Photo Meal Logs – Better, Smarter, More Fun, and More Effective!
Any trainer who has worked with a client’s diet knows meal logs are simultaneously one of the best ways to tack nutrition and one of the most frustrating. Even apps like MyFitnessPal, that lets people enter what they ate and get feedback can be problematic and unsuitable – as well as lacking in motivation, a time suck, and frankly not fun.
Now, there’s a better way – photo meal logs!
By asking your client to simply take a picture of each meal or snack and upload it to a central location you can easily help them track things like:
- Whether or not they are following the meal plan or recommendations that you sent them.
- How big or small each serving size is
- How many of each kind of food they are eating
- Whether or not their choices are the best they can be
If you have a background in nutrition, it may be easier for you to look at their food and give a thumbs up or thumbs down on each component, instead of them trying to decipher the differences between rye bread and whole wheat on their own, and grasp the difference between eating a ripe banana and a greener one.
If client hope for results, their diet has to be as close to perfect as possible. For a perfect diet, tracking has to be in place. . For their diet to be perfect, we need to be able to track what they are eating. A photo meal log lets them track everything they eat with a few clicks of their camera phone.
No more trying to figure out what a client thinks a “small potato” or “lean burger” is when you have photographic evidence. No more worrying about inaccuracies due to the client waiting until day’s end to enter their data. That bowl of ice cream they estimated as 1.5 scoops might really be closer to four, and you can prove it when you sit them down with a bowl and a real scoop and recreate their midnight snack.
Your clients are busy, and you’ve already brought them a long way by motivating them to show up for class every week. Now you can make food tracking easy and fun with photo meal logs. Bonus- when they eat out, they can just snap a picture of their plate instead of fretting over how to determine each item’s caloric count and worth to their nutrition plan.
Since photo meal logs pull in something people do already – take pictures of their food and post online – it makes sense to integrate this into their fitness plan. Using photos to track a client’s diet is basic and effective. They can even snap another photo if they go back for seconds. There’s no weighing, measuring, typing detailed descriptions of their food, or any of the other issues with traditional meal logs.
The YouFood free meal logging app is available on Android or iPhone, operates in a similar way to Instagram, and lets your clients find people on similar food diets for meal ideas, support, and encouragement. Tell your clients about it and sign up yourself – and don’t forget to make sure nutrition advice is covered by checking on the status of your personal trainer insurance.
