calorie-tracker.thelongmores.me.uk

"Losing weight is easy, I've done it thousands of times..."

Ever feel like that?!

Mathematically it is easy. Consume more energy than you burn, and you'll put weight on. Consume less energy than you burn, and you'll lose weight. So the biggest weapon after motivation is information - knowing how many calories we're eating, and how many we should be eating.

Calorie Tracker

Download calorie-tracker.zip (92kB).

Here's my calorie tracker spreadsheet. I created it because I was frustrated with how little control I had on the various web-sites which do the same thing. It's really simple to use if you're used to Excel, and contains no macros so it's perfectly safe and can be run in the high security level. If you have any ideas you'd like me to include (or you need some help) just let me know! You can contact me at

Screenshots (click to view):

Diary tab

Calories graph tab

Weight graph tab

There's also a calorie-sugar-tracker.zip (120kB), by popular demand! You can use this to track sugar intake as well as calories - however, the foods in the spreadsheet don't have any sugar values yet.

Frequently Asked Questions

> What do the different coloured cells mean?
Purple is an automatically calculated cell; you should never have to type in here.
Yellow is a choice cell; you can either type in here, or select from the drop-down.
White is a normal cell; you just type in here.

> How do I get started with new dates?
On the Summary tab, I'd recommend overwriting the existing dates (starting with 10-Dec-2007, etc). You only need to overwrite a few manually - you can then highlight the cells you've entered, use your mouse to grab the bottom-right of the highlighting rectangle, and then drag the rectangle down. Excel will automatically fill in the dates for you.
On the Diary tab, feel free to delete all of the existing rows, or leave them in for a while as an example.

> How do I add new kinds of food?
Go to the 'Food' tab, and start a new row. If it's a basic kind of food which isn't made of other ingredients (e.g. a banana), you could put Food='Banana', Unit='each', Basic calories='100'. If it's a recipe made of other ingredients (e.g. a banana sandwich), you could put Food='Banana sandwich', Unit='2 slices'. Then leave Basic calories blank, and use the Ingredient columns to say you make it with Ingredient='Banana', Amount='1' (each), and Ingredient='Bread', Amount='2' (slices).

> How do I get the graphs to show the right dates?
In Excel, right-click the x-axis and choose 'Format Axis...'. Then go to the Scale tab. The Minimum and Maximum values are confusing, because they show dates as the number of days since 1900. But you can enter the date you want, e.g. '1/1/2010'.

> Where do I enter my target calories/weight/target weight?
On the Summary tab.

> How can I account for calories burned in exercise?
The easiest way to do this is to add exercise onto the Food and Diary tabs with negative calories.

Converters

I'm forever having to convert between different units. Here are the converters I find myself always needing - they work in both directions (i.e. right-to-left, as well as left-to-right).

Calculators

The recommended daily calorie intake varies depending on how old and active you are. As a rough guide, for the average adult this is about 2000 per day (women) and 2500 per day (men); if you're trying to lose weight you could start by eating 500 less calories per day - see NHS Direct.

Target calories per day, Harris Benedict formula
Body Mass Index calculator

Calorie values

Most foods have sensible calorie values written on the packaging, but sometimes it can be useful to look things up. Just add what you're looking for to the search box.