Two of the most requested forms for the D*I*Y Planner are weight and diet trackers. However, I know nothing about such things. Keeping in mind that I don’t want to tread on the toes of Weight Watchers ™ and the like, and there is a limited amount of space available on a piece of paper, does anybody have any advice about the particular data to track (e.g., fat calories, total calories, burnt calories, and so on…)?
Please leave a comment or drop me an email (see my address at the bottom of the menu at right) if have have any advice on what should be in the form. Remember: I know nothing about these things, so if you assume my complete ignorance of such matters, you’d be entirely correct!
You may find some inspiration, if not samples, by looking at “The Hacker’s Diet,” particularly the section on tracking progress via pencil and paper:
http://www.fourmilab.ch/hackdiet/www/chapter1_4_1.html#SECTION0410000000000000000
OK, maybe too much math. How ’bout the stuff on plannerforms.com:
http://www.plannerforms.com/display_forms.asp?type=health
Something simple, but very effective: water intake.
On average you should drink about 1.5 to 2 liter of fluid (preferably water) per day. That’s 6 to 8 glasses of 0.25 l or 4 to 6 glasses of 0.33l.
It would be nice if you could design a form that shows a week with checkboxes (make them glasses for fun) for the glasses to drink per day.
Another idea:
weight loss/gain is often connected with mood and mood swings. You could add happy/sad smileys to the water form to indicate the mood you are in. It often helps to see that when the weight loss was not much that the week had been rough (lot’s of sad smileys).
A little simpler than tracking grams of carbs/fat/protein is simply tracking portions of the different food groups: fruits & vegetables, breads & grains, meat & alternatives, milk products, other (i.e. high-sugar or high-fat foods).
A list of caloric content for different foods could be really helpful. There’s one available at the “The Hacker’s Diet” website mentioned by eric.
I like Helma’s idea!
Hi. Sorry this is kinda long, I brainstormed in the reply box. If it doesn’t make sense – please ask questions and I’ll try to answer.
For diet forms – just a page that allows people to enter what they ate six times a day (breakfast, snack, lunch, snack, dinner, snack), their bedtime (and latenight snack), with spaces for numbers beside each.
Time:____ Breakfast [ ] [ ] [ ]
Sort of thing. Everyone will want to put in their own numbers, or sybols.
Diabeties tracks symbols & glucose measurements, weight watchers tracks points, someone else might just count carbs, … so to please everyone just have 1-3 small columns beside the food to track numbers.
For exercise, I’d recommend just a simple planner like the ones the pros give you at gyms:
Name: _________________ Date________________
Routine name:________________________
Machine # | Exercises | Series-Reps | Weight
And on another form:
Date Routine Success level
Or some such. That way people can have their exercise ‘routine’ and track how good (or how bad) they did on a day by day basis.
Tracking weight loss is usually done on a graph, but a simple
Date Weight [Up symbol/Down symbol] would work.
Then there’s body measurements. Some folks track weightloss not just by how many grams they loose, but how many millimeters they loose.
Maybe have a silohette of a human form with lines coming out from it at the various parts of the body. The page would need a date field, and some place to mark the circumferance measurements for: neck, upper arm, forarm, chest, trunk, stomach, upper thigh, mid thigh, and calf.
You could also have a BMI page. (BMI samples available at: http://win.niddk.nih.gov/publications/tools.htm#bodymassindex).
Just my 2 cents on the issue.
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