How do I add custom and homemade food?

[Bhramari]

It looks like the only food a person can enter is processed, packaged foods.  I make my food from scratch, or buy locally producted foods like gluten free breads.   I tried to enter the bread we buy, but I was only offered the option of  a "bar", "box" or "bottle".       Kind of a bizarre way to format food entries, considering this is a device to support healthier living.     How can I enter my kind of food?   The current format seems very limiting.     

Moderator edit: Format. 

[ellie_q]

HI @Bhramari Best I can tell from then Food menu Select the Plus sign

From the pop up select custom

Then add custom fill in the blanks;

Or you can search Homemade and  then click on Create Homemade food

Click on serving allows for you to select type of serving, just scroll  to view all the options.

I have not completed one so do not know if will calculate the calories for you. But it's a start.

Hope this helps.!

[AnnieFitbit]

Hi there @Bhramari! Glad to see you around! Thank you very much for the help @ellie_q! 

To add a little on the useful information my friend @ellie_q kindly provided, please note that those steps are for the FItbit app for Windows 10. Please note that custom food log is currently not available for mobile app for iOS and Android. 

You can also log Custom Foods from the Online Dashboard. You would have to go to the Food Log and there, you will see "Favorites" next to the food log box:

You will see a Create a new food option:

After you click on it, you will get a pop-up window, where you will be able to enter the Food's name, brand, serving and amount of calories per serving. You can also add Nutritional Information.

I'll be around if you need anything else! Happy Holidays!

[Bhramari]

Hi @ellie_q.   I was about to express that your explaination doesn't work, but then I clicked "boxes" of the choices "bar", "bottle" and "boxes" and saw that new serving forms showed up.    It would be great if there was an explaination there, because I assumed I had only 3 choices of forms that food can take and that seemed totally bizarre.  I wish the app had more labeling and explainations of how to use it.  It feels like trying to find one's way through a maze!!!   

[Bhramari]

Hi @AnnieFitbit.   I was able to find what you describe and use it successfully.   However, this still does not resolve my issue of how to enter my home-made dishes from fresh, unadulterated ingredients.   For example, can I construct a whole recipe as a single food intkae entity (for (example my own homemade curry) and create serving-size stats, so in the future I can just select the dish that I make?      

[AnnieFitbit]

Thank you very much for clarifying @Bhramari! I'm sorry for the initial confusion. 

In this case, you can create a mean in the same Food Log. Once you go to the Food Log in your Online Dashboard, in the same Favorites section, you will see the Meals option. 

 

Once you click on Create meal, you will see a box where you can enter the name and you will be taken to a new page, where you can enter the foods that are included in the meal.

Once you save, you will see the meal in the Meals section and, once you log it in your Food Log, you will see all the ingredients and calories logging. 

Catch you later! 

[eclarke7]

It would be a nice feature if only the name of the meal created is logged instead of all the ingredients.  You can check to see how myfitnesspal does it. 

[eclarke7]

Do you have a feature which allows me to create multiple servings of a  meal and then log based on portion.  When I create a family meal in FITBIT it logs the entire meal portion with calories and all.  Example I would like to create a meal with nine servings.  Enter ingredients for preparation of 9 servings meal.  Then enter one as my portion and have only the calories etc for one meal portion logged. Right now its cumbersome.  I create my 9 portion meal then I have to pull out my calculator to figure calories, etc for one serving.  Then to log the meal to my plan I currently have to create a new food with the same name as the meal I created and enter the divided fat, fiber, etc.  This is a lot of  steps.   MYFITNESSpal has this feature, not sure if fitbit has it. 

[ZoeAnnL]

I am looking for the same information. I have Created the Meal (FAMILY SIZED) but now need to know what is the nutritional value for portions in grams of that meal.  I would think that most everyone else is in the same predicament.  I don't know anyone who Creates a MEAL that is portioned for 1 person only.  I separate portions to freeze for a later date so I don't have to cook everyday.  Create a Meal is not very useful if the application isn't going to do the work of breaking the calorie count, etc. per serving down based on the proportion eaten.  If the application can't do this, then it is a waste of time to Create a Meal when you can't log only the portion you've eaten.

[ZoeAnnL]

Create A Meal should be eliminated!  I cook and freeze portions.  This application is useless to me.

[ipatty]

I agree.  Although it will let you add specific foods, I don't see how to add the nutritional values of those foods as in calories!

[AT_Fit89]

Agree with this thread. I would like to know how I can log a full meal and then put a specific portion into my daily food. This is how My Fitness Pal does it, no one is going to log a whole meal and/or eat all of the portions in one sitting. Currently I am dividing it and adding it as a food, but that seems unnecessary. 

[SunsetRunner]

Annie- when I search berries I’m getting one cup portion option only. Would I be able to create a 1/2 cup option in the custom section on the food tab? I’m finding quite a few things that I use as snacks or midday pick me ups have few smaller portion options hoping can use custom for them as well. 

[jkjacks]

Here it is in 2020 and no changes to this  as far as i can see.  Yes you can crate a meal and add all of your ingredients but you have to cut them down to a single portions value i.e. if the dish serves 4 and each person eats 1 cup of rice, just put the 1 cup rice instead of 4 cups of rice.  It basically forces you to do some horrible math because most recipes are not made to do that with.  This will get you a list of all those ingredients under whichever meal you selected instead of just the meal name.  To do that, you would have to create food and put the portion count for calories only because that is the only field besides portion type you are allowed to input.  So now when I select Omaha Rolls and put 1 roll, I see it is 337 calories but nothing else.  But i do not get the ingredient list so lose some, lose some.  There has been need for improvement for years and nothing seems to be getting done.  #sadfaceemoji

[Irisheyesofny67]

Ugh! Here it is, August 3, 2020 and still not upgraded.

I made a meatloaf today from a recipe, added it as a meal.....I didn't eat the whole thing, so I can't log it properly.

The least that they can do is add a "#of servings" field for new meals.

Not that difficult, Fitbit! Geez, Louise!

[joanne1971]

10 February 2021 and still unable to create a meal based on portion, please see if this is doable on your app FB, MFP have managed

[jkjacks]

It is August 2021 and no you still cannot create an actual meal and then put a serving of it on your calorie intake log.

[jkjacks]

I am going to test something but I think this is as simple as creating the meal and then having the check box to create as new food item that imbeds the total nutritional values for all items included into a new food item you can portion out.  From our perspective, we can simply create the meal, then create a new food with the added up nutritional values and portion it from there.  Much simpler if fitbit would just add the feature as its simple math and storing new values. 

[jkjacks]

I ran my test.  Created a meal called Jax Curry.  Added all of the ingredients and viola I have a 3141 calorie masterpiece.  I tried to add it as a new food and I get the option to just add calories or i can add the nutritional breakdown per serving.  That is the rub of the problem.  I would again have to calculate out all of the single serving data before creating it as a food with full nutritional breakdown.  I did this with another dish and here is what happened:

I created a new trial Curry recipe and weighed EVERY ingredient (except spices duh) and cooked it up.  Afterwards, I combined the total weight of the ingredients and calculated what percent of that total made up 500 grams (1 bowl full of food!).  It came out to 23.2%.  Serving for 4!!  So i took 23.2% of every ingredient and came out with roughly 800 calories per 500 grams.  I am guessing that 500 grams is more than an average serving should be but it was a quite filling curry.  This was a beef curry and I probably messed up the combination as I removed the grease from the ground meat when I browned it, and I did not consume much of the "sauce" in my bowl as I do not like to eat sauce.  I also picked out all of the carrots.  Because of this, I would probably need to reduce the milk and fat calories somehow.  I would also have to look up the nutritional data for every ingredient, verify what changed when cooked, and % those as well. 

Basically, it is a WHOLE lot of work I should not have to do if fitbit would just allow the preparing of a meal with a total weight post cooking or weight of each ingredient selection so that it could do all that math for me.

[kimic]

I was able to enter the whole meal & then enter my portion to my daily intake. I added up all the ingredient's nutritional value (in a spreadsheet). Weighed the final cooked product. In Fitbit I added a custom food. I put the total calories (I had to convert grams to oz because grams only go up to 500 but it was fine). I also added all the nutritional details of my recipe totals in the custom food entry. When I picked the food, it popped up with the WHOLE dish as my serving 😳 but I was able to change it to grams, enter the weight of my meal & it calculated my specific serving. It correlated with what I had figured out in my spreadsheet. This is a common meal so I’ll be able to reuse this entry - happy happy!