New and Improved Food Diary - Marcella

As promised to our friend Tony from the cruise, here's my new and improved diet tracking sheet! Save it to your computer by selecting File (top left), then Download as, then Excel.

I've included a daily calorie needs calculation (Katch-McArdle formula) at the top right, based on your weight, body fat %, activity level and goals and you can either use that as your guide, use your own calorie target, or ignore calories entirely and focus on your percentage of total calories from protein, fat, and carbs as that's really what we're interested in. We certainly don't count calories or restrict them, the real concern is where the calories are coming from...a diet of 3,000 calories/day from Fruit Loops and potato chips and a diet of 3,000 calories/day from steamed vegetables and lentils are not created equal and that quickly becomes apparent when you look at the percentages. I've even added a % of carbs from fiber to give you an idea of how much whole versus refined grains you're eating. And sodium and sugar tracking by popular demand.

This is really an evolving project of mine - eventually I'd like to build it into a full-on free nutrition program in Excel more like a software program. In the meantime, if you have questions or need help getting this sheet to work, you can e-mail me at marcellam.torres@gmail.com

Diet Planning Worksheet!!

Here it is: a simple, interactive diet worksheet I built in Microsoft Excel to help us reach our respective fitness goals, and that we're now sharing with you as a proven success!

How we did it:
Derek gathered info about the diets of the male and female winners of the Olympia bodybuilding contest and adjusted their calorie and nutrient intake down to our body weights. Then I put my Excel skills to work in creating a spreadsheet that was easy to update quickly and understand. Before sharing it with you, I added some formulas to make it work for everyone, like calorie calcs based on weight (averaged from values on the American Cancer Society site and checked by Derek for reasonableness) and adjustments for activity level.

How it works:
In finance, we tend to compare actual results to expected results using ratios to get a comprehensive snapshot of where we stand and I figured why not do the same here? Hence the "Actual/Ideal" ratio I've included at the bottom of the sheet: 100% across the board is perfect, while something like 150% of your ideal fat intake is clearly bad...Instructions are contained on the first page, please follow the link to download:

Diet Planning Sheet on Google Docs