Nutrition Optimization-Testing Needed

I love it - easy to use - can't wait to try out the new stuff!

Thanks, Ron!

I don't understand what threshold is...how do you determine this?

Good queston. Threshold really refers to how strictly you want to follow your caloric target per day and how much variation you may have in your eating habits.

If you put in 2,000 calories a day as your caloric target and no thresholds, that means you have to hit 2000 calories exactly every day to get the minicalendar 'blue' which means your on-target.

Thats mostly impossible, so you adjust it with the 'threshold' number.  So your goal can be 2000cal/day + or - 100calories.  That means you will still be in the blue if you eat 1900-2100 calories per day. 

The best thing to do is start with a wider threshold to get a baseline as you start logging consistently, you can then decrease that number as your eating becomes more regimented or consistent.

The only thing these two number do is just provide an easy visual reading via the minicalendar as to your eating habits and if you are hitting the targets you set consistently...

The actual 'weight' of the nutrient is given to us in the database per 'x' gram (or servings) of that food that was tested by the USDA.  So that is where the weight comes from and is adjusted by multipliers depending on your servings. 

Since we have the weight of the nutrient per serving provided, and we know from the USDA what the guidelines per nutrient is for a 2000 or 2500 calorie diet, we get the %Daily Value which is whats on the label.

*Remember though, NOT ALL foods in the database will have values for a particular nutrient (Vitamin A for example) so be careful when interpreting summations (week, month, year) of the nutrients as some foods may lack the testing and the summed value will be lower than what it actually is.  You can see what nutrients were tested by looking at the 'advanced nutrition info' at the bottom of the label - if its 'NA' then no testing for that nutrient.  If it's zero, its zero or very small.

Oh...I reread your message.  Totally missed your question.

Hmmmm...good point.  Based on what I said prior to this, we can probably just use some algebera and given the serving size and the % noted on the label.

Something like:

X1 unit nutrient per serving = X2 conversion factor x %DV on label

Where the X2 conversion factor is the amount of that nutrient for a 2000 or 2500 calorie diet if it were 100% of the DV

*We will add this 'lookup' or calculator in march so you can input the %DV for a 2k or 2.5k diet from the label per serving and it will spit out the nutrient by weight of that serving.  Good call.  This will allow some more detailed info of the main vitamins on a label for when you do 'custom food' work.

We have added the last 'make it easier to log' item - CUSTOM MEAL TEMPLATES.

In the following picture, the 'Save Meal' button will take a meal, sum all the nutrient numbers together and make it one entry that you can only change the portion size or the sum total nutrient numbers for subsequent logging.

The 'Save Template' will take any particular meal and keep the ingrediants separate.  So you can add that template to a meal when you log AND STILL have the ability to recall and modify the individual food portions (example: your recipe has changed, you ran out of peppers and you don't want to re-create the meal again)

(mealtemplatebutton2.gif)

(addfood.gif)

This is a big one for me.  I log a lot of custom foods and would like to be able to track all that other stuff.....

Rebecca

DUMB Question - I can't find the nutrition mini-calendar.  I set up my calories and threshold but don't see anything in my log.  Performance members only??

Is there a way to automatically determine net calories consumed?  For example, I ate 1700 calories but burned 600 so that would be a net 1100 for the day.

Thanks for a great site!

DC, no, it's a free feature.  We don't yet have the ability to calculate calories burned to get net.  But we hope to within this year.  It will be a big addition.

I have attached a pic of where the link is to the nutrition blog....

(nutritionloglink.jpg)

it's working great Ron.  Love it.  I only have two suggestions:

1.  Split the threshold into high and low instead of one +/- number.  For instance I want to target 3000 calories, so my low threshold may be -100, but if I go 500 over if I have a hard day, that's still within acceptable limits.  So I have to either choose +/- 200 and have it show me going over calories quite frequently, or use +/- 500 and have it not show when I was under a lot of the time.

2.  I like the meal template, but would like to have "submeals."  For instance with my smoothies, right now I have it saved as a meal template, so that I can tweak ingredients and quantities every time I make one.  It is then imported into the meal as ingredients only.  It would be nice if I could do that editing and have it added to the meal as simply a smoothie with the properly updated nutrition, instead of just all the ingredients listed individually.  It can sometimes make reading exaclty what I had for that meal difficult.  It would be kind of nice if when you clicked on the item that it would expand to show the ingredients and quantities individually, but not necessary. 

I just started messing around with this - and it's totally cool.  Makes me WANT to track calories. My question  -- until the ability to calculate calories burned is added, is there a way that we could put a manual Calories Burned entry in?  That way, when I look at the mini-calendar to see if I'm above or below my threshhold, it will be taking into account calories burned by training?  Or - even put in a food entry with negative calories (didn't try this to see if it was even possible yet)?   What do y'all think?

Vortmax and Casie, we are working on your requests-they are good.

StartingtoTri, I'm going to hold off on this till we get the official calories burned integrated later this year...I'm hesitant to spend the time/money to do 'workarounds' which will then be undone later as I don't have a clear project description for calories burned yet.  Sorry.  BUT I will say that we are putting some priority on this as we will be hopefuly soon integrating a nutrition coach for the nutrition logs with a diet/lifestyle analysis.  Once that is running, we will have a better idea of how we want to get the calories burned numbers from as we will be getting expert advice and a calories burned feature is a necessary tool our nutrition coach and users will want.  Soon....

as in an actualy person coach or a computer algorithm?  Either way, that's bad ass.  You sure you charge enough for this stuff? 

Vortmax - DONE.  Please check it out for accuracy. 

"1.  Split the threshold into high and low instead of one +/- number.  For instance I want to target 3000 calories, so my low threshold may be -100, but if I go 500 over if I have a hard day, that's still within acceptable limits.  So I have to either choose +/- 200 and have it show me going over calories quite frequently, or use +/- 500 and have it not show when I was under a lot of the time."

For the custom food, we have changed the serving size so that you can enter you own custom measurent-be it cups, meals, ounces, etc.

You will see a feild as 'Measurement' in the custom food creation screen.

works like a charm.  Thanks 

Casie, DONE.  'Most frequent foods' should work better.  It counts all differant food logged over several days, then orders them in 'descending' order based on frequency used.

It may take a few days for it to start working like it should.  Let me know.