| |
|
Foods, Meals, and Nutrients |
|
-
How do I record my daily foods and meals?
To record what you've eaten for a day, click the Food Diary link at the left of the program window. To add a food or meal for the selected day, click the Insert Foods button near the top-right of the screen.
The "Add Foods/Meals to Your Food Diary" window will open where you can pick the foods that you have eaten. You can leave this food selection window open while you add foods to your food diary.
To top
-
What is the "Recent Foods" list and how can I take advantage of it?
Most people eat the same things frequently (especially when on a diet). Weight-By-Date Pro automatically keeps track of what you're eating. So, as you record food entries into the Food Diary, Weight-By-Date Pro puts these items in the "Recent Foods" list.
After just a few days of recording meals, this will be a big time-saver. Once you've used the program for a couple of weeks, you'll rarely have to search the food database.
How do you use the Recent Foods list? When you click the "Insert Food" button to make a new food diary entry, click on "Recent Foods" at the top. You'll see every food that you've eaten for the last 14 days. Now you can select from this list instead of searching.
To top
-
Does Weight-By-Date Pro come with a database of foods and nutritional values?
Weight-By-Date Pro contains a database of over 40,000 foods, with 850 brands and 130 restaurants. Each food contains data for calories, carbs, fat, and many additional nutrients. We also have the ability to update this list of foods in future program updates that you can download from the Weight-By-Date web site.
To top
-
Can I import foods from other sources into the database?
Unfortunately there isn't any way to import foods from another source. The problem basically boils down to standardization -- there is no standard file format that manufacturers agree upon, and many don't even list the nutrients in the same order.
We're not ruling the possibility out, but without any type of standardization, this makes it very difficult to create an import feature.
To top
-
How do I add my own custom foods and meals?
Weight-By-Date Pro gives you a way to add your own foods for use in the software, with no limit to the number of foods that you can add. So if you have the food label for a particular food that is not already in the list, just add it to the database and it will instantly be available in your food diary. Here's how to do it:
 1. Click "Food Setup" at the left of the program window.
2. Click the "New Food" button and enter your new food's details and nutrient amounts in the "Amount" column.
3. Use "% Daily Value" column if you are entering from a food label and you don't know the actual amount. Enter the percentages and Weight-By-Date Pro will calculate the nutritional values for you.
4. Click OK to save the new food's details.
* You can also add a custom food from the Food Diary. Just look for the "Create New Food" button at the bottom of the window when you are searching for foods to put into your Food Diary.
To top
-
What restaurants are in the food database?
Weight-By-Date's food database contains thousands of items from many popular fast food restaurants, including: A&W®, Arby's®, Boston Market®, Burger King®, Chick-fil-A®, Church's Chicken®, Dairy Queen®, Hardee's®, Jack in the Box®, KFC®, Long John Silver's®, McDonald's®, Pizza Hut®, Sonic®, Starbucks®, Steak 'N Shake®, Taco Bell®, and Wendy's®.
There are lots of regional food chains in the food list as well. As more data becomes available, we usually add to this list once or twice per year. They are made available through the free program updates.
To top
-
How do I delete a food for a day?
From the Food Diary, click on the food in the list that you wish to delete. Then click the Delete button. That's all there is to it.
To top
-
How do I select foods that I have planned in advance (in the Meal Planner)?
From the Food Diary, click the "Today's Plan" button above the list area. A new screen will pop up, where you can click on the check box next to each food that you want to insert into the current day of the Food Diary. Finally, click OK when you are finished.
To top
-
Can I copy and paste foods from one day to another in the Journal?
Yes, you can. Here's how to do it:
1. Select the foods that you want to copy by clicking and dragging your mouse over the little gray square to the left of each food entry. When you do this, the rows that you have selected will be highlighted.
2. Put your mouse over the selected rows, right-click, choose "Copy Rows", and then "Normal Copy".
3. Advance the food diary to the date where you want to paste these food entries.
4. Right click anywhere in the area where the food entries are normally listed, and choose "Paste Rows". You should see your foods have been copied over to this day.
To top
-
How do I change my nutrition limits and goals?
To select or edit your daily nutritional targets, click on Nutrient Limits under My Settings at the left of the program window.
You can define a daily and per-mail target for each nutrient. The list of nutrients on the top of the window is the nutrients that you are tracking in your Food Diary. Below that you will see the rest of the nutrients in the database, should you wish to define targets for any of these nutrients as well.
Entering the nutrients is much like entering the nutritional values for a custom food, except that calories from fat, carbs, and protein are not automatically calculated for you.
You're not required to have target values for every nutrient in the Food Diary. If there are nutrients that do not have a target, simply enter an "N" for the value or leave the value for that nutrient blank.
To top
-
What are Net Calories?
Net Calories are the difference between the calories that you consume and the calories that you burn. In other words:
Net Calories = Calories In - Calories Out
Calories In = Calories that you consume throughout the day from food.
Calories Out = Calories that you burn through exercise as well as the calories that you burn at rest (your BMR or Basal Metabolic Rate).
A positive number for Net Calories means that you ate more calories than you burned. A negative number means that you burned more calories than you ate.
The technical formula for Net Calories is:
Net Calories = Calories Consumed - Calories Burned - BMR.
If you prefer to keep it simple and do not want the BMR to be factored into the calculation, there is an option for this. Choose Program Options from the Settings menu, Click the Journal tab, and then Deselect the "Factor My BMR into the Net Calories Calculation" option.
To top
-
Can I record my recipes and see nutrient totals for each recipe?
Yes! You can use recipes in the classic sense (for when you're preparing something) and you can also use recipes to group food items together in a meal.
Here's how to create a recipe:
1. Click "Recipes" at the left of the program window.
2. Click the "New Recipe" button below the "Select a Recipe" field, and then type a name for this recipe in the window that appears.
3. Define the Number of Servings. Each recipe can represent more than one serving. For example, a cake might have 12 pieces, or a pizza might have 8 slices. Enter the number of pieces, slices, portions, etc. in the # Servings in Recipe field and click OK when you are done
4. Select the Ingredients/Foods. Click the Insert Ingredients button above the Ingredients/Foods Used list and you will see the familiar Food Selection window. Just as you do with your Food Diary, enter the number of servings and double-click on each food that belongs to this recipe.
5 (optional). Enter Preparation Instructions. If you like, you can enter instructions for preparing the recipe. Click the Instructions button to do it.
To top
-
How do I change the nutrients that are shown in my Food Diary?
Weight-By-Date Pro allows you track up to ten different nutrients in your Food Diary. Of these ten nutrients, you can also configure up to five custom values, which can be helpful if your diet is on a point-tracking system or requires nutrients that aren't included in Weight-By-Date Pro.
To select your ten nutrients or to add custom values, click Nutrient Choices under My Settings at the left of the program window.
From here you'll see the ten nutrients that you're currently tracking. Pick a row and open up the nutrient field in that row to change the nutrient. Put your most important nutrients in the first slots and they will appear first in the Food Diary.
Click OK when you're ready to close the Nutrient Selections window.
To top
-
Can I print my food diary to show to my doctor, dietitian, or personal trainer?
Yes, you can easily print each day of your food diary by clicking the "Print" button above the list of foods in your Food Diary. Your doctor, dietitian, or trainer will be able to see what you've eaten each day, along with your daily nutritional totals.
To top
-
Can I keep track of the nutritional supplements that I'm taking?
Yes -- these are treated as foods that you log into your food diary. The pre-loaded foods database doesn't come with many supplements, but you can add them to the database yourself very easily.
To top
-
Can I keep track of my water intake?
Yes. Near the bottom of your food diary there is box where you can enter the number of glasses or cups of water that you have had. You can also use the buttons to the right of the box to increase or decrease the value.
To top
|
|
Weight-By-Date is an easy-to-use weight loss program that runs on any Windows PC. You don't have to be online to use it and it's totally private. 
