FlavorZoom User Guide
Welcome!
Quick Start
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Whole Day Food Planner
Calorie Counter
Add Foods to Your Food List
Foods I Add
Weight Journal
Food Manager
Nutrition Goals
Food Diary
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Frequently Asked Questions
Tips & Techniques - General
Tips & Techniques - Whole Day Food Planner
Click Here for the Guided Tour
FlavorZoom provides a complete weight loss system to empower you!
No need to go on a diet. Diets are great, but when people go off them they gain weight back. With FlavorZoom there's no need to diet. Just eat the foods you like! FlavorZoom shows you how to make just the changes you need so that you get good nutrition and lose weight. Don't go on a diet - just modify your lifestyle so that you lose weight, and keep it off for good. FlavorZoom makes it easy.
Registration is free!
We hope you will enjoy eating right and losing weight with FlavorZoom!
What are the Buttons with a Little "i" In Them For?
Most pages on the site have info buttons that look like this:
Hover over them with the mouse and you'll see helpful info about the site.
It's easy to get started with FlavorZoom.
Click "Nutrition Goals" on the FlavorZoom menu. FlavorZoom will help find out how many calories you can eat each day.
Click "Calorie Counter" on the FlavorZoom menu. This is where you'll add the foods you eat during the day.
(You need to be logged in to see the FlavorZoom menu. If you're not logged in, )
The first time you visit "Calorie Counter" you'll need to add some foods to your Food List to get started. So click the link "Add Foods to Your Food List." This brings you to a page where you can search the giant USDA food database.
Enter a few letters of the food you're looking for. Find the food you want in the list that pops up, and click it. It will be added to your personal Food List. FlavorZoom will remember your Food List for you so you only need to add these foods once.
When you've added the foods you want, click "Go to Calorie Counter."
Click the meal, i.e. "Breakfast," "Lunch," "Dinner," or "Snacks," and it will highlight. Click the food in your Food List, and it will be added to that meal. Change your mind? Click the green delete button to remove the food, or drag and drop the food to move it to a different meal.
Select the Units of Measurement, for example "slice," "ounce", etc., and then enter the number of units that you ate, for example 1 slice, or 3 ounces, and so on.
FlavorZoom automatically updates all the totals for calories.
When you've entered all your foods for the day, click "Save This to My Food Diary," and FlavorZoom will save it.
The Whole Day Food Planner makes it easy to plan ahead to get the right amount of protein, carbs, and fat in your diet, as recommended by the US Dept. of Health and Human Services (See their publication, "Dietary Guidelines for Americans".)
It's perfect for people who want to get a balanced amount of protein, carbs and fat. It's also great for people on the 40-30-30 diet - or on a low-carb diet - or on the 80-10-10 diet - and many others. The Whole Day Food Planner helps you get the right number of total calories, and the amounts you want of protein, carbs and fat - all while eating more of the foods you enjoy.
While we are often told to get the right balance of protein, carbs and fat in our diets, in practice it's not always so easy to do. Each food has its own unique proportions of these things. How are we supposed to find out how much to eat of each of the foods we like, to wind up with the right proportions over the course of the day? There are prepared menus of foods that will do the trick, but what if you want to make it easy for yourself, and eat just the foods you want?
FlavorZoom tells you exactly how much to eat of each food, to get the right number of calories, protein, carbs, and fat each day. Simply select or add all the foods you want to eat through the day and list the smallest and greatest amount that you want to eat of each food. FlavorZoom will then calculate the nutritional information-- quantities of calories, fats, proteins, carbs and other nutrients--and advise you on adjustments you should make to achieve your goals.
For each food, do this:
Select The Unit of Measurement. Most foods will have popup menus for the units of measurement - e.g. cup, ounce, etc. Pick a unit of measurement that is convenient for measuring the food.
If you see "oz", that's an abbreviation for "ounce."
Some foods show a unit of measurement called "NLEA". NLEA stands for Nutrition Labeling and Education Act. An NLEA serving is the amount that you would "customarily eat in one sitting," according to estimates. Since nobody exactly matches the average, it's better to use other units of measurement, such as cups, ounces, etc.
Enter the Smallest Amount You'd Like to Eat. Say you want to eat between 1 and 3 eggs. Enter a 1 here.
Enter the Greatest Amount You'd Like to Eat. If you want to eat between 1 and 3 eggs, you'd put a 3 here.
Tip: put a lower number for the minimum than for the maximum for most of your foods. This will make it easier for FlavorZoom to find the food plan that meets all your nutrition goals.
Remember: the amounts are for the units of measurement that you select. Let's say one of your foods is "Fish, salmon", and you select "3 Oz" as the unit of measurement. If you enter 1 as the minimum, that means your minimum is 3 ounces of salmon. If you enter 2 as the minimum, that means your minimum is 2 of the units, which equals 6 ounces of salmon. A lot of the time it can be easier to just select a unit like "ounce."
When you have entered your foods, click the "Make My Food Plan!" button, and the Whole Day Food Planner will figure out exactly how much to eat of each food, to reach all your targets, not only for total calories, but also for protein, carbs and fat.
On the left is the list of foods you like, called, Your Food List. Just click a food in it to add it to Calorie Counter.
Click on Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner or Snacks to highlight it. Then when you click a food in your food list, it will go to the meal that you highlighted.
Over your food list you'll see a link, "Add foods to your food list." Click this to search the our giant database of foods, and add to the list of foods you like.
At the top of the page you'll see three links:
- Clear All. This clears all the foods from Calorie Counter.
- Whole Day Food Planner. This takes you to the Whole Day Food Planner view.
- Save This To My Food Diary. This saves all the foods you entered for the day, to your Food Diary.
Type the first few letters of a food in the filter box to find a food in your food list.
Select Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner or Snacks from the dropdown menu to show the foods you eat for each of those meals. The dropdown menu automatically learns what foods you like to eat for each meal.
Search for the food you want to eat. When you see it, just click it to add it to the list of foods you like. You are searching the giant USDA food database.
There are also foods entered by our members. They are marked by this icon: 
Hover over the icon to see the food's nutrition info. You can also rate the nutrition info for accuracy.
Just enter the nutrition info on the side of the package. If the nutrition info doesn't show the number of grams per serving, you can leave it blank. All the other info is required.
Just enter your weight and click "Submit." You'll see a chart of your weight.
Make a mistake? Just enter the weight again and click "Submit."
Click the date to enter your weight for a previous date.
All the foods in your food list are shown. Click the green delete button to delete a food from your food list.
FlavorZoom automatically learns which foods you like for Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner and Snacks. When you're on the page for Calorie Counter, you can use the dropdown menu to just show foods you eat for Breakfast, or Lunch, for example. If you don't want a food to show up for a particular meal type, just uncheck the checkbox.
Foods marked with this icon were contributed by our members. Hover over the icon to see the food's nutrition info. You can also rate the nutrition info for accuracy.
Answer the questions and click "Submit" to see a recommended number of calories to eat per day. While FlavorZoom cannot guarantee that this is the right number of calories for you, the calorie recommendations come from the Mifflin - St Jeor Formula, which is widely used.
FlavorZoom suggests that your food plan contain 30% calories from protein, 40% calories from carbs, and 30% calories from fat. This is in keeping with the US Dept. of Health and Human Services publication, "Dietary Guidelines for Americans". It's up to you to determine the amounts of protein, carbs, and fat that are right for you.
Can I enter the number of calories manually?
Yes. Just click the "Manual Mode" button. You will be able to enter the number of calories manually, and also the percentages of protein, carbs, and fat. You will also be able to enter the amount of sugar calories. Sugar calories are shown as a percentage of carb calories. So, for example, if you enter 30% for "Target Sugar as a % of Carbs", that means up to 30% of your total carb calories can be from sugar.
This keeps a record of all your food plans. You make an entry here by clicking the link named "Save This To My Food Diary" on the page for "Calorie Counter."
Click a date in the calendar to see Calorie Counter for that date.
How Do I Use FlavorZoom When I Eat at a Restaurant?
Enter what you want to eat, like chicken or salmon or steak, and add extra olive oil, because most restaurants use more fat in cooking than you do at home. Consider adding an extra 2 tablespoons of olive oil to account for that extra fat. For portion size, most restaurants serve around 5 or 6 ounces of fish, and 6 to 8 ounces of chicken and steak.
What if I Already Ate Breakfast and Lunch Today - Can I Still Use the Whole Day Food Planner?
No problem. Just enter the food you ate, plus what you are thinking of having for the rest of the day, and FlavorZoom will help you look for just what to eat to finish the day with the right number of calories, and the right proportions of protein, carbs, and fat.
How does FlavorZoom calculate the number of calories for protein, carbs, and fat, for foods that are added on the Foods I Add page?
For foods that are entered using the Foods I Add page, FlavorZoom uses the info from the nutrition label. The nutrition label shows total grams of protein, carbs, and fat, but does not show precise calorie counts for each of these nutrients.
There is a rule of thumb: 4 calories per gram of protein, 4 calories per gram of carbs, and 9 calories per gram of fat. Often if you apply this 4-4-9 rule and count up the calories, you get a number of total calories that is slightly different from the number of total calories shown on the nutrition label. In fact, the exact amount of calories per gram of protein, carbs, and fat, can vary slightly from one food to the next.
FlavorZoom starts by using the 4-4-9 rule. If the resulting number of total calories is different than the total calories shown on the nutrition label, FlavorZoom adjusts the protein, carb, and fat calories, so that they add up to the correct number of total calories. The required adjustment factor is calculated, and the same adjustment factor is applied equally to protein, carbs, and fat. This gives us an even more accurate estimate of the precise number of protein, carb, and fat calories, in each such food. It also ensures that the exact number of total calories for the food, shown on the food's nutrition label, is used.The Number One Tip
We all know the tempation - we've eaten right all day. Now it's late afternoon, or maybe late at night after dinner, and we could use a little snack. And what happens? We grab a handful of our favorite snack, and right there add another 100 or 200 calories to our food for the day.
Well, it's exactly those moments when you are losing some weight. So have some water instead. Or take your vitamin pills if you take them. Or have some carrots - they have very few calories, they taste good, they're crunchy, and they're filling. Just have something with almost no calories, to tide you through.
If you're the type who likes to plan ahead, put some of your favorite snacks into your foods for the day, so you can have them without going over your target calories..
Let the Whole Day Food Planner Do the Heavy Lifting
Put a lower number for the minimum than for the maximum for most of your foods. This will make it easier for FlavorZoom to find the food plan that meets all your nutrition goals.
Get the Benefits of Cheating, While Staying on Your Food Plan
A lot of us cheat a little bit on our food plans. We figure, we've been so good the rest of the day, what are a few chocolate chips? But as we all know, those cheating times add up and keep us from losing weight as fast as we would like to. A great way to deal with this, is to put those chocolate chips (or whatever treats grab you) right into your FlavorZoom food plan. You may be surprised how often you can fit some of your favorite treat into your plan and still get the right number of calories and the right amounts of protein, carbs, and fat.
Get an Ounce Scale
They're inexpensive and so helpful. Many people like the battery-powered ones the best.
Add Some Protein Powder to Your Food List
And include it in your food plan every day. Put 0 as the minumum, and 1.5 ounces as the maximum. (Never eat more than 1.5 ounces of protein powder at a time because your body can't process more than that). Then if your food plan needs a little extra protein, it's easy for FlavorZoom to find it in the protein powder. This will give you a wider range of foods you can eat each day, and still get the amount of protein you want.
Add Some Crackers to Your Food List
This is the same as the last tip, but for carbs. Add some low-fat, low-sugar crackers to your food plan, and include it in your food plan every day. Put 0 as the minimum and a high number, for example 15 crackers, as the maximum. Then if your food plan needs a little extra carbs, it's easy for FlavorZoom to find it.
Add Some Butter or Olive Oil to Your Food List
This is the same as the last two tips, but for fat. If you cook with butter or oil, and most of us do, put something reasonable for the minimums, like 1 tablespoon, and something high for the maximum. Include it in your food plan every day. Then if your food plan needs a little extra fat, it's easy for FlavorZoom to find it.