How to track your nutrition across a whole week

1. Decide whether the week is planned or eaten

A weekly result only makes sense when its seven days describe the same thing. A meal plan estimates food you intend to eat. An intake record describes food you actually ate. Do not mix five planned days with two remembered days and call the result a weekly intake.

MorselMetrics shows nutrient contributions from meals in the planner. It does not automatically know whether you ate them. If you use the planner to reconstruct an actual week, update every changed meal, portion, drink, snack, sauce and leftover first. Otherwise, describe the result honestly as planned nutrition.

2. Complete the denominator before using the average

For a seven-day view, the calendar denominator is seven. That prevents three carefully entered days from looking like a complete week. Before interpreting a daily average, inspect each date for missing meals and missing personal portions.

1. Scan each meal slot. Check breakfast, lunch, dinner, snacks and drinks, including meals away from home if the week is meant to describe intake.
2. Check personal portions. A four-serving recipe does not tell the planner how much one person had. Assign the actual or planned portion.
3. Check food identity and state. Correct a dry-versus-cooked, canned-versus-drained or fortified-versus-unfortified mismatch before changing the menu.
4. Open data-quality notes. A food can report energy and protein while leaving a vitamin or mineral unreported.
5. Mark estimates. A household-measure estimate is different from missing data, but it is still not a measurement.

The Australian Food Composition Database contains foods commonly available in Australia and reports 58 core nutrients, with other components available depending on the data. The source record and its available fields matter: absence of a value is not evidence of zero.

3. Audit the evidence before doing weekly arithmetic

This example uses an invented nutrient and invented units. It demonstrates the review logic only; it does not describe a real nutrient, food or recommended intake.

The visible amounts add to 63 units, but 63 is only the reported subtotal. Dividing it by seven gives 9 units per calendar day; that arithmetic is correct, yet it understates the week because Thursday is blank and Wednesday has an unreported contribution. Dividing the four complete days by four gives 11.25 units, but that answers a different question and still does not describe the whole week.

Finish Thursday, resolve Wednesday if a suitable source record exists, and keep Saturday labelled as an estimate. If Thursday becomes 9 units and Wednesday gains 3 reported units, the revised subtotal is 75 and the seven-day average is about 10.7 units. The estimated Saturday still prevents a definitive comparison.

4. Does every day have to be perfect?

No. Ordinary meals and appetites vary, so use the weekly view to identify a repeated pattern rather than trying to force every bar to exactly 100% every day. However, a higher day does not literally erase a lower day, and a weekly mean should not be used to dismiss an applicable upper reference on a particular day.

The official Australian and New Zealand Nutrient Reference Values explain that an RDI is an average daily intake level intended to meet the needs of nearly all healthy people in a life-stage and sex group, while an AI is used when an RDI cannot be determined. A UL is an upper reference, not a target. These distinctions matter more than making every percentage identical.

5. Review a seven-day plan in MorselMetrics

1. Open week view. Select the person whose assigned portions you want to review.
2. Finish the plan. The summary states how many of the seven dates have no meals. Enter portions for every meal that person is expected to eat.
3. Open All nutrients. Period amounts are totals; reference bars use the daily average across all seven calendar dates, including empty days.
4. Check Below reference and No data separately. A missing value is not sorted into the low list as though it were zero.
5. Open the nutrient detail. Review the meals and ingredients behind the number, plus any partial or estimate note.
6. Return to the day view. Inspect the specific dates that created the weekly pattern before editing a meal.

For building the week before reviewing it, use the weekly meal-planning guide. For the data-quality decision behind a low vitamin or mineral result, see how to separate a shortfall from missing data.

Keep exploring

Reviewed 13 October 2026 against the MorselMetrics week view, calendar-day averaging, personal portions, evidence labels and nutrient contribution detail. Official references: Eat for Health AU/NZ Nutrient Reference Values and FSANZ AFCD Release 3. Every number in the worked week is explicitly illustrative.