Customizing Foods How to
 

Not a new thread exactly:

I want to add together the information for a custom lunch. After I manually add the necessary categories, I DO NOT KNOW how to label this "LUNCH" and have it as a separate item. (isn't this the point of customizing food?) Explanation from ANYONE (easy, step by step) would be most appreciated. Many thanks and skinnies to all.

Hi there, welcome to the site.

Here is how you can do what you want to customize your lunch.

1. Go a day ahead in your food log so that you have an empty day.
2. Add in each food that you have in your lunch and either write down the nutrition totals or open a new FitDay window so you can look at them for the next step.
3. Click on "Create a Custom Food."
4. Give your lunch a name. Enter the serving size (would be 1 if you usually eat it all).
5. Take the nutrition totals from the day you entered the lunch components into and enter them into the custom food boxes.
6. Save the custom food.
7. When you need to enter it, just look in Custom Foods for it and click.

Some people use a separate recipe builder site to calculate the nutrition of a custom food with many components, so that is an option as well; just Google "recipe builder".

There is at least one site on line that will give nutrition labels for different raw foods (even produce, and many specific brands of an ingredient) so if you want to get totally OCD about it (which I have done more than once because of how I log) you can go and add all of the info on each nutrient (fiber, protein, etc), add it all up, and enter that total in the label for your custom food.

As I said, it is a very OCD method, but more precise if you are using the same brand of ingredient each time you make the lunch. As for what to name the custom food if you have it on the same day you may call it "Monday's Lunch" or you can use numbers "Lunch Option 1".

The whole process is a bit cumbersome, but once it's done it will make logging infinitely easier. Good luck with your program.