So I do not use/own a smartphone. I feel that using a food diary is what I need right now to figure out the weight gain that I am experiencing. I think I am on plan but I guess I am not. Anyway what is the most practical way of carrying this thing around so as to get an accurate picture?

Hi. I've never used my phone as a tracker. Do whatever's easiest for you: I use my PC with a program called FitdayPC. It's rather dated with no recent updates, but I still really like it. You can create recipe entries and repetitive meal entries, and generate all kinds of reports. You could also use the MyPLAN tracker we have on this site. You could use a pen and paper, and your Atkins book... or even just start a journal here and describe your meals. People can visit and offer advice if they see anything that stands out as possibly problematic.

Keep in mind that you're at a perfectly healthy body weight. Body composition on LC is totally different from what it would have been when you were younger, and/or if you've low-calorie dieted in the past. The scale is not a fat-meter. I was smaller at a higher weight than I was at a lower weight and skinny-fat.

I like using an old fashioned notebook and pen. I don't carry it with me, I just write it down when I get home. I track my weight each day, calories, carbs, grams of protein.
I look up nutrition info using google rather than a carb counting book.
It is easy to spot trends flipping through book.
My current one is cute- green with white polka dots. I have fun with it- but I have always been a numbers oriented person and enjoyed math....

It also depends on what you want to see out of your notes.

For a while I did all my tracking in a week-at-a-glance paper book. It was the ONLY way I saw that if my meals were skimpy and careless for 3 days, I had a binge on the 4th. the notes were cryptic and shorthand but *I* knew what it meant, LOL. So it could all fit on a page a week. And it fit in my purse and was always with me.

I also tracked not only what I ate, but my physical and emotional feelings in the 4 hours after I ate. That helped me see what meals were energizing and wonderful and what meals were not so much. Paper worked for me because again I could make little notes and icons that I knew what it meant. Oh and I tracked sleep to see how that worked with how i managed food.

Or if you want the numbers for grams of protein or carb, or percent of protein/fat/carb, you can make paper notes with you all day and enter them once a day in Fitday or a computer tool that does the math. I did that too and got fast at it.

I use a steno notebook. I track food, exercise, & bg. I no longer write down the carbs because I now know what most are. The only time I track carbs is if my bg tells me I'm suffering from carb creep - it gets me back on course.

I do have my own list of foods with carb & protein counts. If it's a new food I google it.

I don't keep a food diary as such, but I do keep all my shopping lists after going to the supermarket each week. As long as I'm only buying good stuff I can't really go wrong at meal times, and it means I have a record of what I've had in the past so I don't forget things I haven't had in a while.

Thankyou for all your suggestions. I have found for the time being a small day planner with a place to write and will try to be faithful in writing it all down there. I know I have allowed my carbs to creep as my hunger is super out of control. I had forgotten about my plan that this site offers. Might be fun to play with.

Hunger out of control was from 2 things for me - one, not eating enough at meals.

Or two, meals with too much protein and too close together. Turns out I also have a lively insulin response to protein too, and too much too often just gave me the hungry horrors you get with insulin being high. PS I could eat 8 ounces at every meal of steak or chicken. Now I have 3 ounces and paradoxically it's more satisfying. I am 64, 5'2", and sedentary.

I also use Fitday

But even more so... I plan my meals (weekly)
I know what foods I'm going to eat everyday and I know what the carb counts are. I need to do this in order to never have to think about what I am going to do next. I hate the what's for dinner conversation with my husband

I know that too much protein is a problem for diabetics (such as myself), but hadn't realized it was for non-diabetics, too. I had been eating a lot of meat because it has no carbs & couldn't figure out why my bg wasn't going down. When I learned the truth my scream of frustration was probably heard for miles! But moderate protein worked & my bg is normal - without meds - as long as I eat on-plan. And that was when I was able to go from 3 meals to 2 without insane hunger.

If not a lot of protein what are you eating? More fat? low carb vegetables?

Me? Usually just less food. I have a large salad almost every day; when I don't I have broccoli or cauliflower. On rare occasions, a dessert of berries or lc custard.

Tho yesterday I made broccoli cheese soup - way too easy to eat too much of that!

Yes, either more veggies with butter and salt, or just less meat. This is a food style that is low volume when I don't eat veggies, that's for sure.
Last night for some reason, cabbage with salt and butter was so good I must have had 1-2 cups, way more than my usual half cup. Weird.

I've been using myfitnesspal.com it works with computer and smart phone.

I used an app called Carbs Control for months, but now I have the hang of how I work. So we don't have to always track to get benefits from it.

Like I upped the calories and lowered the carbs; and started losing again. I never would have guessed that combo was going to work.