Here are some ways to make your use of Count 3 even faster and easier.
Part of the creative design of Count 3 was to keep the program as
simple as possible in terms of the number of buttons and screens. We
wanted to share some of the more creative ways to use the software in good health....
You can use negative quantities. Let’s say you had a Quarter Pounder but you ordered it without the bun (low-carb style). In your meal with the Quarter Pounder, search for and add a hamburger bun then change the quantity of the hamburger bun from “1” to “-1.” Your totals will now reflect all the totals from the Quarter Pounder minus those that were contributed by the bun! This works for anything similar.
Measure once. Rather than pouring all your beverages into a measuring cup before consuming them, we recommend that you fill your favorite glasses with water and then pour the water into a measuring cup one time. This will let you know how much your glasses hold. Similarly, you could measure say 8 ounces of liquid and then pour it into your favorite glasses or mugs to see how far it fills them.
Compare items by creating a “meal” with all of them. Let’s say you want to know which frozen entrees are better nutrition-wise. You can create a “meal” (use a date outside of your other entries) that contains all of them and then view it as one of the detail reports. You will be able to see how they compare to each other and which one is the closest to your diet’s guidelines.
Use “Copy” to quickly add commonly eaten foods and combinations of foods. If you have coffee with one sugar and one cream every day, you could make a “meal” which is just those three items with their quantities adjusted. Any time your meal includes coffee, you can start by copying the coffee meal and then adding the other items to it. You can even copy from different meals into the same meal. Just be sure to set the date and time on the copy screen to match the meal you want to add to.
Zoom in on reports. When reports open, they open in a shrink-to-fit the screen size. They are much clearer when you zoom in. When the report is open, your cursor changes to a magnifying glass. Simply click in the middle of the report to zoom in (clicking again zooms out).
Many users go back and forth between the main screen and the reports while they are balancing a meal. The detail in the “Count 3” report shows which foods are contributing carbs, fat and calories. With a little experimenting you can find a better balance for a meal. This tip refers to meal planning. If you are analyzing a meal you have already eaten then you just want to be accurate with your quantities.
Search Tips
Our super fast search feature gives you the power to search 14,000+ items in the blink of an eye. Here are some tips to help you get the most out of this feature.
Type part of the brand name to view all items from a certain maker or restaurant. If you search for “mcd” you will get all of the items sold at McDonald’s in one list.
The search is order sensitive. If you search for “gouda cheese” you will get nothing because the search engine is trying to match that whole phrase and gouda is listed as “cheese, gouda.” Less is more as they say so searching for just “gouda” will get your cheese in a variety of quantities.
You can use the “*” (asterisk) character as a wildcard in your search strings. As in “Milk*2%” which will match any item where the word “milk” precedes “2%” no matter what it in between. Building on the tip above, you could search for “hamburger*mcd” to view all choices of McDonald’s hamburgers (at least the one which have the word “hamburger” in their description, so “Big Mac” would not be included).
If you get too many results to read through for a search try adding a word to narrow it down. Your first search terms will stay in the window so you can just add to them, using the * as above. Searching for “beef” gets way too many items to look through, so I change it to “beef*frank” to get a list of 6 options for beef franks.
Unchecking the “filtered” box on the Search screen will let you search the entire database. Our filter knocks out items which are in not commonly eaten by our users including all prepackaged baby foods, raw meat and items with unusually large quantities. If you need any of those, uncheck the filter and they will be eligible to show up in your search results.
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