ok that may not be the best title but I'd like to be able to track the calories I consume throughout the day, I know I can set the value and then update it during the day, but I was wondering if there is some way (within this site or external recommended sites) that allow me to track the calorie values of foods I commonly eat.

As an example,
this morning I had a bowl of cereal which I looked up on the NSDA to be about 300 cals so I add 300 to the custom calorie counter.

at lunchtime I had a sandwich (350 cals) so I changed the counter to 650.

This evening I'll eat something, look up the calorie value and add it to the counter until I get my daily total.

Tomorrow, if I have the same breakfast, I'll have to look up the calorie values again because I know I'll forget.

So I'd like to be able to record commonly eaten food along with their calorie values for use in this site.

I could do this myself in a spreadsheet, but I was wondering if there is a way of doing it within traineo.

Many thanks,
Steve

I use weight watchers and we use points instead of calories. Every food is assigned a point value based on calories, fat and fiber. You record what you eat each day in the points tracker. I use the flex plan, so I count points. If you eat the same meal many times, you can mark the meal as a favorite, then I think you don't have to keep recording the same thing because you can just select that meal.

I think I've misunderstood the whole calorie thing.

I thought it was for recording how many calories I've had today, but it seems more complicated than that and I can't get my head around it. I can't work out how to change it to a lower number of calories (e.g. so far I've only had 800, but as my slider starts at > 800 I can't set it to 800).

I want to just track the the calories I've consumed through the day by adding them somewhere. It looks like I'll need to track that elsewhere and then update traineo at the end of the day.

I think I'll give the 'diet' feature a miss unless it suddenly makes sense to me.

I don't know about how to track it in Traineo but what I did initially was start a GMail draft (or any web based email would probably work) and I plugged the numbers into it and just left it as a draft. As I go through the day I can add to it or check it to add up the numbers for the day.

@Stephen, if you want a free and detailed calorie tracker, try www.fitday.com. I was using that tool at first when I needed to get a handle on all my consumption and have some help figuring out portion sizes and calorie amounts. then I would come back and update my traineo daily.

Now, I don't even use fitday anymore because I have a better understanding of calorie levels and portion sizes.

Hope that helps!

Thanks for the link to FitDay Jennie, I think I'm going to give that a try...

Thanks Jennie, that's exactly the sort of thing I was looking for.

Out of interest why did you stop using fitday and start using traineo?

Although traineo looks groovier (very web 2.0), fitday seems to be a more mature product.

FitDay was just too much work after a while. Once I had a handle on calories and the amount of food I was eating, I didn't need to "log" my daily intake anymore. The benefits of the community (you guys) here at Traineo far outweighed the tools Fitday had to offer for me at my current point in my weight loss experience.

Plus, I like that the Traineo "team" is constantly making improvements and updates to this site, whereas Fitday has been the same...well for years it seems. But, I found when I was logging daily meals it was a great place to do it, and then I came to Traineo for the community and the ease of use.

I love traineo but for logging what I eat each day I've been using TheDailyPlate (http://www.thedailyplate.com/). It's really easy to use and add new items. I take my caloric totals for each day from MyPlate and put the number into Traineo. I also have my weight and goals synched up between the two systems. It's a great addition to Traineo!