CalorieKing Nutrition and Exercise Manager: Day 2

No more grief from the program today about check-ins more frequent than once a week. My check-in for today went flawlessly. Those tip boxes must only show up the first time you try a feature.

 

As for check-ins, the program lets you record your weight (in pounds or kilograms, depending on what you set as your preference when you started the program), your steps for the day as measured by a pedometer, your waist, hip, and thigh measurements, and a journal entry. The journal entry box is just a free-form text box. I suppose it’s useful if you’re the type who likes to keep track of other notes about your progress or likes having some private soul-searching. As of yet, I’m not sure if there’s further use for journal entries.

 

Unless you’re willing to make the effort to measure your servings (somehow) when you eat out somewhere not covered in the program’s database, you have to be prepared to make estimates when entering your meal data. We had lunch at Ikea Slovakia’s café today, and believe it or not, there’s not an entry for that Eastern European specialty, Large Block of Breaded and Fried Non-Mozzarella Cheese. I marked it as three fried cheese sticks and hoped I was close.

 

I must admit, I felt a little guilty and put my lunch salad in the “Breakfast” box. I know you’re not supposed to skip breakfast but . . . well, it’s only my second day, I can improve. However, it’s a good reminder to not skip meals having the foods separated into groups. The Diary screen also has boxes for Snacks and Exercise.

 

CalorieKing doesn’t limit itself to tracking only your calories. The Diary keeps tabs on your carbohydrate, fat, protein, and fiber intake as well in a little sideways bar graph in the lower left-hand corner. You can also track your fluid intake and your exercise minutes for the day. The program can calculate how many calories you burn through exercise, it seems — it has a database of exercises along with its nutritional database.