I am using a modded version of John's .xls to calculate percentage of calories from fat, carbs, and protein....I have noticed that the percentages never add up to 100%. Is that due to other minor ingredients in the food that add calories but isn't one of the big 3? I've seen +-8% from 100 when adding up the totals.

Can someone enlighten me?
-chris

Short answer: Yes, other ingredients play a lesser role in overall caloric value.

Hi all, my first post. :)

I've also wondered this. I'm using a format for my excel worksheet which is pretty much identical to John's.

John, thanks so much for this website. I've been following your progress for several months now and finally took the plunge. You're a true motivator! A quick request - would it be possible to post your forumlas for calculating your Protein, Carbs and Fat percentage? I can never seem to get them to add up just right.

Thanks!



:flex:

You should be able to take total grams of the nutrient (ie Carbs) multiply that by 4 (this gives you calories, 4 cal per gram for Carb & Protein), and then devide that by TOTAL calories.

For instance, if you consume 100g of Carbs, and your total calories for the day ends up at 2000,it would look like this:

(100*4)/2000
Which should equal .20 or 20%.

This is made easy in a spread sheet, since you write the formula to just reference the cells that have the totals already added up (ie =(D1*4)/E1 )

I think Johns spread sheet breaks down carbs into sugar and fiber, so maybe that is one reason that it will not add up to 100% (I'm not sure).

If you add up the calories by doing the 9/4/4 calculations you will find they often do not agree with what is printed on the box. They differ on how much fat is required before they will list it. Some companies will list .1 grams of fat while others will hide up to 0.4 grams.

I was curious about the same thing until I figured that out. Once you identify the worst culprits you can either avoid them or tinker with their nutritional data until it matches the calories they give you.

That's just what I'm doing.