I was referred by my nurse practitioner to a "Nutrition for a Healthy Weight Class" to help with my weight loss (especially since in 2 weeks I've gained 14 pounds with no change to my diet or activity level; and blood work coming back all normal). I was skeptical; I wanted to see the nutritionist and get a plan through her; I didn't want to sit through a 2-hour long class covering stuff I already knew (omg I can't eat McPukes everyday?!?!?! Who knew!! - although, granted, there was one woman there who had NO idea what "processed food" meant
and it had to be explained to her seeeveral times).
Anyway, most of the stuff covered was stuff I already knew - portion sizes, etc. etc. Same old same old.
What I did like, though, was that she handed out information on the Canada Food Guide. This is something we took in high school, but at the time it was just one piece of paper with the list of food groups and serving sizes. Now it's a booklet with serving numbers, what constitutes a serving, and alternatives/suggestions in a meal. There's also another little bookletty thing with a wheel and you select your gender and age and it tells you how many meat servings a day you should have etc. It also shows you the serving sizes. All very cute and nice to have 'physically' rather than on the internet, you know?
She also gave out the address for the Dietitians of Canada Association, which on their website had a link to this tracker.
Now, I've tried other trackers and this one is very similar to the rest. You have to sign up (it's free) and you plug in your weight and your height, age, gender and activity level and it gives a rough estimate of your BMI and blah blah blah. It has an activity tracker, too. When you enter in a meal (with all the ingredients and amounts of them) it tells you calories, fat, protein, carbs. Then when you do an activity in the activity tracker, it tells you roughly how many calories you burnt and then shows you on your main page your calories and protein and whatnot for the day - MINUS the amount of calories you burnt, giving you a total of calories consumed (after those being burnt). A bit difficult to explain, but similar to other trackers.
What's neat about this one though is you can create meals and the tracker will analyze them just as a dietitian would. It shows you how many servings of each food group you had in a particular meal; calories, fat, sodium, iron, protein, fiber, etc etc etc. It's incredibly thorough.
When you create meals, you can search for food ingredients. I haven't tried many brand names except the Flax Plus cereal I ate this morning. I had orange juice too, but I just punched in "orange juice" - not sure if it would recognize "Tropicana" but I think the main focus of this tracker isn't so much calories but food groups.
Anyway, if anyone is interested, the link is:
https://www.eatracker.ca/default.aspx
I can't remember if we're allowed to share links - and if not, mods I'm sorry
Great tracker website
