The calorie calculator

I wrote this calculator to help keep track of the calories on the "fast days" for the 5/2 diet but it would be a useful aid to keep track of any calorie controlled diet. OK so many of you have "an ap" on your smart phone for this sort of thing but for those who are not into the smart phone craze this calculator could be just what you need.

The calculator will keep a running total of the calories for the meal as you build it up, you can also set a calorie target and the program will show you how many calories you are below or above the target as you add items to the meal. You also see a list of all the items you have added so far so you can check you don't add the same item twice or forget something.

If the item you want to add is not on the list you can still include it as long as you know the calories per gram for the item you want to add.

The calorie calculator - browser version

This is a javascript program that runs in your web browser, it should also work on your smartphone web browser and even in the basic Kindle web browser. Just follow this link, the operation is failry self explanatory.

Permanently changing the food items lists in the web based version

If you want to add more items you can just enter them in the lower entry field on the web page, however if you often find yourself adding the same item then it would be better to either use the Excell version below or alternatively download the web browser version and run it from your hard drive where you can easily edit the javascript to add your favourite foods (this is not as complicated as it sounds, just follow the instructions below).

You will need to save a copy of calories.html to your computer and also download and store in the same directory copies of these files calories.js, jquery-1.8.3.min.js and calories.css. Just rightclick on each link and then "save as" to a convenient directory on your own computer.

You can then open your copy of calories.html in a text editor. You will see three sets of lines beginning with the <option> tag and ending with the </option> tag, one set for each food type.

Now add new lines to the set for the food type you wish to add. For each food add a new line beginning with an <option> tag and ending with an </option>. Between each new set of tags enter the name of your food followed by an equals sign and then followed by the calorie value for 1 gram of the food. DO NOT FORGET TO INCLUDE THE = SIGN OR THE PROGRAM WILL FAIL

Finally open your modified version of calories.html in your web browser and your new foods should be visible.

The calorie calculator - Excell spread sheet version

You will need to have a copy of Microsoft Office installed on your computer in order to run the calculator. The spread sheet contains a representative list of different foods and their calorie values (per gram as the spread sheet is currently written). You can change the lists of foods and the weight unit to suit your own diet and scales as long as you are carful to keep the overall structure of the spread sheet the same.

You start the calculator by clicking on the button in the spread sheet. A window then pops up to allow you to build up your meal from the various foods in the spread sheet. Simply select the food, enter the weight you are using and click Add.

When you have added all the foods for you meal you can save the total back to the spread sheet to refer to later in the day (you will need to save the spread sheet to keep the totals for later).

Right click on this link and save the file to your computer and then open the spread sheet in Excel to use it. Read the instructions on the Instructions tab, you will probably have to enable macros in Excel before you can get the calculator to run, the way to do this is explained in the instructions in the spread sheet.