All entries should be timestamped automaticly by myfitnesspal. This include food and exercise entries as well as newfeed/status updates and forum post. Not every one eats breakfast at the same time. if you snack all day and never eat a large meal the very concept of named eating peroids is irrelivant and useless. Time stamping all entries will show an even greater level of detail in reporting. Some would say it might violate their privacy. To the privacy issue i say, have a check box in privacy settings that allows no one to see my exact time i ate something, only friends, only people with a password, or everyone ect. Their is also the issue of time zones, not all mfp friends are in the same time zone. the united states military uses zulu time to cordinate global operations in multiple time zones simutaenously, mfp could use zulu time (or grenwichmean time) and we could do that math in our heads to figure what time of day or night it was, say in italy when someone ate pasta. or mfp could just display the timestamp as it was really entered in the source time zone. and all these setting could be adjustable in your personal setting section of mfp.

My friends complain i enter everything in snacks cause they don't know what one of my "meals" look like. time stamping would fix this issue. Also when i see they ate snacks i constantly wonder, "When did they eat these snacks?". Time stamping would fix all of this. In fact, with timestamping you could completely eliminate the "named meal" concept alltogether. For example if i see you entered....

FOOD
milk 1 cup (634am)
bran flakes 1 cup (635am)
oragne juice 1 cup (635am)
Bread 1 slice (636 am)
butter 1 tbsp (636am)

Its more precise!

If i work a night shift from 8pm till 4 am my "dinner" might look like this...

FOOD
T-Bone steak 12oz (522 am)
Baked potato 6oz (522 am )
Butter 1 tbsp (523 am)
Miller lite 355ml (523am)
Miller lite 355ml (530 am)
Cheese curls 1 cup (555 am)
Miller lite 355ml (623am)
Almonds 25 peices (715am)

Its easy to see how the level of detail with a time stamp far exceeds that of named meals like "breakfast, Lunch, and Dinner'. heres the best part, mfp can add timestamps without removing you beloved "named meals".

For example...

BREAKFAST
milk 1 cup (634am)
bran flakes 1 cup (635am)
oragne juice 1 cup (635am)
Bread 1 slice (636 am)
butter 1 tbsp (636am)

or...If i work a night shift from 8pm till 4 am my "dinner/snacks" might look like this...


DINNER
T-Bone steak 12oz (522 am)
Baked potato 6oz (522 am )
Butter 1 tbsp (523 am)
Miller lite 355ml (523am)
Miller lite 355ml (530 am)

Snacks
Cheese curls 1 cup (555 am)
Miller lite 355ml (623am)
Almonds 25 peices (715am)


its just more accurate.

Some people enter food items hours after they actually ate them or even sometimes before they ate the food. Sadly mfp cannot read our minds and know exactually when we ate what we ate :), if your one of these mfp members who enters all your food at the end of the day/before bed, the mfp member/you/me/us would have to manually enter a timestamp stating when you/me/us ate the food, and that manually entered timestamp would override the mfp automatic timestamp.

That would only work if you log it at the same time you eat it.

I agree with the above; I do not log all my meals at the time I eat them. I know a lot of people pre-log their whole day as well as others who post-log their meals.

You can at least go in and rename sections if you don't want the standard "breakfast, lunch, dinner, snacks."

Also, what difference would knowing the exact time you ate something make? I don't need to know when my friends ate their snacks or at what time they had oatmeal with blueberries. I'm curious as to why you think it would be beneficial.

I addressed the issue of logging at the moment you eat something at the end

Right... not everyone logs at the exact time they eat.

Also, do you know that you can change the names of your meals?

So you could have time frames if you like... something like this maybe:

0600 - 1000

1000-1400

1400-1600

1600-2000

Problem solved, perhaps. Or at least a bit more precise at any rate.

ETA: honestly, I didn't get to the end of your post and I wouldn't bother manually time stamping my food.

A lot of people I know have there diaries set up with times like 6-9, 9-11, 11-1, 1-4, and so on...maybe you could just do that. I really don't see why it matters when people eat their food, though. But, if you want your friends to know when you ate yours, maybe you could set yours up like that?

LOL

I preplan. So that would not work for me either.

Mine is set up

meal 1
meal 2
meal 3
meal 4
snacks
drinks

That way it doesn't matter what time i eat and no one is confused by "breakfast." If it's my day off and I sleep til noon, I might eat my first meal at subway.

Good god... It takes me everything just to log my food and then I'm supposed to manually enter time stamps? who cares when someone eats something?

VeganBaum said

You can at least go in and rename sections if you don't want the standard "breakfast, lunch, dinner, snacks."

Also, what difference would knowing the exact time you ate something make? I don't need to know when my friends ate their snacks or at what time they had oatmeal with blueberries. I'm curious as to why you think it would be beneficial.




Renaming them might just cause more confusion because poeple woouldnt understand my creattive new names. even if i renamed them it still lacks the precision of a timestamp. Hmmmm i can only rename or have 5 or 6 meal periods right?

If i had 96 meal periods i could rename then that might be very close to a time stamp but still only precise to 15 minute intervals...for example

1200am - 1215am
1216am - 1230am
1231am - 1245am
and on and on and on for a 24 hour period

Still not as precise and accurate as a time stamp

You also ask Why my friends why they need this level of detail? Ask them your self gchubs is his screen name.

Why would it matter? Timing of eating has no impact on total intake which is much more important. And for a FREE site, I believe that it's more than adequate to track food.

A.C.E. Certified Personal/Group FitnessTrainer
IDEA Fitness member
Kickboxing Certified Instructor
Been in fitness for 28+ years and have studied kinesiology and nutrition

I think it's kind of creepy that your friends want to know this much detail about when you eat what.

Before I go to work in the morning I enter my breakfast, and then while I am making my lunch box with includes morning and afternoon snack I enter those calories, so everything is entered by 6:30am except for what I choose to make for supper. If I get home and I still have some food left in my lunchbox, then I delete it from my entry. Time stamping would be no good for me. I sometime eat my snacks at a different time then I enter them, but who cares, as long as your entries are in with the correct calories.

What are these wild and radical new names that your friends might misunderstand? Also, why didn't he post this himself?

Rachel0440 i like your idea best of meal1 meal 2 meal 3 ect

As for the misunderstood names, those names are only limited by the alphabet and the mind at work...who knows what one would come up with for new names of meals

I never asked for that level of detail. I said it is not beneficial for other members to look at your diary after you post "I just ate 11 varieties of food for only 130 calories" when you log all food everyday as a snack. There is no way for us to tell what those 11 varieties were. You're complaint was you eat at different times of the day which does not fit into the stereotypical breakfast lunch and dinner times. I recommended renaming your meals to meal 1,2,3 ect or renaming them to time frames. I myself would not post something like that unless I wanted people to refer to my diary for tips on clean eating. Please log however you wish but do not expect other members to know what foods those 11 varieties were.

it all kinda depends on how much precision we want in our lives...if you dont care for the time stamps they can simply be ignored or visually removed from your computer screen altogether through a personal mfp setting check box...all im saying is the technology exist, why is this not an option??? even with the fact that this site is free of charge in mind.....btw i did post this under the how to improve mfp suggestions/feedback section

When I have a day that I'm bored and just snack all day, I just list a few things in each category. At the end of the day, all that matters is your macros.

gchubs you said...

I said it is not beneficial for other members to look at your diary after you post "I just ate 11 varieties of food for only 130 calories" when you log all food everyday as a snack. There is no way for us to tell what those 11 varieties were.


Turns out there is a way...its called time stamping all entries...check the time stamp of my 11 varieties statement and check it against my food time stamps and count backwards 11 foods....and poof...you got your awnser as to which eleven foods they were

This doesn't even make sense to me.

Why don't you just plug 5 things for each category?

Use the note section at the bottom or go back to pen and paper. Problem solved.

I have 12-4 4-8 -8-12 AM and PM, so I think I've got this covered.... It makes my life easier.

The "notes" section is not automatic as in done easily and quickly behind the scenes by a computer. Automation is key.

I have a fitbit, and that puts the option of a time stamp in for exercise, in order to synch with the fitbit site. While it prefills the time stamp with the current time, you can modify the time stamp to the actual time you started the exercise, so time stamps would actually work for when you ate something if the same model were to be applied to foods.