We all have different reasons for watching out on what we eat. Some do it for health purposes but most of us do it for weight loss. That’s why weight loss journal, diet journals or food and exercise journals are in right now. Food intake and exercise is a huge factor which affects our body weight. So by making sure that we keep track of what we eat and what we do, we can create a nice food and work out plan that would help us in achieving the weight that we want
Following my post comparing the FitDay and Daily Plate daily food diary websites, a reader recommended NutriMirror. It sounded like an excellent combination of both of the previous two, so I checked it out. Here are my findings.
The NutriMirror Daily Food Diary
The NutriMirror interface has the Web 2.0 friendliness of The Daily Plate. It offers a handy snapshot on the home page, as well as snapshots on additional pages. Note that the actual site is less blurry than my captured images because I resized them.
Here’s an example from the daily Food Log page. It shows your foods broken down by mealtime as well as nutrient quantity. You can also add the number of glasses of water you drank that day.
Adding foods already in the database is simple. You can search or use subject menus to find what you’re looking for. It includes more name brand items than FitDay, but fewer than The Daily Plate.
You can also add foods to the database, either to share with others or for your personal use. It was also simple.
If you don’t want to calculate the quantities yourself, you can also use the “add recipes” function to add your own recipe. You may have to add a couple of items to the database to create a recipe, but it will do the complicated math for you.
In addition to recipes, you can add menus. For example, if you eat the same meal for breakfast, add it to one simple menu for quick logging.
The Exercise Log
The exercise log is also simple. It’s similar to the log on FitDay, but contains a few more options. It doesn’t have as many options as the Daily Plate. I like that it calculates the total calories burned (if you’ve entered your weight), as well as the number of additional calories you burned (because you burn a certain number per hour just by being alive.)
A weight loss journal for your Weight Goals
If you have a weight goal, it calculates how many calories you’ve eaten, how many you’ve burned, and how many you have left for the day. That’s an easy way to monitor your progress without complicated math.
You can also input your hip and weight measurements to track other important fitness indicators.
Final Review
Overall, I like NutriMirror. The interface is attractive and simple. I will have to import my custom foods, but being able to find more foods in the database will reduce that some. It’s not the ultimate food diary – that would include the entire Daily Plate database plus all of NutriMirror’s functionality, but it’s the closest I’ve seen to perfect yet. Best of all – it’s free!
