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DietLog

© Janice Karin

In these days of high stress, high blood pressure, heart attacks, and other health problems, more and more people have special diets or need to lose weight. DietLog by SoftCare Clinical Informatics can help you manage your weight loss or dietary needs.

DietLog first collects some basic information including your age, gender, activity level, height, current weight, and weight goal. DietLog will use this information to set some basic nutritional targets. If you have specific dietary needs, such as low sodium in your diet, these nutritional targets can be edited to meet those needs.

By default, the calorie intake set by DietLog will maintain your current weight. You can use the Calorie Calculator to set either a weekly weight loss goal or to set the number of weeks you'd like to spend getting to your weight goal. Your daily caloric intake will be re-adjusted based on this setting.

Once you've performed this setup, DietLog will go to the main food log. This is a dated screen with buttons for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snacks. The bottom of the screen lists the daily allotment of calories and has buttons to find a food item (magnifying glass), show an intake report (bar graph), show percentage of nutritional targets met (bullseye), and show user information (person).

Select the appropriate meal then use the find button to select the food eaten. You can either search for a food in the top portion of the selection form or browse through the categories on the bottom portion. Food is separated into general categories like meat, fast food, fruits, and breads. Each category is further subdivided into specific foods, which are then divided into different preparation styles.

After an item is entered, it is listed in the main food list and its calorie value is added to the number of calories consumed both that meal and that day, shown both numerically and graphically in the bottom left corner. The percentage of nutritional targets met are also adjusted to include that food item. Select the button for that meal, or the T at the far right to view the list and values for that meal or for the entire day.

You can edit the food database to add foods you eat that don't come preloaded or to remove foods you never eat (if you have space concerns). All of the information you need to enter a new food can be found on the nutritional label.

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