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

[Michael]

How about adding an option on the dashboard to "Create a Meal" from what you have entered in for a particular time period for the day.

[Michael]

How about adding an option on the dashboard to "Create a Meal" from what you have entered in for a particular time period for the day.

[CCampana]

I would love a recipe builder to help with portion control. 

[zapleahy]

Thanks for the idea, Michael. It is currently possible to log custom meals (instructions below), can you explain how this would be different?

1) On your Food Log, look to the right under "Favorites" and click on the Meals Tab.

2) Click the blue link "Create a meal." This will open a window where you will give the meal a name.

3) Click the Save button.

4) It will be moved to "Add Foods" where you can begin to add the individual foods for this meal. After each food item, click the red "Add to Meal" button. 

5) When you are done, click the red "I'm done" button.

[Michael]

Allison,

Thanks for the reply! (I was wondering how much the ideas were monitored, and if duplicates would get combined.)

The difference is that the food entry has already been done. Say yesterday I entered 12 items for dinner, and then tonight I end up eating the same thing, which I think I might do again in the future, so I want to create a meal out of it. At this point I could create a new meal from scratch, which would be a lot of work, or with the proposed feature I would just navigate to yesterday's log, click the new "Create a Meal" link under the dinner section, give it a name, and bam my meal has been created and is ready to be used for tonight, and the future, with just a few clicks.

[lizvocal]

Other weight loss food trackers like Weight Watchers and My Fitness Pal have a function that allows people to input a recipe ingredients and serving size and log the portions.  The way Fitbit is set up, I often use restaurant meals to estimate what I made at home, but this probably includes more fat and salt than I actually use when cooking.  Having a recipe building function would be encourage and support home-cooked, healthy meals.  We don't all eat at restaurants or packaged food for every meals!

[ijud]

I absolutely agree.  I've asked about it in the forum.

[Bandpwise]

I agree! I know there is integration with other apps that have that feature but it would be nice to have it all in ine place. 

[Squirrel]

Log the ingredients in your recipe separately then note the combined calories, fat etc.

Next set up a new food item entitled <recipe name> that totals all of the above.

Then next time just log one <recipe name>

[Michael]

@Squirrel,

That is a work around, but it is more work than necessary, and Fitbit doesn't show the break down of everything, like sugars and vitamins, so you lose a lot of information.

I would be happy if they just offered a way to convert a meal into a food item, it would just have to ask for the number of servings. (I would think this would be a fairly easy modification for them.)

[lizvocal]

@Squirrel That might work for simple recipes, but it seems a bit much for really complex ones.  On Weight Watchers, the recipe function is separate from the food tracker, but linked to it.   It lets you input all the ingredients, set the serving size, and then feeds that information to the tracker.  It also has a public function, that allows people to share recipes if they wish, and lets others access the recipe and the food totals.  So, for example, only one person has to input the recipe work for Julia Child's Beef Bourguignon, and everyone can enjoy the recipe without repeating the work. 

[Squirrel]

I understand now, thank you 

Yes, that would definitely be a good idea! 

[Pola]

Good idea. I am going to continue to use the "Lose it" app to track my food, and this for exercise/calories burned simply because it's not possible to enter in ingredient lists/serving size info and save it as a recipe. The MEAL function is not good enough. 

[zapleahy]

Thanks for additional info and for sharing your use case, @Michael. I can see how this would be a big time saver. Could even take it a step farther and have a bulk select and add function on the meal logger. 

[Michael]

@Allison, while a bulk select and add function would be ideal, removing items from a meal is fairly easy.

I look forward to improvements that Fitbit will make to the food logging functionality in the hopefully near future. (It seems like this section hasn't gotten much love from Fitbit recently.)

[ytakposer]

I absolutely agree. I've been annoyed at having to enter every single food time and time again when I could just have it saved as "meal." It's healthier to cook your own meals, therefore calorie trackers should be intuitive and friendly for people who cook!

[ytakposer]

With other calorie counting systems like Weight Watchers and MyFitnessPal, they remember my serving sizes for different favorite foods AND I can save recipes and meals so that I don't have to enter them separately as ingredients every single time.

Please, Fitbit, improve your system! I love that you keep track of the calories I've burned, but how I can properly use your tools of tracking how many calories I've taken in if you don't provide me with a better system?

Eating healthier often means cooking your own meals and eating certain-sized portions. Please support those of us who do and encourage those who don't by making your food log adaptable to those of us who don't buy all of our foods prepackaged.

Moderator edit: Title edited for clarity and visibility & labels

[SunsetRunner]

May I add in addition to your suggestion to have a feature which allows to quickly enter food by the press of a one click button.

Example:

On working days, I eat the same breakfast, lunch, snacks.. (except what I add to the bread slices can be different.

Have a function 'Automaticly Enter Food'. When adding a 'automatic food entry', it allows the user to set freely food items for any time of the day - breakfast / morning snack / lunch.. and give it a name like in this example 'working day'.

When clicking onto 'working day', it automaticly fills in the food which I eat every day at work and can adjust if required.

[Greypaws]

Fitbit is extremely cumbersome and user unfriendly when trying to log serving size for a home made recipe. Have any of the mods tried to log one serving of homemade chili? 🙂 It's near impossible and totally time consuming.

It would be awesome if you could add a feature so you can log all the ingredients in a recipe, so would have all the nutritional information, figure portion size, name it, and save it to your favorites. This would allow you to take a favorite family recipe, possibly make it healthier and save it. Total boon would be an option to publicly share your recipe with other Fitbit members, should you chose to do so. 

I do appreciate your extensive database and a recipe converter would really compliment this. Thanks for your consideration.

Moderator edit: Labels

[KIervin]

I agree.  I sent an email on Friday about the need to update the database and to add easier entry.  I cook from fresh/whole foods for the most part.  Try finding fresh green beans-steamed or even raw fresh pineapple in a measurable portion-they list a slice.  A slice can be anywhere from 5 grams to 50!  It is my only complaint about the fitbit apps.  I would like to see more fresh (unbranded) foods for those of us who cook. And, possibily a scan bar code option for when you are using something prepackaged.  It is the only feature I miss from my old app.

[didi02453]

I left Fitbit for a long time, and recently bought a flex.  I am so disappointed to learn that Fitbit *still* offers no recipe functionality, despite users begging for it for years now!  "Meal" gets us more than halfway there... just need the ability to specify # of servings, and ask Fitbit to handle the division math.

Use case:

I create a recipe, listing all of the foods and quantities.

I tell the food log how many servings are included.

Food log handles the division.

So... Bananas and Milk.

Banana  1  100 calories

Skim Milk         1c 80 calories.

Total 180 calories

Two servings.

So if I enter 1 serving of bananas and milk in my food log, it figures I should have 90 calories for my one serving. If I enter 1.5 servings, it figures I should have 120 calories for my 1.5 servings.

Thanks -

Thanks -

[edwardgr]

Greypaws,

I replied to another user for a similar issue with the following.  While this is not ideal it does work in the short term.  I have used it exactly as I describe herein:

"This may be a little late for you, but what i do is visit the web site caloriecount.com. Under the food menu they have a 'New Recipe' option. I enter the ingredients in whatever I am making, and the number of intended servings. This spits out the nutrition guesstimate. Then in fitbit food tracker search for whatever you are wanting track then select the Add New Food give your item a name such as Suzi's Chili, with homemade as the brand. Fill in your info from caloriecount for the nutritionals. If you have other fitbit friends and or family who ate the same item, turn on food log visibility for friends and they will be add this item to their log by visiting yours."

[SplitRaindrop]

I use myfitnesspal which I'm able to sync with Fitbit and it allows recipes. I've been happy with it!

[SplitRaindrop]

MyFitnessPal has a recipe function and syncs with fitbit. That's how I use it and have been vary happy with results.

[Captemblack]

It would be nice and easier if on the app under calorie counting if you could just input frequent meals, or saved "recipies" that way it would be able to enter a group of items at once instead of constantly having to add the individual item

[raquel54]

I would really like to see this feature enabled.  It could make creating a meal much quicker. The screen is misleading as it is now:

It clearly says "click on an item to add to the meal", yet nothing happens when you do.  I've tried it in Explorer, FireFox, and Chrome, and it doesn't work in any of them.  I realize you can type to do a quick search when creating, but sometimes when you do that, you get too many choices, and those choices don't include the calories, so you can't be sure you're clicking the right one from the search list. 

It would be much more convenient and quicker to be able to select from your "Favorites" food log.

Moderator Edit: Format