My Deluxe Calorie Diary (MDCD)

What is it?

My Deluxe Calorie Diary is a simple spreadsheet program that is compatible with Microsoft Excel (versions 2000 and greater). It is an Excel workbook that allows you to track your total daily calories, both input and output, and compare them on a daily basis. Both food and activity databases are built into the program, making it easy to find and input your entries.

How can MDCD help me lose weight?

In order for you to lose one pound of fat, your calorie "balance sheet" must be negative 3500 calories. By learning to balance your food calories with your activity calories, you will be on your way to weight loss and better health.

MDCD offers you:

   A food database over 11,000 items long, including the major fast food menus.

   Detailed information about fats, carbohydrates and proteins, allowing you to make more educated diet choices.

   Assistance in choosing a reasonable intitial target weight and target date to achieve that weight.

   An activity database over 450 items long, including occupations, sports and fitness, leisure activities, and common chores.

   Graph your progress and estimate your weight loss over time.

   The ability to add your own recipes and customize the food database.

This last feature is unique to My Deluxe Calorie Diary and worth explaining. You can add your own "home-made" recipes into the food database. For instance, let's take one of my family's favorites: lasagna. With My Deluxe Calorie Diary, you would enter the individual ingredients on the Recipe Sheet. Automatically, detailed nutrient information for the entire recipe and each individual serving is calculated. With the click of a button, you can add your lasagna recipe to the main food database, so that you can reference it in your Daily Calorie sheet. This makes My Deluxe Calorie Diary very adaptable to your type of eating style and takes the guesswork out of estimating calories in your home recipes. No program I have found can do that for you!

And best of all, it's FREE. If you feel My Deluxe Calorie Diary is useful, consider sending us an email or postcard to tell us of your success!