Food Log

A food log is a structured record of what you eat — portion size, time, sometimes location — and it's the working document behind any calorie or macro tracking system. MyFitnessPal, Cronometer, MacroFactor, Lose It!, and Yazio are all built around the food log as the core unit of data.

What a log captures that a diary doesn't

A food diary can be loose ("oatmeal, banana, coffee"). A food log is more precise: you logged 50g of rolled oats at 7:15 AM, a 118g banana at 7:20, 12oz of black coffee at 7:30. That precision is what lets the app total your calories, break out your macros, and show you a weekly rolling average.

Real-time vs retroactive

Real-time logging means you log the food as (or just before) you eat it. Retroactive logging means you reconstruct the day at night from memory. Real-time is more accurate — Schoeller and colleagues, using doubly-labeled water as the gold standard, have shown memory gaps cost you 10–25% of your intake within hours. But real-time is also harder to sustain. In coaching practice, the honest answer is: a retroactive log you actually keep beats a real-time log you abandon.

App choices

The five big consumer logs are broadly similar — database, barcode scanner, custom entry, recipe builder. They differ in (a) database quality, (b) whether portions are volume or gram-based, (c) macro-target flexibility, and (d) adherence features. Cronometer leans precision (great micronutrient breakdowns). MacroFactor leans adaptive (it recalculates targets weekly). MyFitnessPal leans social and big-database. Lose It! and Yazio are somewhere in the middle. Pick based on which one you'll actually open.

Short-term vs long-term

A short-term log (2–4 weeks) is a diagnostic: you want to see where calories hide, which meals derail you, whether your "small dinner" is actually three meals. That's often enough. A long-term log is a lifestyle — it takes active work to avoid tracking burnout, and most research (Burke 2011 in the Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics) shows adherence drops steeply after the first 90 days.

When the log lies

Every log has error. Packaged foods (barcode scan) are usually within FDA label tolerance (±20%, but typically much tighter in practice). Restaurant meals estimated from a chain database are reasonable. Home-cooked meals where you eyeballed the olive oil are the weakest link — that's where a kitchen scale earns its keep. Photo-based AI logging tools are improving but still carry visible error on mixed dishes.

A practical setup

Log real-time for breakfast and lunch (they're usually repeatable — same oatmeal, same sandwich). Retroactively log dinner an hour after eating, while it's fresh. Weigh things you cook; estimate things you don't. Check your weekly rolling average, not the daily total. That's the workflow that survives a real month.