FAQs

People of all ages, in various stages of health, use the Good Measures platform to learn about, or take control of their wellness. We are confident that becoming a Good Measures member would be helpful to you whether or not you are currently participating in a formal or informal weight or health management program.

In the words of one of our Good Measures participants, “the Good Measures Index is a simple, single number that can help you change your life”. What’s a good Index? We think a Good Measures Index is good only if you pay attention to it.

GMI is a number between 1 and 100, which shows you how well you've been eating (taking into account exercise) over the past week compared to your personalized nutrient goals (goals for vitamins and minerals as set by the Health and Medicine Division of the National Academies, and personal goals for weight maintenance, gain, or loss). In total, the GMI encompasses up to 30 nutrient goals including vitamins, minerals, calories, and macronutrients (protein, carbohydrates, and fat).

A high GMI (near 100) means that your recent exercise and food choices are very consistent with achieving your health goals. A low GMI (say 40) means that your recent exercise and food choices are NOT consistent with achieving your health goals.

Rather than thinking of a GMI as either good or bad, we encourage our members to use it to learn about their own eating and exercise patterns. As you log more foods and meals, you'll see how your GMI changes and responds, and that should help orient you towards foods and meals that will improve your GMI and meet more of your nutrition goals.

Although the Good Measures platform can be used to help your meet your weight loss goals, it is not a diet or weight loss program. The Good Measures platform can also be used to help you maintain or gain weight. Our platform is different because we start by learning about who you are, what your goals and needs are, and then offer real-time suggestions and learning opportunities to help you become you...only better.

No, the Good Measures platform does not require that you eat special foods.

Yes. Good Measures is customizable so that you may specify your nutrient goals according to your specific needs. Good Measures will work with your registered dietitian, physician, or healthcare provider to help you set these goals.

Yes. Good Measures allows you to track the calories and nutrients you eat every day through the Log section of the website and the iPhone and Android applications. However, this functionality alone does not help you figure out what to do next to best address your body’s nutrient deficits and excesses. To help you figure out what to do next, Good Measures provides meal and snack suggestions along with new foods to try.

Yes! You can scan bar codes from packaged foods using the iPhone and Android apps. From Log, select the meal in which you would like to log the food, then select "scan barcode." Center your phone or tablet over the barcode, and if your food is in the database it will be logged to that meal in your log.

If you have any questions about scanning bar codes, please let us know by sending an email to help@goodmeasures.com.

Yes. The Android application is available for download on Google Play (link via Google Play: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.goodmeasures.myindex).

There are many tools that provide “nutritious food” suggestions. Foods that have lots of important nutrients are viewed as nutritious and are recommended. This “one size fits all” approach misses the important point that your current nutrition needs are impacted by your recent eating and exercise patterns. The “nutritious food” suggestions are not contextual. To help you figure out how to best address your body’s nutrient deficits and excesses, Good Measures provides meal and snack suggestions along with new foods to try.

Although water is not one of the nutrients that factors into your GMI, drinking more water is often a personal wellness goal for many of our Good Measures members. If this is the case, by all means, log your water!

With the exception of restaurant chains, most restaurants do not list the nutritional information for their menu items. If you happen upon a restaurant that does report nutritional information--and the food isn’t already in our database--then Create a Food. Otherwise, the best you can do is approximate the ingredients, cooking method, and quantity of the food you ate. Here are some tips for logging restaurant meals:

• • If you ate a dish that was similar to a food that you have a recipe for (or you can find a recipe online), create a recipe for that food, and log the portion that you ate.

  • If you have no idea what might be in the food you ate, try and record the identifiable ingredients, and combine them in the way that you ate them.

  • Look for a similar food in the Good Measures database. There might, for example, be packaged, frozen, or canned versions of the foods you ate.

  • The Good Measures database has several foods (e.g., hamburgers) listed as “restaurant type” foods. Look at the descriptions and see if any are a good match for the foods you ate.

  • Don’t forget sauces or condiments – these can significantly change the nutritional content—especially sodium or fat—of a meal.

Because your GMI is related to the nutrients that you consume in your meals and snacks, it’s important to log foods that are as closely matched to the ones that you actually ate. If you can’t find the exact food or brand of food that you ate, but there is a similar one in the database, then logging the substitution may be the fastest and most direct option.

However, if you have a very unique food, and can’t find a reasonable substitution, you could add it to the database using the Create a Food feature in the Log section. This would work best with a packaged food that has nutritional information. If the food is not packaged, the other option would be to add the food as a Recipe from the My Foods section of My Profile.

New formulations and versions of products are constantly added to our food supply. And, many brands use different processing plants to produce their foods, which sometimes results in a slight change of ingredients, and differing nutritional information.

Because we strive to maintain the most updated database possible, we hope that you will let us know when you see a difference in product information between what you have on your shelf, and what we have in our database. Send us the exact name of the product, the brand, and a picture (or scan) of the nutrition label, and we will do our best to update the information.

The database includes raw products because some foods may actually be consumed in their raw state (e.g., the raw fish in sushi, or the raw beef in steak tartar). The Good Measures system also has a recipe function, in which ingredients are usually added in a raw state.

The nutritional information does change when you cook food depending on the method of preparation, the time, and temperature that you cook it. For the most accurate nutritional record of what you eat, log foods the way you actually eat them (i.e., if you have a baked chicken thigh, log it as such). It’s okay to log raw foods if there isn’t a cooked version in the database, or if there isn’t an entry for the cooking method that you used. Just make sure you log the pre-cooked (raw) portion size of the food that you eat, as shape and size can change during cooking.

The rules of logging are simple. The GMI is most accurate if you log whole days. However, it is not necessary for you to log every day...but our Meal and New Foods To Try Suggestions will be better if you log more frequently.

Behind the scenes, the GMI Engine estimates your calorie needs using the Mifflin-St Jeor equation, which is used to predict your resting energy expenditure (the amount of energy it would take to keep you alive if you rested in bed all day). This calculation takes into account your height, weight, age, and gender. Next, something called an activity factor is added to the equation, which helps determine the amount of calories you burn on top of the resting energy expenditure. This number basically describes how active you are in a typical day, but does not include formal exercise, such as running or swimming. Good Measures counts exercise separately. Finally, your goals for weight maintenance, weight gain, or weight loss are factored into the calculation. The resulting number is an estimate of how many calories you would need to consume in a typical day to achieve your weight goals.

Because all people are different, and may burn calories at a different rate, your calorie needs represent a “best estimate” of what scientists have observed through research and experiment. If you are not able to meet your weight goal at the calorie level that has been recommended for you, it may be worthwhile to explore working with a registered dietitian or other health professional to help you set your calorie goal. We can then take that recommendation and customize your calorie goal within the Good Measures platform.

Yes, weight loss or gain is accounted for in the calculation used to estimate a calorie goal. Consuming more or fewer calories than recommended might help you reach your weight goals more quickly, then again—depending on your unique metabolic make-up—it might not.

For the best results, it’s important to set your weight goals realistically. For the calculation to work correctly, you must accurately record and update changes in your weight or weight goals. And, because gradual weight change is generally considered safer, and longer-lasting than drastic change, we suggest that you speak with a registered dietitian or other healthcare professional before making big changes to your calorie goal. Luckily, the Good Measures system is customizable, so if you and your healthcare provider decide that a change in your calorie goal would be in your best interest, we can certainly customize your settings to reflect those goals.

The number of calories you burn while exercising depends on your physiological make-up (height, weight, gender, and lean muscle mass), the type of exercise you do, and the intensity and duration that you do it. If you logged your exercise, then the calories you burned will appear beneath your calorie goal in the line for Exercise. Adding your exercise ensures you are eating the right amount of calories to achieve your weight goals.

A nutrient is a substance that you need in varying amounts to live and grow. The word “macro” means large, so macronutrients refer to those nutrients we need in large amounts to keep our bodies healthy. They include carbohydrates (carbs), fat, and protein, and are the major nutrients that supply calories (energy) to our bodies.

The Macronutrient Summary shows you the proportion of calories that come from each macronutrient relative to the total amount of calories logged per day. The goal percent range of daily calories is based on recommendations from the Health and Medicine Division and the United States Department of Agriculture.

You might notice that the percentage of calories from carbohydrates, protein, and fat displayed on the Macronutrient Summary on a given day aren’t adding up to 100 percent. This could happen if:

1. You logged alcohol

Macronutrients (carbohydrates, fat, and protein) supply most of the calories in our diet, but alcohol also contributes a substantial amount of calories. For example, if you logged a shot (1.5 ounces) of alcohol, it would add about 110 calories to your total calories for the day.

To figure out the macronutrient percentage, the GMI Engine divides the calories from each macronutrient by the total number of calories. Since alcohol isn’t counted as a macronutrient, but is counted towards the total number of calories, the percentage will not add up to 100%.

2. You logged a food that contains calories, but is missing information for carbohydrates, protein, or fat

This is typically a problem for foods not originally found in the database.

There is ample evidence to suggest that dietary patterns high in fruit, vegetables, whole grains, legumes, and lean protein, along with exercise and portion moderation, contribute to overall health and wellness. We built the Good Measures system to help you understand how well your current eating pattern is meeting your nutrition needs, and to guide you towards food choices and combinations that will improve your GMI.

We encourage you to learn about your baseline nutrition (without a supplement) before adding one into the Good Measures system. You will have a clearer picture of your nutrient excesses and deficiencies, and begin to understand which foods, combinations, and eating patterns help you best meet your nutrition goals.

If you are thinking about starting a supplement, it is always good practice to check with your physician. Some supplements can be dangerous for your health when taken at certain doses.

For vitamin A, Recommended Dietary Allowances (RDAs) are given as mcg (micrograms) of retinol activity equivalents, or RAE, to account for the different bioactivities of retinol and provitamin A carotenoids.Currently, vitamin A is listed on food and supplement labels in international units (IUs) even though nutrition scientists rarely use this measure.

To convert a vitamin A supplement containing retinol in IUs to mcg RAE, you would multiply the IUs by 0.3.

Example: 2500 IU x 0.3 = 750 mcg RAE

Here are other handy conversion factors for vitamin A:

• 1 IU retinol = 0.3 mcg RAE

• 1 IU beta-carotene from dietary supplements = 0.15 mcg RAE

• 1 IU beta-carotene from food = 0.05 mcg RAE

• 1 IU alpha-carotene or beta-cryptoxanthin = 0.025 mcg RAE

For vitamin D, RDAs are listed in both international units (IUs) and micrograms (mcg).

To convert a supplement containing vitamin D in mcg to IU, you would multiply the mcg by 40.

Example: 15 mcg x 40 = 600 IU

In other words, the conversion factor for vitamin D is:

• 1 mcg vitamin D = 40 IU vitamin D

Currently the only way to add a supplement to your log is by entering it into the system as a new food. So, if you log your supplement, it will be counted towards your GMI. If you are curious about how well you are meeting your nutrient needs without supplements, simply do not log them for a period of time. We recommend setting aside at least a few days without logging your supplement so that you may begin to understand where you are naturally over and under your nutrient goals. If you are thinking about starting a supplement, it is always good practice to check with your physician. Some supplements can be dangerous for your health when taken at certain doses.

Current scientific literature generally supports obtaining nutrients from whole food sources rather than supplements when possible. Good Measures will only suggest supplements as part of your Meal Suggestions if you have previously logged them, and in the amount that you have previously logged. Please make sure to indicate if a food you have “created” is a supplement by checking the “supplement" box when creating or editing a food.

It is quite possible for meal suggestions to look very different while having the same impact on the Good Measures Index (GMI). The reason is that while the meals may impact your GMI the same amount, they do so in different ways.

Meal suggestions are designed to help meet nutritional goals for up to 30 different nutrients at one time. So, the increase in the GMI you see reported for the meal refers to the overall effect the meal has on the GMI, as a summary of up to 30 nutrients, rather than the effect of any one nutrient in particular. (You would see the GMI increase if you were to eat the foods in the suggested portions.) In this way, meals can contain different combinations of foods and nutrients, while still having the same cumulative effect on the GMI. You might think of this as different trade-offs being made within each suggested meal.

Another important thing to note is that Good Measures looks at the nutrients from all foods in a meal, not just the main sources of any particular nutrient. You gave the example of the protein being different in each meal, so let’s look at the meals to dig a little deeper:

Meal Suggestion #1

Turkey Breast 1 oz

Tortilla Chips 1 oz

Red Pepper 0.5 pepper

Wrap 3 wraps

Spinach 15 oz

Meal Suggestion #2

Avocado 0.5 cup

Red Pepper 0.5 pepper

Shrimp 5 large

Apple 2

Meal Suggestion #3

Avocado 0.5 cup

Egg whites 9 large

Wrap 2 wraps

Although protein does come from the “traditional” meat group (like egg whites, shrimp, and turkey), protein is also found in other foods. From Meal Suggestion #1, for example, besides the 1 oz turkey, the spinach contributes 12 g and the wrap adds 15 g of protein to the meal. In total, that meal provides 39 g of protein. The other two meals provide 35 g and 43 g of protein, respectively.

In summary, although these meals might look very different, they offer comparable increases in the GMI because they use different combinations of foods to balance up to 30 nutrients at once. It’s a complicated math problem, but luckily you don’t have to do it all in your head…that’s why we invented the Good Measures Index!