Perhaps the best way to determine the way you might want to track your food intake is by self-assessing your current nutritional habits. The path someone should take to a destination is determined by where they currently stand, after all, and without knowing your A it can be very hard to get to your B.
Here we will loosely describe 3 ‘levels’. Note that these are stated as levels A, B and C rather than 1,2 and 3 and that is for a reason – they are not hierarchical and there is no value judgement placed on them. It’s not a case that you need to progress from one to the other, it’s just a case that different goals and different starting points require different applications of the same information. .
On a population scale most people will start at A, though it is probably safe to say that a large majority of those reading this manual will find themselves at B or C. If A or B suit someone and they represent an approach to nutritional management which they can adhere to over the very long-term (if not for life) and be happy with the outcome, then there is no need to go to anything else. By outlining them all here, however, we can help you appreciate the options available and then make a critical decision as to what you or your client would do. .
In the final section of this module we will also note that each method is not mutually exclusive and a given individual may use more than one throughout a given year depending on the situation at hand, but for now let’s lay out the levels.