Why & How You Should Track Your Calorie Intake

Getting fit and living a healthy life can be a tough decision. Where do you begin? The golden rule of dietology says: “If one wants to stay healthy and maintain a normal weight, he/she needs to burn as many calories as consumed, but if this one would like to lose weight, he or she will need to consume less calories than burned”.

An exhausting workout is not always wise because increased energy expenditure will cause hunger and can lead to overeating. The most important factor in losing weight and staying fit is calories count.

Follow your diet, but be ready to make adjustments: if you overeat today, reduce your overall calorie content tomorrow.

It might be difficult to estimate the result when diets and physical exercises are performed inconsistently. A weight scale is not always a reliable tool because for an adult a daily weight fluctuation can be up to 11 lbs for water only. An accurate weight monitoring can be recorded during long periods of time only, while considering several factors.

Energy Intake Self-report: Calorie charts, Food Diaries and Calorie Counting Applications

Automatic tracking GoBe

Here are some of the traditional calorie tracking methods and reasons why they are ineffective:

I. Calorie charts and Food Diaries

Energy value is calculated by measuring the approximate amount of proteins, carbohydrates and fat in your food. The next step is to determine how much energy was released during the digestion of these nutrients.

The charts can be easily found online; however keep in mind that this method is not very accurate. Specifically, fruits, vegetables, and meat products from different manufacturers can vary greatly in their contents, which will result in different energy value.

In order to calculate the energy value of your meal, you need to weigh every ingredient, find its calorie concentration, and sum up the results. The problem with this method is that the process is rather laborious, and many tend to give up and stop keeping track after a couple of days.

Another consideration is that energy value can change dramatically with different cooking methods. For example, the energy content of a soft-boiled egg is 6-7% higher than energy content of a hard-boiled egg, and 3.5 oz of fried beef is two times fattier than baked beef!

II. Energy Content on Labels

Energy value on food labels is not very accurate. Products identify calorie content based on the product alone – they don’t take into consideration the impact cooking techniques will have on calorie level.

III. Calorie Counting Applications

Mobile applications for calorie counting limit you to a small list of meals and foods to choose from. This is definitely easier than manually keeping track of your calorie count, however it still doesn’t solve the main problem – accuracy of energy value. Most applications are formed using calorie charts from content labels, which as stated earlier, are typically inaccurate. This also doesn’t eliminate the process of weighing your meal, and noting the cooking methods — it still requires patience and time.

An obvious disadvantage for all of these methods is the fact that they don’t consider the individual characteristics of the particular person. 

Digestion varies from person to person, and in most cases we do not fully consume the energy stored in the food we eat. The amount of calories consumed depends on a variety of factors: differences in metabolism, the time of day we eat, and emotional background along with many other influences.

What is the advantage of HEALBE GoBe?

One of HEALBE GoBe’s features is the one to automatically track and measure your calorie intake through your skin. Healbe’s patented FLOW™ Technology uses information from three sensors (an accelerometer, impedance sensor, and piezo pressure sensor) to deliver comprehensive insights into your whole body health. Only FLOW™ Technology can measure calorie intake through your skin by reading the glucose levels in your cells.

The HEALBE GoBe’s feature to accurately track calorie digestion significantly differentiates it from other wearable health monitoring smartbands. The level of accuracy exceeds the effectiveness of comparable devices, as other wearables rely on a human recording of diet and calorie ingestion, and the potential for human error in that process typically drops the accuracy down under 50%.

The Foods for Health Institute at the University of California Davis have recently completed a validation study of an innovative health monitoring smartband, Healbe GoBe. Over the two week period, GoBe showed an 89.6% accuracy in measuring calorie intake.

More details on the study are available at http://bit.ly/ucdavis_validation.

Please note that HEALBE GoBe is not responsible for any content that purports to give medical advice or advice regarding fitness training, exercise, or diet. Always seek the advice of a physician or other qualified health provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition and prior to starting a diet or physical fitness program.