Adding Food to the Diary

This section of the manual tells you all about getting started adding food to the calorie diary.

The Diary Page

If you have just started JXCirrus CalCount, chances are you are currently looking at the diary page. If you are somewhere else in the application, click on the "Diary" tab (with the Calendar image) just below the top of the main window.

This screen is the one you are probably going to spend most of your time in (or the Home Page). It is where you record what you have eaten each day, and were JXCirrus CalCount tells you whether you have managed to be good or bad.

Have a look at the table. It contains the results for each nutrient for the day. If you don't understand this table, follow this link to a detailed description of everything in this table (as well as all of the things you can do here).

Our Mission: Corn Flakes

But enough of that. Today you are going to have a bowl of corn flakes for breakfast. We understand that you may hate corn flakes, or may even be allergic to them... This is just an exercise to get you started. Once you have recorded "corn flakes" in your diary, you can delete it with a single button press.

Look down the table - Next to the "Breakfast" heading, is a Add button. This lets you add a food for breakfast.

Press Add.

Finding the Food

You should now be able to see a page with about 5 foods listed (but no corn flakes). This page is the "Food Select" dialog.

What you are looking at is the "My Foods" list. JXCirrus CalCount has 2 lists of foods: My Foods (My Food), and the Food Database (DB). "My Foods" is a list of the foods that you actually eat regularly. The Food Database is a database of thousands and thousands of foods, most of which you may never eat. When you use a food from the food database, JXCirrus CalCount copies it into the My Foods list. The reason it does this is that My Foods records your usual serving size, which saves you a lot of time when you use that food again. For more info, see My Foods and Food Database elsewhere in the manual.

To actually find "corn flakes", type "corn" into the field at the top of the dialog. Notice that as you typed, the list suddenly switched, and it seems to have suddenly found a bunch of things with "corn" in their name. The reason that it switched is that if the select list can't find what you typed in the My Food list, it switches over and searches the food database.

The one you are after is titled "Breakfast cereal, flakes of corn, added vitamins..." - Click on that.

Selecting a Serving Size

You should now see a dialog which lists a whole series of serving sizes. This is the Serving Size dialog. You can select any of the serving sizes in the list, or type the size into the field at the bottom of the dialog.

For this exercise, select "Bowl (one cup of cereal)".

Changing its Name

Now, you should see another dialog. This is the Food Edit dialog, and it lets you edit the details of a food before it goes into the My Food list.

You don't have do anything here except press OK if you want. But before you do that, you might notice that the food name is a bit of a mouthful (one slight problem with the food database). Click on the Name field, and just change the name to "Corn Flakes".

Press OK, and "Corn Flakes" should now appear in the "My Food" list, and you should see "Corn Flakes", complete with all of its calories, fat, and every other nutrient listed in the diary page.

Don't worry, it doesn't usually take this long

OK - So you just went through 3 different dialogs to add that. A bit excessive!

But don't worry, it doesn't usually take that long. When a food is in the My Food list, you only have to go through the select dialog to add it to the diary. So next time you add "corn flakes" to the diary, it is only a couple of clicks.

Adding the Milk

We aren't quite finished with the corn flakes - We need milk.

Press Add again, next to breakfast. You should see the Food Select dialog again. Follow the same sequence you did for corn flakes to add a cup of milk.

OK - So a question that may have popped into your mind - "Can I add milk to the cornflakes automatically since I never have cornflakes without milk?" The answer is absolutely yes - We will cover that after the next exercise under Adding Recipes.

Next: Adding Exercise to the Calorie Diary