Able to create a custom meal and indicate number of servings

[mrshrdng1016]

I would really like to be able to build a recipie and then indicate how many servings it makes and how much I ate and see nutritional break down by servings too.  I think it would way easier than trying to enter all ingredients then when its time to eat the leftovers I can just add the recipie serving.

Moderator Edit: Clarified subject and updated label

[RichGee]

I've given up on Fitbit. Now using MFP free account. The ads are a little annoying but not too bad. And I sync it with Fitbit account. I paid for premium this year but that will change when my subscription runs out. Then I'll be paying MFP for their premium. Oh, and MFP barcode scanner works BRILLIANTLY in UK for scanning in foods. Another thing Fitbit doesn't do. So...I'll keep their tracker for step counting and Garmin for running. All synced through MFP. Not a too tough workaround. 

[jennyjane]

So FitBit, people have been asking on this thread for 3 years now......any response at all??? do you even read these?? IF the answer is a straight up no, please let us know so we can quit wasting our time with your incomplete food log and move on to a site that cares what their customers want.

[jessiearsenault]

I'd like to see a meal or recipe option for adding food to your meal log. Let's say I make lasagna where's there's the noodles, pasta, cheese, and hamburger - I don't want to add each individual item and guess if there's 1/2 of a cup of hamburger/noodles/etc. in my serving. Add all of your ingredients when they're easier to calculate, determine how many servings it makes and then go from the here. Myfitnesspal app has this feature and it helps a lot!

Moderator edit: Labels

[grammang]

I agree with this post. I use the recipe converter on my LoseIt app because FitBit doesn't have a recipe builder. I'm surprised a leading tech company such as FitBit, which is all about being healthier, would think healthy people only eat out or eat processed foods?! I cook meals at home 5-6 days a week. 

For me FitBit is only useful for physical activity, not for logging food. Please update your app. I know it's possible, just look at LoseIt as a good prototype!

[seporter12]

I whole-heartedly agree!  It would be so handy to be able to divide meals.

[ProfCrash]

When I enter a meal I would like to be able to enter the number of portions that come out of that meal. It was a pain in the but to convert my butt to convert a lasagne recipe that makes 16 servings so that my lasagna meal shows as one portion. The meal feature should not only have a title but a serving size option, like all the foods you look up have.

I would also like to see it show up as what I title it "Four Cheese & Spinach Lasagna" and not all the component parts.

Take a look at My Fitness Pal and what they do with recipes, which is how I am using meals. It is far easier to work with

[Inger]

This has been asked for over, and OVER...and OVER again, always getting a ton of votes. So so very frustrating that even after years of being asked for the most basic of basic functions for a food log, that we're not able to do this. At this point I have no hopes at all that this feature will ever be added. So very disappointing.

[Jajrosie872]

I was hoping an enhancement could be made to the nutritional tracking. It would be great if a recipe builder could be built into the app that will calculate the serving size by oz and/or grams. You would be able to name your recipe, then scan in your ingredients as well as manually add ingredients. Once the recipe is built, then the app would tell you the serving size n the calories per serving. Also, i think a my food list and a my recipes should be a link under my profile so i can store all my frequent foods n recipes there. A publish button could b added to my recipes so you could share your recipes with the fitbit community.
Ive used the Samsung tracking app, map my fitness app n a few other n none have this feature. As far as i know, only the weight watchers app has this feature.
Your thoughts?

[ProfCrash]

My Fitness Pal has this feature as do a number of other food trackers. It is a bit silly that the Fitbit doesn't. I would like to use one app for my food and activities. I like the fitbit dashboard so I can more easily trck a whole bunch of activities, weight, steps, sleep and the like at once. I should not have to try and trim down a recipe when the meal feature essentially can be used for recipes. All they have to do is add a feature that allows you to adjust the serving size, like they have for every food that you record. 

[Sdg729]

Yes, yes, yes!!!

There is no way to divide custom meals into servings once created. So counter-intuitive!!!

Also, foods submitted to the database via photos never seem to show up there... I'm almost tempted to stop trying. It gives me false hope...

And so many foods are MISSING entirely from the database. COMMON foods. Like Kabocha squash.

I feel like Fitbit doesn't respond to simple EASY SUGGESTION that are made in these forums. I feel like I am howling into the wind....

[Cassiemya]

I really hope that you add the Custom Recipe option on the tracker. I create a meal and think it will be a simple option of just inputing all of the ingredience and then when i go to log it I could put the portion size (i.e. Ounces or Cups) of the Custom Recipe/Meal to my account. But we cant. It becomes so frustrating. I would think that if I was able to do it at other websites that you would be able to create one here as well. I don't want to dance between two different websites to find and answer. I want a one stop account in tracking my health and nutrition. I so hope you solve this very simple problem. Thank you!

[LeE86]

I TOTALLY agree! Sitting there and entering in the full recipe, and then going back and dividing each and every ingredient by the # of servings gets really time consuming (and annoying)

[kirstenallover]

I can say that I was super stoked to see that I am able to log custom meals. That being said, after I logged all of the ingredients, it said that I had eaten 1000+ calories. Which is not true. That would have had to mean that I ate the WHOLE meal by myself instead of the intended serving size. When you're creating custom meals, people tend to use the recipes that they got it from to enter in the ingredients. There should be an option for SERVING SIZE whilst creating a new meal instead of me having to figure out what percentage of the "serving" that is the entire recipe that I created, which should allow you to set 1 serving size is x Calories meaning 1/4th of the recipe or whatever the recipe called for.

I know I can't be alone.

Moderator edit:  Labels

[Bob33133]

Great idea but it's been almost 3 years so I guess they don't care

[ProfCrash]

I gave up and am using My Fitness Pal. The calories for meals and snacks shows up on my Fitbit dashboard so I am able to use that fully. The recipe option is great. You can import directly from a website or cut and paste a list of ingredients into the field and find your equivalents.

I would suggest that you double check everything because I had 2 cups of carrots some how end up equaling 2,000 calories. So look over everything but it takes me under two minutes to enter a recipe.

It is silly that Fitbit does not have something similar. It makes me think that they have an agreement with other sites that pair up with them to not develop a decent food tracker so that people go use something else.

[ktel09]

The Fitbit app is great, but I think there is room for improvment on the food logging.  I use another app in conjunction with Fitbit because it has several features that make food logging easier... but I would much rather have everything all in one app and not have to flip back and forth.

Fitbit does have the option to save a meal, which I have tried to use for recipes, BUT you have to try to figure out the amount of each ingredient in each serving which can get difficult with small portions.  Or even, think of trying to log something like homemade chili... it get's difficult.  Additionally, when you log the meal at a later date, it inputs each item on your food log as an individual item.  While, yes, everything is there, it's a real pain if you change your serving size for that meal because you have to go in and adjust each food item up and down individually...

I would like to be able to input and save a recipe in the Fitbit app.  You would input the total amount of each ingredient once and tell it how many servings that recipe makes.  The app would then calculate the nutritional info per serving and save it.  When you go to log it at a later, it would come up on your food log as a single item and a single serving.  The user could then easily adjust the number of servings up or down appropriately.  

I know a lot of food preppers and many times myself and others make our meals for the week, break them up in tupperware, and grab and go.  Depending on my calorie burn that day and/or macro balance, I will eat different protions of each of those meals.  It becomes annoying having to constantly adjust multiple items just for one food item (i.e. the chili example).

Moderator edit:  Labels

[ktel09]

Agreed!! I use MyFitnessPal as well and find myself just flipping back forth and my poor husband rarely gets his foods logged because of how long it all takes.  Add a recipe builder in and add back the option to share foods/meals/recipes and I'd be totally satisfied!

[SarahEE]

Yes I agree, it would be helpful tohave the serving size option for when you've added your own meal. recipe books dont give breakdowns for 1 portion - they are for 4 or 6 or whatever so I'm putting these quantities into my tracker but I'm not eating that volume in 1 go. its not great to then have to try and break the recipe down by portion. this would be a simple piece of coding fitbit - you already have the functionality there....

[PaulGDuncan]

Why is FitBit still silent on this topic?  Do they want to force everybody to MFP?  It appears that we are approaching a year since the last communication from FitBit reps on this -- certainly would be nice to see some progress.  I should not have to use two apps when almost everything needed is in the FitBit app.

FitBit Customer Service / Web folks:  are you even reading these comments?  I'm a consultant to large organizations and when I show them they are ignoring a large percentage of their customers (which they worked hard to get) they generally do something!  Come on!  Be proactive!  Get a recipe/meal/portion function into the app!  Communicate progress of this!  Do something!  Crickets chirping is not an option in this day when there are so many other options available....

Regards!

[bbbaer]

I was hoping to find a solution when I googled this simple question, but instead I found that this has been an issue for over a year.  It is really a simple implementation.  Other items let you scale dynamically, why cant meals scale dynamically by scaling their constituent parts as a batch?  I hope Fitbit implements this soon, as I have been pleasantly surprised by the upgrades they have made to their software this past year.

[gigi7kona]

How do I vote for this?  Just posting a comment is voting?

Never mind.  I figured it out.  LOL

[YoBubba]

I'm surprised that this issue is still not resolved yet. I gave up logging my meals on fitbit. It's just too time-consuming and since I don't eat prepared/processed foods, your database isn't helpful. I cook everything from scratch and would love to have a way to know exactly what the nutritional value of each serving is. Where do you stand in this? Are you actually working on improving the app??

[JustDucky72]

I totally agree with this idea!  There are lots of other health/fitness program that allow you to do this (myfitnesspal and weightwatchers being two that I use or have used).  This would be one thing that would keep me 100% on the fitbit website!

[Canehdn]

I 100% agree. I absolutely hate using MyFitnessPal for logging my meals. The app is incredibly slow and frustrating.

The calories burned vs what is consumed never match which is also annoying.

If the Fitbit food tracker had the ability to create and store recipes that you could quickly add and as you suggested select the serving size, I would be in heaven.

Another awesome feature would be to quickly add your own foods. I will submit foods to be added to the database but I also need to add the food then and not wait. 

The food catalog can definitely be expanded upon. Someone dedicated to constantly adding foods into the database would be cool.  

If the food tracking was updated with these features and act more like MyFitnessPal, I would instantly switch to only use Fitbit for all my activity and sleep tracking.

[LindsW]

You aren't alone. The worst part is, whenever this gets brought up, you get told to use another app like MyFitnessPal. I don't want to have to use a different app, why cant this one app add a simple "# of servings" option to each custom recipe, then you can choose how many servings you ate.