Tracking cholesterol intake

[asuri0423]

So I've been using my fitbit for almost 3 months now and I love it. I've lost 12 pounds and have really taken to tracking my food using the app. It makes sure a huge difference when you actually have to lookup food and see the nutritional facts every time you eat it.

The only thing missing for me is a daily total of the amount of cholesterol I am eating. I know that fitbit has this info for all the food I log, I just wish there was a way to see daily totals on the website the same way I can see my total calories, fat, fiber, etc. I know there are a lot of third party apps that work with fitbit data. Does anyone know of any good ones that will show me a daily cholesterol intake total? From what I can tell, most of the third party apps will let you log food in them and then sync to fitbit. But I actually enjoy using the fitbit interface for logging food, so I was hoping to find an app that would just pull the food data from fitbit and show me the numbers I'm looking for. 

Does anyone know of an app that can do this?

[LMMRR]

Try my fitness pal.  I know you can customize your output and it tracks micronutrients.

[SunsetRunner]

Was there ever a resolution concerning this.  I too am interested in following my cholestrol intake and since the information is in the database it should be a simple fix for fitbit to add that to the daily report or may be make a report that is custom on what one would like to see.

[Dominique]

My impression is the "resolution" is to use MyFitnessPal, if the basic info tracked by Fitbit is not sufficient for your needs.

[TerriST]

The log screen on the PC fitbit app shows daily cholesterol.  I look at mine daily.  It is in the summary above the individual meal lisitngs

[SunsetRunner]

On my Mac within the Fitbit in the food log area it shows

Daily Totals
Calories
391
Fat
11.3 g
Fiber
5 g
Carbs
58 g
Sodium
73 mg
Protein
18 g
Water
0 fl oz
Daily Calorie Composition: 57% from carbs, 25% from fat and 18% from protein.


I don’t see Cholesterol… not sure why you see it and I don’t the only difference is I have a MAC and you have a PC…

Thanks for responding by the way

Gina

[TerriST]

I was wrong i is not cholesterol that is showing.  It is sodium I was thinking about

[JTWrenn]

Not sure if this is just new but, if you go to the app, and on the dash scoll down to the calories eaten tab.  Looks like an apple.  If you don't have it then you need to hit edit at the top and find it under additional stats.

Then click on the food eaten tab. It should show you a bunch of stats on the food you have logged.  Under macronutrients should be a nutrients link.  That should show you the totals of all the nutrients you have eaten for the day, including cholesterol.

[BXgrl]

If you click on the name of the food you logged, it will give you all of the nutritional information. I then add a note to the meal indicating the total of cholesterol for that meal. In this way, I don't go over the recommended daily allowance of no more than 200mg. My Fitbitpal gives the same information. I prefer to use the Fitbit App rather than to have to log in to yet another site.

[hopskipjump]

Super helpful, thanks!

But to Fitbit I say the following:

With heart disease a top killer in the US, shouldn't cholesterol count be a tab customers can include in a tab, just as you can also select to keep track of glucose levels? Please consider!  Thank you

[KSS2]

It is difficult to calculate cholesterol intake and would likely not be very useful in any case. Current research shows that the amount of cholesterol ingested does not make much difference to heart disease. It's the type of LDL (who knew there was more than one type) that is the issue. And the amount/type of cholesterol in foods can vary enormously - consider the difference between meat from grass-fed free-range animals to that of grain-fed stall raise animals. Another thing to consider is that the body makes its own cholesterol (it is really that important) so a reduction from diet maybe made up by the body to ensure sufficient amounts are available.  There are calculators available - just Google cholesterol calculator. You can find one from Johns Hopkins Medical, Wisconsin Medical College, even Apple has one. Adding fibre to the diet can reduce cholesterol in the blood as can exercise! Check out some of the work by a UK cardiologist and Professor of Evidence-Based Medicine Dr Aseem Malhotra. A Statin Free Life is a good place to start from a credible source. Very readable and with good tips.

[MrBosco]

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@KSS2 wrote:

It is difficult to calculate cholesterol intake and would likely not be very useful in any case. Current research shows that the amount of cholesterol ingested does not make much difference to heart disease. It's the type of LDL (who knew there was more than one type) that is the issue.

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This is correct - tracking intake of cholesterol is less important than tracking the amount of healthy fats versus unhealthy fats in the diet, and it may be the case that it's not even that simple.  In short - most unhealthy blood cholesterol does not come directly from food but from the way the body processes different types of fat contained in that food.

https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/saturated-fat-and-cholesterol

The booklet available on the web page below gives a nice simple explanation of good cholesterol vs bad, and the different types of fat content in various foods:

https://croi.ie/heart/risk-factors/cholesterol/

The Fitbit app is not the best way at present to track food intake in detail.  My Fitness Pal is supposed to be quite good, though I use a free app that came with a smart food weighing scales which does everything I need.  The advantage of a smart scale is that you can very quickly record the actual calories and nutrients contained in fruit and vegetables, which come in various sizes, and similarly record the calories in a given portion of pasta or rice for example.  Some of these free apps even come with a barcode scanner function, so you can rapidly scan food products like jars of sauce or ready meals.  I use the free app then just add the calories for each meal to Fitbit using the 'quick calories' function so I can see the nice charts and graphs that Fitbit offers.

https://www.makeuseof.com/best-smart-kitchen-scales/