FitDay.com How To's
 

As I've been reading through the forum, I've notice that many people have difficulty with using FitDay.com. I'm quite comfortable using it and I like to track my daily activities and my weight using it as well as my food. It's such a useful tool, once you get the hang of it.

If you are having difficulty using it or cannot find a food that you've eaten, feel free to post it here and I'll help you out with navigating FitDay.

Marlaine

Fitday has some unusual defaults don't they? :confused:
Do they have the option of inputing entire custom recipies? (similar to the way dietwatch does)

Yes....they have some very strange defaults.

I entered a S/F fruit spread I use as a custom food and though I put it in as a Tbsp, it defaults to a litre. :daze: Like that makes any kind of sense.

I don't know anything about dietwatch, but to put in a whole custom recipe, open a future day in a separate window. Then enter all of the components of the recipe on that future page. When it's done....transfer the totals and enter them under "New Custom Food".

M

What you can do in this case is get a second fitday account. Enter all the information for your custom food in one day and there you have the breakdown for the entire recipe. I take that information (print it out) then input it into my regular account dividing it as I want (cups, servings, etc)

HTH
Nat

Your ideas are great....why didn't I think of those things? Thanks

PS Dietwatch.com is similar to fitday.com but it has many more foods pre-entered into their database. The downsize you ask? It costs money to join and I'm just plain too cheap...

The handiest advice I ever read here was from (I think) Nat, who suggested entering partial words to get a listing...I've found that some words have an "S" and some don't (and not what you'd guess). Also, this helps me when I forget if zucchini has two "c's" or two "n's" or what. I just write "zuc" and hit "go" and it finds it for me without me havving to lern to spel or anything.

Also, a recent "aha" for me---for those of us who eat free-range meats, it doesn't list those, but in beef, it often lists "select" cuts, which would be closer in fat content to free-range than "choice" or "prime" cuts.
The defaults ARE crazy (who eats a cup of butter with only a leaf of romaine?)--the fastest way to handle that is to enter all the foods at once, then go back at the end and correct all the amounts at once.

One "beef" I have with fitday has to do with chicken :daze:

Chicken parts .. the portion size options are "from a 1 lb. ready-to-cook chicken" or "one ______ (name yer part -- thigh, breast, dark meat, light meat, etc) This is useless as far as I'm concerned. Most chickens I've encountered weigh more like 2½ to 3 lbs .. and one thigh?? I've bought packages of chicken thighs that range in weight from 3 to 6 oz. each

I've had to enter chicken parts as custom foods, using our nutrient data counter here. At least that way, I can get accurate counts based on the actual weight of the portion I eat.

Doreen

Do, I gave up trying to do that with chicken - I just started weighing everything. Its got to the point that I can eyeball 4 oz of turkey pretty dead on. It does get annoying when you're dealing with boned pieces, though.

Fitday doesnt seem too swift on replying to queries - I recently sent them off an e-mail asking just what "NFS" means next to so many of their items. Haven't heard back yet. I know what I think it means ;)

Nat

I thought I was the only one who didn't know what NFS means. Whew.....

What do you think it means? I have NO idea!

Sue

"Not F___ Sure" ;)

Nat

*LOL*

Actually, that term is also used with the USDA data, which is what fitday values are based on. I believe it stands for "No Facts Stated" usually in reference to preparation method.

Doreen

Hey, Do! Thanks - So, do you think "NS" means something other than "Not Sure"? ;) LOL I just figured NFS was the superlative of NS (shows you how my mind works)

Nat

Chicken Parts
 

I found that by going in through "All Foods" and then "Poultry" and then "Chicken", I can choose (for example) under "Chicken Breast, with or without bone", the entry called "Roasted, Skin Eaten" which gives a lot of choices for quantity:

1 cup cooked, diced
1 oz boneless cooked
1 oz boneless (raw) yield after cooking

etc. I usually use the "1 oz boneless cooked" and weigh what I'm going to eat.

I've found my $10 scales priceless and have managed to find a way to enter most foods by weight.

Thanks for the tip about chicken :thup: ... I just gave up in frustration, and entered the values manually from here as a custom food.

I agree about weighing everything. I weigh my vegetables too .. way more accurate than a cup measure.

Doreen

Marlaine, how do I delete a food from my custom list ? Im so hopeless with fitday Ive got several things in there by mistake that Id like to clear out :o thank you.

Love the N 'F' S. Unfortunately every time I glance it now, thats all I see lol

To delete a custom food:

Open the custom foods menu list .. scroll down to the bottom; select ALL CUSTOM FOODS ... then GO!

Click on the food that you wish to delete. At the top of the nutrition facts page are options to edit or delete :)

Doreen

Doreen, that was so helpful
 

thank you. I didnt even realise you could go in there and tick off items to enter all at once !! You just saved me some fitday time :thup:

You can do the same thing with the "add recent" list ... open the menu, scroll to the end (or press Ctrl+End) to ALL RECENT FOODS. Click GO! and there you have pages of everything you've entered for the last week or so. This is really handy if you eat the same things often .. or if you're having leftovers .. You can just check off multiple items, then "Add Checked Foods" and there ya go, all entered at once.

There's a catch ... the foods are listed over several pages but you can only enter from one page at a time ... ie, you will lose all your check-marked foods if you skip to the next page without submitting them all first.

Doreen

This thread has been very helpful to me. Thanks to all of you who posted here.

I very recently discovered lowcarber. Then while reading on another page on here, someone mentioned fitday. So I began using it. And it is proving to be a great help to me.

But I haven't figured out yet how to open another account for my husband from this one computer. I'll try that again.

Again, my thanks.

I know what "NFS" on Fitday foods means, in case you haven't figured it out already. It means "Not Further Specified" (i.e., could be any number of things or types or sizes or flavors or whatever!).

Now I ask you, how useful is any item with THAT designation going to be? And how on earth do they arrive at the nutrition counts for NFS foods??? :daze:

:sunny:day

I agree FItDay is not great at getting back to questions. I have e-mailed them twice and am waiting for x-mas cause that is when they will respond I guess. One problem I have is an 8oz steak has a certain # of calories and then if you choose 1 cup of the same steak it has different calories? Isn't 8oz a cup?? Remember guys usually measure things by the handful not ounces.

Other then my stupidity about how many ounces in a cup, I have found FitDay to be very helpful. I use it to make custom foods and found I was taking in more carbs then I thought. It aslo keeps you on track for excersize.

Patrick, eight fluid ounces is a cup. However, 8 weighted ounces could be half a cup, 3 cups, etc, depending on what it is you're weighing. I honestly don't understand why they would put "1 cup" as a possible measurement for a sirloin, how many of us chop up our steak and use a measuring cup? :rolleyes:

HTH
Nat

A Tip For Customizing
 

I often customize recipes as mentioned at the beginning of this thread, but one problem is that you don't get the vitamin/mineral content. So what I do is this: once I've got the numbers, I search for a similar food already entered in the database. Say I'm making chili. I look for a similar chili that's already there (it lists the ingredients), then click on "customize this food." You can alter the calorie/fat/carb/protein content and the vitamin/mineral numbers are already there. Slightly inaccurate, but better than a bunch of zeroes.

This is also handy for when packaging does not have the nutrition facts on it. Here in Canada, it's not required.

Something else handy that I just noticed the other day: it used to bug me that I'd have to do a "report" to figure out how many non-fiber carbs I'd had, but if you look to the left of the pie chart on your main food page, it's right there:
Carbs: 16
Fiber: 7

Duh! :rolleyes:

Cheers!

Copying from Fitday?
 

Has anyone figured out a way to copy out the food list from fitday.com? I thought it might be nice to be able paste into my journal here.

What I do with a recipe is similar to everybody else I guess. I go to an empty day and enter all the ingredients. You will then have the carbs, fiber, protein, and fat grams. If you go to the "did I meet my nutritional requirements?" report for that day, you can get the vitamin and mineral figure.

I have only tried this for one-serving recipes so far, but I imagine for a multi-serving recipe you could either use the whole recipe and make it a custom food and then divide when you enter your intake (i.e. 1/4 pie = .25 serving) or else go to the trouble of dividing each individual item and entering the custom food as a serving size.

Hi there Marie.....

I just highlight what I want to copy....then copy and paste.

HTH
Marlaine

Thanks
 

I guess it was too obvious for me to think of! I'll try it soon.

Marlene -

I tried highlighting, cutting and pasting and it worked perfectly. Thanks for the help. Sometimes, I'm just too dense to try the obvious.

Marie.....

Glad that I could help. Being really comfortable with the computer makes a difference too. I've been fortunate enough to have learned to handle both Windoze and Mac boxes.

Marlaine

Fitday: Mac or PC? Netscape or Explorer?
 

Since the issue of being good with PC's & Mac's has just been raised, I am itching to ask this. I do my Fitday work on a Mac, and I find it extremely frustrating that sometimes I click on "Add this food to whatever it says exactly" and nothing happens. Multiple times in a row. (...grrrr...) I have to leave the site & then come back. And since I am new at it and have not learned all the tricks, this makes entering my food a laborious (and sometimes torturous) process. I was thinking it was because I am on a Mac and not a PC, and I'm wondering if others have had the same experience? My boyfriend says it also might be the browser I'm using. I'm currently using Internet Explorer, but am happy to switch to Netscape if it's more stable there. Also, does it perform better on newer browsers? I am not excited about waiting for the newest version of my browser to download, but if that's what it takes to enter a serving of vegetables, I'm willing to give it a shot.

So how about it, any computer-savvy people on this board who can save me from tearing my hair out?

As always, thanks in advance,

~rebecca~

ps. I suspect that the Mac vs. Pc issue is why I STILL can't get my type to turn color, highlight, be bold, or add smileys to it. Computer programmers of the world, Mac-users are people too!

Rebecca....

I'm on a Mac and using IE5 and have no trouble with Fitday at all.
I also have Netscape 4.73 and have found that I have more trouble with it than with IE. IE is stable with pretty much all websites I visit.

I write the HTML manually to get the text changes I use. I suspect that the problem you are having is with the Javascript. I also do the smilies manually after peeking at the code. Unfortunately, I know the cause, I just don't know any other way to resolve it besides doing the HTML manually.

Marlaine