Recording Food Intake - Counting Calories and/or Carbs

I found the DietPower food journaling program in September 2004, while surfing the net.  I started using it.  I had good success, and still really like it.  

   I have logged all of my food into DietPowerevery day since 9/20/04, today, 2/21/11 makes 2346 consecutive days.

DietPower is my most essential tool for weight-loss and maintenance.……….However, like any tool, it won't be helpful unless………you make, and follow through with, a commitment to consistently use it.

Before using DietPower I tried many times to keep track of my food and calories. That was very hard to do using only paper, a pen, and a calorie dictionary, I was never able to keep doing that for more than a week or so.

Diet Power changed all that for me. As entering all my food was easy, it became an enjoyable Habit. It is now as natural to me as brushing my teeth or making my bed every day. DietPower works with every diet one might care to use,and no matter what specific diet I’m on, I still use DietPower.

Counting calories long-term used to be very time consuming and difficult, however, using a computer software program like DietPower lets one do it with ease. In fact, because of my habitual use of DietPower, counting calories is now a Habit for me.  I’m currently doing a Low-CarbExperiment and DietPower also makes it easy for me to count my carbs.

DietPower is a very small company, and it gives great personal support. There is a free 2 week trial, and the program pretty much explains itself. When I first got it, I downloaded the free 2 weeks and I liked it so much immediately, that I bought it after using it for only 3 days.

Although DietPower is a simple program, learning anything requires effort.Also, installing a habit is not energy free.  One must keep one’s commitment to consistent action for the weeks that it takes to establish the habit

of logging in one’s food. Consistent effort can result in habitual behavior.

 DietPower has a big food dictionary with thousands of foods of all types and brands. For example it has tons of generic granola bars, and if you want to input quickly, you can just pull up whatever appears to be the closest to what you're eating. However, one thing I really I like, is the ease with which I can input the exact info from the label of my favorite food (for example: a specific Atkins bar) into DietPower's food dictionary, and then from that day forward, I have that EXACT information in my program.

I use DietPower’s recipe function all the time.  Although initially DietPower’srecipe dictionary contains a number of recipes,  I must admit that I've never used any of them.  However, I’ve put all of my own recipes into DietPower, by using ingredients from the food dictionary. So I know exactly what the nutrients are in one serving of any of my favorite recipes.  When I eat that serving, or part of it,  I simply input that choice into my food log which then tells me the exact amount of calories, carbs, protein, fat etc. in my food intake.

Another good use for the recipe dictionary is that I can combine foods to makemy usual salad or sandwich; or even combine all the foods of a standard meal including a salad, a main dish, fruit etc. and then just  a few clicks puts all of that food information into my daily food log. 

 DietPower can be used just as it is, and you will want to do that at first until you learn the program well,  but the benefits of individualizing the program are fantastic.

There is a lot of information about DietPower on its online website, and I've found it all to be true.  I have no financial interest in it, and I’ve chosennot to receive any payment for people who buy the program after clicking my DietPower links.

If you buy the program, my advice is to pay the small extra charge for them to ship you a disk. I don't like that "key" process, because it can take a day or two to implement, and having the program disk has really saved me a few times from computer glitches.

Personally, I’m not fond of the metabolism function of DietPower, except as an area of interest.  I find it much more effective to set myself a "constant calorie budget" than let DietPower zigzag my calories up and down.
The program will tell you to eat far too few and then far too many calories.  Perhaps that function works well for large men, but I've found it doesn't work very well for medium size to small women.

The thing to remember is that DietPower is just a tool. 
It doesn't work unless you use it.

If you have questions, feel free to ask them.  You can easily access the DietPower website by clicking the icons located on the top and bottom of this page.

Update, January 2018: DietPower now only seems to work on an older Windows computer, and over the years, it has become relatively obsolete. Although I still choose to use it to journal my daily food, I supplement it with the use of My Fitness Pal, an online food journal which performs similar functions. As of this date, if I were just beginning to learn to use a food journal, my choice would be to use My Fitness Pal.