Let me label my "quick calories" entry.

[Pennyhero]

I want to be able to just enter the number of calories I ate, and a name/label for the food instead of needing to look up the food in the overwhelming database.  The Quick Calories feature on Android is CLOSE, but doesn't let you label the food. 

The reason I want this is that my most common use case is that I just want to use Fitbit as a food journal to track calories in vs calories out. I do NOT want to use it to "look up how many calories are in this" or calculate macros.  Most times I already know the number of calories I ate (because it's literally printed on the label of the food in my hand), and I just want to write it down.

Currently, accomplishing this task is frustrating. I have the name of the food, and the calories... but in order to get this information into my Fitbit log, I have to search for the food, find a version of the food that is approximately the number of calories I need to log, or is in units that I can easily customize until I reach the calories I need to log. On Android, I can adjust the amount until I reach the calories I want to log.  That's still too many steps if I just want to quickly write down the name and the calories.

On the website it's even worse... On the website, there isn't a Quick Calories option at all.  The ONLY way to add calories to the log is overly complicated.  You have to search for the food, find a version that is approximately the right calories in the drop-down menu, and then you have to guess/adjust the serving size or weight... which is information you might not even have....  So my workaround is often to just log the smallest unit (like 1oz) and then adjust it using the +/- labels later.  The website doesn't currently let you SEE how many calories it is until after I log the food, which means I always have to adjust it manually EVEN THOUGH I already know the number of calories. If my guess at the serving size was wrong and the calories calculated isn't close enough to what I want to enter, and the +/- is the wrong units or won't increment/decrement, I have to delete the entry and try again. This is sooo frustrating when I just want to enter the name and the number of calories and be done. 

This is not a good workflow for a VERY COMMON use case (user knows the food name and the calories already and just wants to write it in the log).

Again, the tl;dr: The Quick Calories feature in the Android app is ALMOST what I want (and I want it on both the website and on Android). I want that feature to just also allow you to label the food. If the Quick Calories feature included a field to "name" it, it would be perfect.

 Moderator edit: updated subject for clarity

[EdsonFitbit]

@Pennyhero Thanks for sharing this suggestion.

I agree that having the option to label the calories in could be useful. Let's see what other Community members think.

[TiffFromPhx]

Honestly I’m so surprised this isn’t already a feature. I calculate calories in meals I cook and want to add them to my tracker, but I want a record of what I ate and not just how many calories I consumed. I don’t want to enter every ingredient and I don’t want to create a custom food I might never make again, I just want to look back and see “chicken and orzo, 600 calories”. That’s often as much detail as I need. 

Unfortunately I use the same workaround as the previous commenter—find something close, then fake the volume until the numbers are close. But I’d rather just jot it down, that’s WAY more useful. 

[Sankarafit]

When will this feature be added to the mobile app? It's frustrating that I can't simply label the quick calorie amount.

[Pennyhero]

I am still interested (actually desperate) for this feature to exist. I basically find the calorie counting features useless now because of the labor involved in trying to look up relevant foods. If I already know the calories for a food I made at home, I want to be able to just add quick calories and then type in my name for it such as my version of "egg salad" or whatever I want to log. It's really frustrating that I can't label my quick calories entries.

I've completely stopped logging calories for about a year and I'd like to return to it. The best workaround I've been able to do is to keep a note in some other place (like a journal or in my google calendar or something) and then use the quick calories, but this is still too many steps and is pretty cumbersome (plus I often forget or misplace or lose where I was logging the notes and I would rather they were just in the app).

I don't need or want to keep track of macros or nutrition... plus if I do choose a brand name version of the food, that is certainly never accurate and would actually be introducing bad data to any macro tracking anyway... 

Please let us label our quick calories.