Questions & Answers

January 28, 2009, 8:39 pm

Calorie Basis for Percentages

A USER ASKS

I noticed that the %s for the various nutritional measurements are calculated based on my calories for weight maintenance, but I would like to see them calculated based on my calories recommended to reach my WEIGHT GOAL. The green and red in the charts are helpful, but would be even more helpful if they were based on what I need to intake to LOSE! Any suggestions? Thanks in advance!

OUR ANSWER

Many of the nutrients that we track have targets that are independent of calories eaten. With cholesterol, sodium, and all the vitamins and minerals, you're looking at fixed numbers, some of them adapted to your age and sex. The trick is to get enough of some while limiting others, all while balancing your calorie intake.

It gets a little trickier when it comes to fat, carbohydrates, protein, and fiber, where recommendations are based on total calories consumed. The key word here is consumed — how many calories did you actually eat? That's the number that should ideally be used to determine whether you're on target.

However, we found on our Food Log page that when we use the "calories consumed" number as a basis for percentages, then the numbers vary wildly throughout the day, leading to lots of confusion. What we've developed instead is a hybrid system that reports numbers from both "calories consumed" and "weight maintenance calories" (the calories you could theoretically eat without losing or gaining weight). The best way to use this system is to pay more attention to these weight maintenance* numbers early in the day when you haven't logged much, and then pay more attention to the calories consumed** numbers later on, when you're closer to logging all your foods.

Our Reflection Analysis page does not rely at all on weight maintenance calories, since this is not typically a page that gets checked multiple times each day. The Reflection Analysis page uses actual calories consumed for these percentage calculations.

* Numbers based on weight maintenance calories are marked by * in your Food Log, and are indicated by the darker colors on the left side of the Daily Minimum/Maximum graphs.

** Numbers based on calories consumed are marked by ** in your Food Log, and are represented by the lighter colors on the Daily Minimum/Maximum graphs.

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