipe in the description field.
- Enter the number of servings that the recipe makes in the “yields” text box.
- Enter the serving description in the Serving Description fields. The first text box is for the number of items in a serving, and the second text box is for the description of the item (such as 3 cookies). You can enter decimals in the number field. For example if a serving is “half a loaf” you can enter “.5” in the first text box, and “loaf” in the second text box.
- You can add instructions to the recipe as well, if desired. The instructions will appear on the details page for the recipe.
- Click “Save”. The page will navigate to the food diary, and the new recipe will be set in the search results.
You can edit the information for any food entered into CalorieLookup by other CalorieLookup users (and other users can edit the foods that you enter!). Some of the food data for CalorieLookup was imported from the USDA database. You cannot edit the nutrition information for these foods, though you can edit the description. You must be signed in to edit foods.
To edit a food:
- Find the food by searching for it on the food diary page.
- In the details view in the search results area click on the link for the name of the food. This will take you to the details page for the food.
- Scroll down to the Actions section and click the Edit link. This will take you to the edit page for the food. Note that you cannot edit recipes that were entered by other users.
- If the food was entered as a recipe, follow the instructions for Editing Recipes. Otherwise, change the desired values and click the Update Food button. You will be navigated back to the details page for the food.
- You can undo any changes that you or other users have made to a food from the edit page for the food. Scroll to the bottom to see the history for the Edit History for the food. Find the version of the food that you want to keep, and click the Roll Back to Here button.
You can only edit recipes that you entered yourself. You cannot edit other users' recipes. You must be signed in to edit recipes.
- Find the recipe by searching for it on the food diary page.
- In the details view in the search results area click on the link for the description of the recipe. This will take you to the details page for the recipe.
- Scroll down to the Actions section. If you are signed in and you created the recipe, there will be an Edit link. Click the Edit link. This will take you to the edit page for the recipe.
- You can remove, change, and add ingredients. Note that unlike the food diary, these changes do not take effect until you click the Update Recipe button.
- Change the desired values in the other fields and click Update Recipe.
You will be navigated back to the details page for the food.
Tags are a way to easily categorize a food. For example, apples are a kind of fresh fruit, so apples can be tagged with “fresh fruit”. If you are interested in fresh fruit, or want to quickly find a food that may be tagged as fresh fruit, you can see all the foods tagged with “fresh fruit”. Foods are tagged and untagged by CalorieLookup users. Any user can tag or untag any food.
- Click on the Tags Hyperlink to the right of the Search button. The tag cloud will appear where search results usually go, under the search box.
- The tags cloud is a list of clouds with two special properties. First, the tags are in order of most recently used tag first. Second, the font size for each tag represents the relative size of the category, how many foods have been tagged with that tag.
- Click on the Hyperlink for the tag that you are interested in. The tag cloud will be replaced with search results.
- The search results show every food with the selected tag. To go back to the tags cloud you can click the Back To Tags button or click the Tags Hyperlink again.
- Find a food you are interested in. Notice if the food has been tagged.
- Click on the Hyperlink for the tag that you are interested in. The current search results will be replaced with search results for the selected tag.
Note that you must be signed in to add or remove tags.
- Find a food that you want to tag.
- In the tag text box, type in the tag. You can tag any food with any tag, as long as the tag is less then 25 characters. Using an existing tag and creating a new tag work exactly the same, simple type in the tag.
- Click the Tag button. The tag will appear in the tag list.
Note that you must be signed in to add or remove tags.
- In the food diary, find a food that you want to tag.
- To get to the Food Details page, click the description Hyperlink. Alternatively, you can go directly to the tags section, you can click the tags label.
- Scroll down to the Add/Remove Tags section.
- In the tag text box, type in the tag. You can tag any food with any tag, as long as the tag is less then 25 characters. Using an existing tag and creating a new tag work exactly the same, simple type in the tag.
- Click the Tag button. The tag will appear in the tag list.
- This procedure also works on the Food Edit page. Note that you do not need to click the Update button for changes to tags to take effect on the Food Edit page.
Note that you must be signed in to add or remove tags and that you can only remove tags from the Food Details page or the Food Edit Page.
- To get to the Food Details page, click the description Hyperlink. Alternatively, you can go directly to the tags section, you can click the tags label.
- Scroll down to the Add/Remove Tags section.
- Click the check box next to the tags that you want to remove.
- Click the Remove Checked button. The selected tags will be removed.
