July 17, 2011

The Dreaded Food Log

Every once in a while, I write down what I eat with annoying precision, for a few days.  Then I look over the log and get a feel for habits and patterns I may not have noticed developing. This time I have added notes on how I feel during the day, and factors like being out in the wind that may be affecting how I feel as well. The main point to the exercise this time is to figure out why my energy crashes at certain times of day and peaks at others.  The sine wave seems to connected to meal times, though not exclusively.

So far, the paper journal holds my handwritten scribbles.  Although I can scan back through and pick out trends regarding protein, carbs, fat, caffeine, etc, it would be nice to have a program that automatically generates data without my having to parse it all out by hand.  Ideally, this app would be non-commercial (I hate signing up for services just to test a device) and very simple on the input side.  If I have to get down to measuring cups of veggies and ounces of meat, I will start modifying my behavior as I go.  While I hope the exercise leads me to do just that, I really need to know what my un-modified habits are first.

Any recommendations for free, simple tools with useful data outputs?

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