Food diary and calorie counter

Why keep a food diary

Once your meals are written down, you see what is easy to miss: snacks, cooking oil, drinks, “just a bite” at the weekend. Reviews of research show that people who log their food regularly lose more weight on average than those who don’t. You don’t need perfect accuracy — consistency matters more.

A diary helps with any goal: when losing weight, to keep a calorie deficit without hunger or guesswork; when building muscle, to get enough protein and calories; when maintaining, to notice how food affects your weight and how you feel.

What Fitaline calculates

• Calories and macros. A food’s values per 100 g are scaled to your portion — in grams, pieces or milliliters.
• Daily goal. Based on your basal metabolic rate and your goal: lose, maintain or gain weight. Calories from the workouts you log are added to the goal — the Energy balance card shows how much you can still eat.
• Macro balance. The shares of protein, fat and carbs in your diet are compared with the targets for your goal: more protein when losing weight, more carbs for training when gaining.
• Fiber and water. The fiber target is about 14 g per 1,000 kcal; water is 35 ml per kilogram of body weight.
• Glycemic load. For every meal you see which food raises blood sugar the most and which portion to cut. After a workout the limit is softer: muscles take up carbs more actively.
• Timing. An hourly calorie chart shows when you eat the most.

How to keep a food diary in Fitaline

1. Find a food by search or tap it in Quick picks — your most frequent foods of the last month.
2. Enter the portion in grams, pieces or milliliters — the app does the math.
3. Check the Energy balance card: it tells you how much you can still eat today.

Can’t find a food? Create it by name — calories, macros and glycemic index are filled in automatically, and your diary entries are recalculated. You can also enter the values from the label yourself.

Tips for an accurate diary

• Log right after you eat — details fade by the evening.
• Weigh your food at least for the first few weeks: you will learn to estimate portions by eye.
• Don’t forget oil, sauces, sugar in tea and caloric drinks — common “invisible” calories.
• Keep logging at weekends: they are what most often wipes out a weekly deficit.
• Compare whole weeks, not single days: swings of a couple of hundred calories are normal.

Works offline too

Fitaline is a web app: open it in the browser or add it to your phone’s home screen. Entries made without a connection are stored on the device and sent as soon as you are back online. To get a starting calorie target, try the calorie calculator.