The wlr Visual Food Diary

The visual food diary enables you to track what you eat and drink in the simplest and quickest way possible.

You can add a picture directly from your phone's camera, or from files you have on whichever device you are using. If you don't have a picture, you can use a wlr placeholder image.

You can access your Visual Food Diary from:

• Your PC or tablet - the left hand menu of your food diary
• Your mobile - the Diaries tab at the bottom of your screen

Tools in the Visual Food Diary

(All optional, use any that you think you might find helpful.)

Options When Adding a Picture

Meal Type

Choose a Meal Type for your pic – breakfast, lunch, snack etc. This enables you to sort your pics by meal type and view them all together over selected time periods.

Hunger Level

Select a hunger level, which is especially useful for those of us who are prone to eating for emotional reasons like boredom or stress rather than physical hunger. (See Selecting a Hunger Level, below)

How You Were feeling

You can add how you were feeling before you ate. This will help you notice patterns and connections in what and why you eat.

Additional Options When Editing an Entry

To keep the add picture screen as quick and easy to use as possible, the following options are available after you have uploaded your pic, and can be added/edited at any time.

Your Label

Name what you had. You could include additional info here such how much you ate.

Calorie Estimate

Estimate the calories you had for each picture. You only need to do a check on a few of your estimates occasionally and you’ll soon get to know roughly how many calories are in things.

Note: Estimating calories for a picture will add a record to your Calorie Food Diary, so that your calorie allowance summary will be updated. So if f you are counting calories every day in your normal food diary, it's best not to estimate calories if you are also using the visual food diary.

Notes

Add notes about your pic if you want to.

Reports

You can report for different time periods, on various combinations of meal type, hunger level and feelings.

Even if you don’t add any of the optional information to your pics, just having a day by day record will give you new, and sometimes surprising, insights.

Benefits of the Visual Food Diary

Reflecting on your pics will make you more mindful of what you’re eating and lead you to naturally make more healthy choices.

This is especially helpful for people who want to lose weight but find calorie counting everything impossible to keep up with - we know you’re out there!

Using the visual food diary won’t give you the predictable weight loss of staying within a calorie allowance. But using it will make you more mindful about what you're eating and encourage you to make better choices which will help you lose weight.

If you are calorie counting, snapping your food through the day will help you remember what you ate so you can complete your food diary at a time that suits you. If you would like to do this, it's best not to add calorie estimates to your pictures, as estimates are used to work out how many calories you have eaten - and you don't want to double count! 

Selecting a Hunger level

Before you eat a meal or snack, ask yourself the hunger questions:

1. Is this a sudden feeling or has it been building up for a while?
2. Is my tummy rumbling, or feeling empty?
3. Have I had a meal or a snack in the last few hours?

Then grade your hunger as:

• Not physically hungry (the 'NOT VERY' icon) 
• A little peckish (the 'A LITTLE' icon)
• Physically hungry (the 'VERY' icon)