Diet Sleuth allows you to keep track of what foods you eat each day, and their nutritional value. For each day, you select the foods you have eaten, and the number of servings of each. Diet Sleuth will automatically calculate your caloric intake, fat grams, carbohydrates, fiber, protein, cholesterol, along with sodium, potassium, and calcium. You can select from over 5000 different foods from 21 catagories, including fast food, lunchmeat, junk food, seafood, and baby food. In addition to the included food groups, you can create and edit your own foods in a separate catagory. You can also create a catagory of favorite foods to quickly access commonly used foods.
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A tour of the Diet Sleuth window
A tour of the Diet Sleuth window:
The Diet Sleuth window is where you enter the foods you have eaten, and can view what you've eaten in the past.
Here is a brief description of the various features of this window, their purpose, and how to use them:
Food Catagory:
In the extreme upper left hand corner of the window, there is the food catagory pop-up menu. This menu selects one of the 21 food catagories, each of which has dozens or hundreds of individual foods. To select a food catagory, click on this menu, and hold down the mouse button. A pop-up menu appears. Move the cursor up and down to hilite the catagory of your choice, and release the mouse button. The new food catagory will be loaded and displayed (which may take a few seconds, during which time the watch cursor will appear to let you know that Diet Sleuth is working on your request).
Food Selection List:
This is the listing of all of the foods in a particular catagory, and is located just under the Food Catagory pop-up menu.
You can click on the up and down arrows in the scroll bar on the left side of the list to move through the list, or click on the gray area in the scroll bar to jump through the list. You can also click on the box and drag it to quickly move through the list.
The number to the left of the name of the food is the number of servings eaten.
Daily Totals List:
This list appears just below the Food Selection List. It displays all of the foods that you have eaten on a particular day, sorted by meal. (if you indicated at which meal you ate a particular food) Just above this list, the date of the day that you are looking at is shown.
You can click on the left (Prev) and right (Next) arrows to move back or forwards one day. If you hold down the option key while clicking, you will jump one week instead. If you hold down the command key, you will jump 30 days. This allows you to quickly move through the list, to look at foods you have eaten in the past.
Nutritional Information:
This display, in the upper right corner of the window, displays the nutritional information for the food you have selected. All information is displayed on a "per serving" basis, the serving size is shown in the display also.
Next to the Protein, Carbohydrates, and Fat information, a percentage is displayed. This is the percentage of calories from each.
If you click on a food from your Daily Totals list, then the nutritional information for that food is displayed. In this case, the total nutritional information is displayed for the amount of food that you ate, not per serving.
If you click on a meal from your Daily Totals list, then the total nutritional information for all foods eaten at that meal are displayed.
Daily Total Nutrition:
This display, in the lower right corner of the window, displays the total nutritional information for all of the foods eaten on the selected day.
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Adding a food to your daily totals
Adding a food to your daily totals:
1. Select the food catagory from the Food pop-up menu in the extreme upper left-hand corner
2. Select the food from the list just below this menu. Use the up and down arrows to scroll through the listing.
3. When you have found the food you want, double click on it.
4. In the new window that appears, enter the number of servings of that food. (the name of the food, along with the serving size and weight, is displayed in this new window for your convenience) You may enter a fractional number of servings, such as 2.5 if you desire.
5. Optionally enter the time you ate the food (such as 12:00), selecting AM or PM, and the meal at which you ate the food.
6. Click on the OK button.
The food should now be listed in the Daily Total display in the lower left corner of the Diet Something window.
A built in conversion utility allows you to easily convert between several common units of measure. For example, say you ate 1 tablespoon of oil, and wish to convert this to cups, since oil is measured in cups. You would enter 1 in the box just to the left of the word Convert. Then select Tbsp (tablespoon) from the first pop-up menu, just to the right of the box. Then select cup from the next pop-up menu. Diet Sleuth will then automatically convert 1 tablespoon into cups, and display the result (0.06) just to the right of the second pop-up menu. It will also copy this number into the number of servings for you.
You can convert between the following units:
Teaspoon (tsp)
Tablespoon (Tbsp)
1/4 cup
1/3 cup
1/2 cup
cup
pint
quart
gallon
stick (of butter, 1/2 cup)
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Deleting or editing a food from your daily totals
Deleting or editing a food from your daily totals:
1. Double-click on the food in the Daily Total display in the lower left corner of the Diet Something window. You may also click on the food , and then click on the food again while holding down the option key.
2. You are then asked whether or not you really want to delete this serving of a food, or edit the entry. Click on the Delete button to remove the food, the Edit button to edit this entry, or the Cancel button to leave it.
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Adding a food to your favorites list
Adding a food to your favorites list:
You can keep often eaten foods in your favorites list. This allows you to quickly reference commonly used foods, making it easier to find them. To add a food to the list, perform the following steps:
1. Select the food by clicking on it (after selecting the correct food catagory if necessary).
2. Select "Add to Favorites" from the Action menu.
This will add the food to the Favorite Foods group (which is the last food in the food groups popup menu).
If you want to remove a food from the Favorites list, select that food in the Favorites list, and select Remove From Favorites from the Action menu.
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Adding your own food
Adding your own food:
You can create your own entry for a food that is not in one of the supplied catagories.
1. Select "Customize Foods..." from the Action Menu. This brings up the Custom Foods Editor window.
2. Click the New button at the bottom of the window to jump to the next unused custom food.
3. Enter a description for the food, this is the name of the food, and the text that will appear in the scrolling food list.
4. Enter the nutritional information for the various catagories, on a per serving basis. For commercially available foods, this information is displayed on the packaging. Most of these values are in grams, some are in milligrams. If you leave the Calories field blank, Diet Sleuth will calculate the number of calories for you, based on the protein, carbohydrate, and fat values you entered.
5. Enter the serving size, in grams.
6. Enter the serving text. This is text that can describe what the serving is, such as "One fruit" or "One muffin", it can be whatever you like, since it is later displayed for your viewing only, and isn't actually used by Diet Sleuth for any calculations.
7. Click on the OK button when you have finished, to save your new custom food. Alternatively, click on Cancel, to ignore your new food.
You can also use the Custom Foods Editor to edit a previously created custom food. To do this, perform the following steps:
1. Use the left and right arrow keys to scroll through your custom foods until you find the one that you wish to edit. The number in the center of the two arrows is the custom food number. You may have up to 500 custom foods.
2. Edit whatever entries for that food that you wish.
3. Click on the OK button to save your changes, or the Cancel button to ignore them.
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How to find a food
How to find a food:
With over 5500 different foods in 21 catagories, it can sometimes be difficult to find a particular food.
Fortunately, Diet Sleuth has a search feature which allows you to find any foods that match your request.
To search for foods, perform the following steps:
1. Select "Find..." from the Edit menu.
2. Type in the text that you are looking for. You may type in more than one word, but if you do so, all the words must appear in the food name in exactly the same order that you typed them. For example, "roast beef" would find "roast beef sandwich", but would not find "beef, roast".
3. Click the OK button. Diet Sleuth will search the descriptions of all of the foods available, and jump to the first one that matches your request.
4. If you would like to search for additional foods that match your search request, select "Find Again" under the Edit menu. Diet Sleuth will search for the next food that matches your request. You may continue to do this to search for additional foods.
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Generating a report
Generating a report:
To generate a report of all of the foods that you have eaten over the last year, select Report from the File menu.
A Report window is now displayed. There are three scroll bars for naviagting through the report:
The vertical scroll bar on the right hand side of the Report window allows you to scroll up and down through one page of the report.
The horizontal scroll bar on the lower right hand side of the Report window allows you to scroll left and right across one page of the report.
The horizontal scroll bar on the lower left hand side of the Report window allows you to select which page of the report is displayed. The page number is shown just to the right of this scroll bar.
For each day that you have logged food, the report displays what food has been eaten, how many servings, and the Calories, Protein, Carbohydrates, Total Fat, Saturated fat, Polyunsaturated fat, and Monounsaturated fat, along with the totals for the day. If you have specified the meals at which you ate the foods, then the foods eaten for each day are further broken down into meals, with sub-totals for each meal.
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Printing
Printing:
To print a report, select Print... from the File menu. If you have recently re-selected a different printer from Chooser, then you should first select Page Setup... from the File menu.
You can print either the entire report, only print selected pages.
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Weight Manager
Weight Manager:
The Weight Manager allows you to keep track of your weight, and compute your percent body fat. The day viewed may be changed by using the yellow left/right arrows. (As always, holding down option while clicking on an arrow moves by a week, holding down command moves by a month)
For each day, there are four entries you can make:
Activity level - This usually does not change much from day to day, and as a default, your previous day's activity level will be copied over to a new day. You may of course overide this and select a different activity level. Your activity level is used when computing your Basal Metabolism.
The five activity levels are:
Sedentary, and have crashed dieted during the past two years.
Sedentary.
Moderately Active - exercise three to four times a week.
Very Active - exercise more than four times a week.
Extremely Active - exercise six or seven times a week for more than one hour duration.
Weight - This is entered in either pounds or kilograms, as selected in the Preferences.
[note: for the time being, please only use pounds and inches, not metric units]
Body Measurements - There are two body measurements, used to compute percent body fat. The location for these two measurements differs for men and women. For men it is the circumference of the wrist and waist. For women, it is the measurement of the hips and abdomen.
Six calculations are displayed, they are:
Calories Consumed - The total calories of all foods eaten during the day.
Basal Metabolism - The estimated calories burned by your body during the day.
Caloric Surplus/Deficit - The difference between the previous two numbers.
Weight Gain/Loss - The previous number, converted into the estimated change in body weight.
Percent Body Fat - The estimated percent of your weight that is body fat.
Body Mass Index - A calculation taking into account your height, weight and body fat. Essentially, it indicates whther you are considered overweight, underweight, or of normal weight.
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Graphs
Graphs:
The graph feature allows you to graph several values: weight, calories, fat, carbohydrates, protein. The buttons under the graph select which value is to be graphed.
The three buttons on the lower right side select whether to display a year, three months, or one month of data. Data is displayed previous to the currently selected day, which may be selected using the yellow left/right arrows. (As always, holding down option while clicking on an arrow moves by a week, holding down command moves by a month)
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Preferences
Preferences:
You use the Preferences to select settings for DIet Sleuth, and enter certain personal information.
There are three sets of information under preferences: General, Personal, and Language.
General:
Click on the Background Color... button to select the background color of the main Diet Sleuth window.
Date format: Select either American (mm/dd/yyyy) or European (dd.mm.yyyy)
Weight Units: Select either English (pounds) or Metric (kilograms). This is the unit that you use to enter your weight if you keep track of your weight.
Personal:
Here you enter your name, birthdate, and height (presently it must be in inches), and select your sex.
Language:
Here you select which language Diet Sleuth should use to display text. At present, food names are not translated, but are always in English. Also, some of the translations may be rather rough.
