Changing serving size for custom meals

[T.Mizzle]

Yesterday I created my first custom meal via the dashboard on my PC. I was surprised how easy it was until I later weighed my meal, and wanted to add the weight of that custom meal serving to my tracker. It turns out it is not possible to change the serving size of custom meals. I took me an hour to work out a work around. It needs to be....

[YojanaFitbit]

Hi @T.Mizzle, and thanks for taking the time to share this suggestion about having the option to change serving size for custom meals. We rely on feedback like yours to help us develop products and features that we know our community wants to see. If this suggestion receives votes from other customers and gains popularity, it will be shared internally with various teams at Fitbit. To learn more about how Fitbit decides which suggestions get developed, visit our FAQs.

Watch this space for status updates. In the meantime, try visiting Health & Wellness to talk with other members about all things health and fitness.

[T.Mizzle]

Thanks! Are you able to share everything g that I wrote, please? Currently only the top part of my text is showing, but I wrote into both boxes as if they're are one. 

Thanks, 

Tina 

[Juliewicz]

I agree this is a needed feature. I shouldn't have to use 2 apps to record my fitness. Why have an incomplete food logging tool? 

[a.weather]

I'm having a sort of related problem. I've been using a recipe analyzer website to figure out how many calories are in a serving of things I cook from scratch. One of the first things I analyzed was our Friday night pizza: I entered all the ingredients and divided the amount by 8, since that's how many slices we cut our pizza into.

When I entered the amount into my Fitbit app, I was offered a selection of units, the first one being 1/20 cl. I scrolled through, but I guess I missed the fact that there is a 'serving' choice. So I chose the unit for all of my custom foods to be 1/20 cl, and if I eat two portions, I log it as 1/10 cl, etc. which is a workaround, but not ideal.

The other day I was entering a custom food and eureka! I saw the 'serving' option in the unit list.

So now I want to know how to open the foods I have already labouriously filled out all the nutrients for and change the serving unit so that going forward 1 piece of pizza is listed as 1 serving and not 1.20 cl. I really, really don't want to have to delete the items and start all over.

alison

[Daviddmh]

The requested ability in scanning to custom foods is spot on. Additionally requests have been made to include portion size from custom meals eliminating the need for the user to "do the math" when creating a custom meal. Both of these requests have been on-line for years without provided solutions. My question is will these be addressed and how long does it really take for suggestions to be promulgated in the app? 

[KelseyHend]

You make a soup to eat throughout the week, you enter in the full recipe into "Custom Food/Recipe" in FitBit. At dinner you ate 8oz of the soup, but you cannot select 8oz from your "Recipe", it only allows you to add the recipe as a whole (which could be 5+ servings). There should be a serving size option from any Custom Recipe that users create.

[YojanaFitbit]

Hi @KelseyHend, thanks for explaining why you would like to have the option to change serving size for custom meals/food. I've moved it into a similar request. I think that a lot of users would like to have this option on their Fitbit devices.You can learn more about how Fitbit decides what suggestions get released in our FAQs.

[rjsttee]

totally agree that this is needed.  i usually make a big batch of smoothy, so all my calories and nutrition are based on what goes into the blender... currently i have to guess on whats going into the glass.  would be great if i could set up the meal as 1 serving or something, and then when added, just say 1/3 of a serving was consumed.

[Caramelmusic]

Does fitbit not have any developers? It seems to me that if other apps can do this then fitbit should be able to do it as well. It doesnt seem right that requests have been out there for years with no results. It seems to me that you would be trying to make things happen for your customers. 

[Eeebs]

I am so confused as to why this issue has not been addressed. I cook a lot so this is a big pain. It is just basic division! Why can't Fitbit do this? 😖

[smrsr]

when you enter custom meal i enter the full recipe and should be able to say how many it is for and then also be able to give it how many servings when i add it to my log not it adding the whole recipe

[YojanaFitbit]

Hi @smrsr, thanks for explaining why you would like to have the option to add how many servings on custom meals. I've moved it into a similar request. I think that a lot of users would like to have this option on their Fitbit devices. You can learn more about how Fitbit decides what suggestions get released in our FAQs.

You might be also interested in this other suggestion: Add servings of meals.

Thank you again for your participation in the Feature Suggestions Forums.

[ltomo]

I would also like to be able to save a whole recipe, and then log what portion I ate on a given day.  For example, I might make a lasagna, but only eat 1/10 of that on one day and 1/5 on another day.  I shouldn't have to re-calculate the individual measurements each time.  The moderator in this thread suggested that we check a thread called "Add Servings of Meals" but that thread just links back to this one.  What is the status of this feature request?

[sarakk1]

This is ridiculous over 2 years later and nothing has been done to fix the issue! 
I paid a stupid amount for premium to see if I could do it then and still I can’t log serving sizes of my custom meal. 
FITBIT please fix this issue so we don’t have to keep using my fitness pal! We have paid beyond enough for the Fitbit and premium, surely we can get this issue resolved and not rely on a free app..

[CCFB]

I ran into the same problem.  I would not have taken the time to create a meal if I had known I couldn't split it into servings.  If you still want the "meal" to mean just things you always eat together in that serving size then you could add a "Recipe" tab & then let them log 1/6 of the meal for example.

[Daviddmh]

If you look back to when this type of request was initially made.......
Don't hold your breath.

[angieleah]

So glad I read through all the comments before I signed back up for Premium. FitBit really needs to get with the times… I should have to use another app to calculate meals and serving sizes. Take notes from Carb Manager, FitBit, they have a great recipe builder. 

Each time I upgrade my FitBit, I consider switching to Apple. This may be my tipping point. 

[JEGL]

Today when I add a meal I have to calculate the amounts for each ingredient/serving. So if a meal (recipe) has 15 ingredients the process is tedious

The way it should work is that I should provide the ingredients and total servings and the Fitbit app should calculate the total calories for any number of servings (1, 1/2, 2 whatever)

[Hapmolu]

When I create a meal, it is usually for multiple servings.  There has to be a way for FitBit to allow us to set # of servings when we create a custom meal.  I've been looking into a way to do that, and it seems that people as far back as 2014 were requesting FitBit to update this feature.  It's been almost 10 years since the earliest post I could find.  Can FitBit respond to why this feature is still not available?

[LizzyFitbit]

Hi @JEGL, thanks for taking the time to share this product feedback about being able to indicate the serving size for custom meals with us. Because a similar product feedback was already requested in this board, I’ve moved your post here. Please support this product feedback by adding your vote, this helps our developers to keep tracking its popularity and demand over time.

[Hapmolu]

Since this issue with inability to change serving size for custom meals seems to be have been going on for many years, is there any plan to improve this feature?  I have been using FitBit for 3 years, but primarily to track my exercise and sleep.  I have had to rely on another app to log my food, and it's just too cumbersome.  I really hope FitBit takes this request of adding serving number/size feature for custom meals seriously and make it available soon.

[JEGL]

@Hapmolu 

My guess is that not that many people use the food logging feature and Google has chosen not to spend any money on it. I have to use it because a fitness tracker is pretty much useless if you don't log what you eat. My wife also has a Charge 5 but she will not spend the time that the Fitbit food logging requires so the usefulness of the device is limited for her. There are so many things broken with this feature:

• The newly redesigned iOS app calorie data doesn't match with what is on the web portal. Why Google allowed the release of that new version of the app with that kind of error is beyond me
• On the portal if you have a large number of recipes you have to scroll several pages down to click on "Create a Meal" or "Create a new food" or "Edit my foods". Those options should be at the top or somewhere more accessible
• If you add the wrong meal to your daily food totals you can't delete it... you have to go and delete each ingredient one at a time....if you have 20 then you will have to click 20 times to delete everything.
• Sometimes a meal may involve more than 1 recipe. Pizza for example: You have the dough recipe, the sauce, recipe and your toppings. Adding this in the Fitbit portal was very cumbersome
• If you have a recipe that has water as an ingredient like a protein shake for example...shouldn't that amount of water be added your daily water total instead of me having to add water in two different places?
• If you mistakenly add a lunch meal to breakfast ...you can't fix it. You have to go into breakfast find the ingredients for the lunch meal, delete each one by one and add the lunch meal again. If both meals have some of the same ingredients ....it is a real pain to fix it.
• The web portal still relies on Adobe Flash. Seriously? guys is 2023.
• The bar code scanning app in iOS is so painfully slow. I stopped using it. 

These may be other items that I'm forgetting. Will post later if they come back to me