Guides

Plain answers to what comes up when you keep a calorie diary: what you really burn, how to keep logging through a busy week, and why the scale jumps around. Each guide says where its numbers come from.

• Maintenance calories: a formula, or measured

  What a TDEE formula can and cannot tell you, and how to measure your own maintenance from your diary and your scale.

• Counting calories, and keeping it up

  Habits that keep a food diary quick: when to log, what to repeat, and what to do about a missed day.

• Why your weight goes up and down from day to day

  Water, glycogen, salt and your cycle all move the scale; a trend line shows what is underneath.

Unpound is a calorie diary for iPhone that draws the trend and measures your maintenance for you.