Tracking food on ETL? Yes or No?

Thanks for the feedback... this helps me...

My goal is to make this a lifestyle change not a diet. But i think tracking my food somewhere so I can visually see how I am doing sticking to the plan will work for me. So for now I will stick with SP.... but maybe move to paper and pen if I find I'm getting too concerned about calories, etc....

I track mostly to monitor my nutrients (not counting my multi). I stay consistently within good ranges for calories, fat, protein, etc. (ETL standards) without tracking, unless I eat off plan of course.

I use the notes feature sometimes too.

Well those are actually two different thing.

The spark tracker is a good record of what you have eaten. I track on spark to watch my nutrients: mostly iron, calcium stuff like that. It isn't just for calories. ETL shouldn't require it but I like to know what is going on.

A food diary generally gives you more input. I ate that cake when I was really mad about work and then ate more cake because I was mad i ate the original cake. That way you can see if there are trends in your eating like mood (anger, boredom, movie night) or groups etc.

So if you are having issues with food then a diary might help you identify them and learn how to handle them more appropriately. If you are the type to obsess about calories then you might want to skip it and just go by how you feel.

Loren

I track, I've been doing it for years for both weight loss and diabetes control. I am relatively new to ETL, I'm guessing once ETL becomes firmly established and my health concerns are no longer an issue, I'll quit tracking.

I track. Not much to it now because I eat basically the same foods and have set up groupings and built recipes early on. There is a notes section on the nutrition tracker that is very handy. Report can be run from there if you want be able to look back over a period of time.

I don't track, I just couldn't figure out how and didn't want to spend the time.

I found it helpful to track at the beginning of my SP experience. Tracking gave me information about how many calories I usually consume, and the distribution of fat, carbs, and protein in my diet. What it doesn't track, however, is your ANDI score for the day. Wouldn't it be cool to be able to track the total nutritive value of what you've eaten for a whole day? (without having to figure out the numbers yourself)

For me ETL is a lifestyle, not a diet. This is the way I intend to eat for the rest of my life. I KNOW I am not going to write down or track all my food forever. I eat based on the plan (at least most of the time!!!) and don't write anything down. Now and then, out of curiosity I'll look up the calories on something, but that's about it. If you're eating all the veggies, fruits and beans allowed, you won't be hungry and you won't be over in calories.

I dont' track my food online because I know I wouldn't do it consistently. When I was losing the bulk of my weight (and to keep losing weight I know I have to go back to this) I did an actual paper/pen journal and didnt think about calorie numbers. I would just detail exactly what I ate and was totally honest - and I think it kept me thinking about my food choices knowing everything was getting chronicled. So described what the food was made of and how much like super tiny bowl or big huge plate or just a huge mouthful or sample tasted a tiny bit of whatever. I feel that I dont personally respond to having to track minute details because it'll push me into slacking and not doing it at all. But random run on sentences about what I'm eating at the end of everyday before bed so it's still fresh in my head was totally doable for me.

I think it's compatible...but after a couple of weeks of it you may get sick of the tracking and learn that you do not need to track your food if you're following the ETL guidelines. To me one of the nicest features of ETL is being free of calorie counting.

ALSO if you are going to track on SP I would say don't pay attention to the protein and fat they recommend you consume. Unless you have a tracker that you can change the percentages of each in your diet (like body bugg) just go with the calories.

You can also just keep a food diary of what you eat and forget about content of the food!

I'm new to ETL and I am struggling with the concept of tracking what I eat. I've used SP sporadically in the past to calculate calories etc....
I've also started working my way through the Beck diet solution to work out some of my food hangups...(whole other story there)....and she suggests keeping a food diary.

Anyone do this.... I'm just wondering if tracking food in SP (calorie counting) works with the ETL program - do you find you do better when you track or when you don't?

Is following ETL and tracking calories compatible?