Your food diary

Your food diary is a personal, day-by-day log of what you actually ate, with calories and macros tallied against your targets. It works whether or not you have a nutrition plan - use it on its own, or alongside one.

Pick a day

The day strip at the top lets you move between days. A day that is behind you shows how far it landed from your target - +340 kcal, −140 kcal - in green when you hit it, orange when you were a little off and red when you were well off. Hitting it means landing within 10% of your target, up to 200 kcal either way; the next 200 kcal is orange, and anything past that is red. Today is still running, so it reads in words instead: Under while there is room left, On target once you are in range, and Over if you go past it - and it only takes on a color once you go over. A day with nothing logged, one still to come included, shows its calorie target, with the word target under the number; a day without a target shows No meals.

Your week

Under the day's card, the week bars show the seven days of the current week, Monday to Sunday. Each bar is one day, coloured the same way the day strip colours its badge: green when the day landed on target, orange when it was a little off, red when it was well off. Today is turquoise while it is still running - the same colour the day strip gives the day you are on - and takes on orange or red only if you go over, because being under your target at lunchtime is a day in progress, not a miss; and a day you did not log stays a small grey stub rather than counting as a failure. Tap a bar to see that day's calories; tap it again, or anywhere else on the card, to put it away.

Under the bars the card states how the week is going and by how much, like −598 kcal. It measures what you have eaten so far against the goals of the days that have already started - so on Tuesday you are compared with two days' worth, 4 000 kcal on a 2 000 kcal daily goal. A week is judged more loosely than a day: within 5% of that running goal, up to 700 kcal either way, counts as being in range; roughly another 5% past that reads as a little off, and anything beyond it as well off. That is deliberate - seven days of small honest misses should not add up to a bad week.

Today counts in full, in both directions. The card will therefore read low in the morning and climb back as you eat, which is the honest answer to how your week is going at 9am. On the first day of the week it stays quiet altogether: with no finished day behind it there is nothing to compare against, so you get the bars and the total and no verdict. Days you never logged drop out of the comparison entirely - the same call their grey bars already make.

The card always shows the week you are in, even when you scroll the day strip back to look at an earlier day.

Added and planned

The meal list has two tabs. Added is what you actually logged, most recent meal at the top. Planned is what your nutrition plan schedules for the day - open one to review it and add it to the diary, or swipe it to log it exactly as planned.

Thirty minutes before a planned meal's time it moves across on its own: it appears under Added, greyed out, at its own hour among the meals you logged, with Confirm meal and Reject meal buttons. Confirm meal logs it exactly as planned; tap the card first if you want to read the recipe or swap it for another dish. To change the amounts, log it, then open it from your diary and tap an ingredient. Reject meal skips it for that day. It stays there if the hour passes and you have not logged it - logging it late is exactly what it is waiting for - and it leaves the moment you confirm or reject it.

In the hi.fitness app, swipe a logged meal to the left to take it back out of the diary. You are asked to confirm first - the swipe is quick and the deletion is not - and once you do, the meal and its calories leave the day straight away.

Not sure what to eat?

When you are at least 300 kcal short of today's goal, the hi.fitness app shows a Not sure what to eat? button at the top of Added. What you have logged counts towards that, and so do today's planned meals you have not rejected, if you have a nutrition plan. The button appears only on today, and not while a dish you picked is waiting.

Tap it for a list of easy dishes that fit, or come close to, the calories and macros you are missing:

• Sized for your next meal. The list aims at your next meal at its usual size: with a 1 960 kcal goal, breakfast is about 490 kcal. It never aims at less than 300 kcal, and for the day's last meal it aims at everything that is left. Which meal comes next depends on when you ate over the last 4 weeks, or on standard mealtimes until you have that history. Once all of the day's meals are behind you, the list covers the rest of the day.
• Quick to make. The list opens on dishes ready in up to 20 minutes - the line with the number of dishes shows it - and you can turn that off in Filters.
• Whole portions. A dish is always a whole portion or more, up to double, never half.

Tap a dish to see its photo, the ingredients for that portion and the method; the checkmark at the top picks it. Picking does not log it yet: the dish waits greyed out at the top of Added, with Confirm meal and Reject meal, and counts towards your day only once you confirm it. Confirm meal logs it at the time you confirm; Reject meal removes it and the Not sure what to eat? button comes back. A picked dish waits only until the end of the day, and only on the phone you picked it on.

Today's goals

The day's card, under the day strip, shows the calories, protein, carbs and fat you have consumed so far against your daily target. The target is whatever is saved on your account. Completing the intake survey sets a starting target for you; after that it only changes when you or your coach change it - logging a new weight never moves it on its own. Redoing the intake survey does replace it; and once a new weight has been logged the goal card can offer to recalculate - you decide. To change the goal itself in the app - what you are aiming for, the pace, your weight, how active your day is and how many sessions a week you train - tap the day's card with the ring on the Calories screen (the Log another meal row at its foot still logs a meal); see Completing your intake survey. The chart icon at the top of the same screen opens Statistics -> Nutrition: what you ate over a week, a month or longer.

Past days keep the target that was in force when you logged them. Change your goal today and last week still shows last week's food against last week's target - your history is not rewritten. Days from a time when you had no target at all show what you ate, with nothing to compare it against.

Log a meal

Tap Log meal to add what you ate. You have a few ways to do it:

• Describe it. Write what you ate in one sentence and the app estimates the foods, amounts and macros for you. Review the result before saving; in the hi.fitness app you tap an ingredient to change how much of it there was or to take it off the meal, and a meal with several items is grouped together under one name.
• From today's plan. If you have a plan, log one of the day's meals in a single tap.
• Photograph it. Point the camera at the plate and the app works out what is on it. Everyone can do this and see the foods it recognized; the amounts, calories and macros need a subscription - see Your subscription.
• Barcode. In the hi.fitness app, scan a packaged product's barcode with the camera.

Which day the meal goes to. In the hi.fitness app, a meal you add from the diary goes to the day you have open on the day strip. When that day is not today, the top of the meal chat names it, for example Yesterday, Oct 12.

Build a meal step by step. In the hi.fitness app the meal stays open until you save it, and whatever you add next goes into that same meal - its name follows what is in it. Type "two eggs", then "two slices of bread", then scan a yogurt, and it is all one meal. Dictating works the same way: tap the microphone and, after a short chime, say it. Corrections too: "sorry, it was one egg" takes an egg away, "one more egg" adds one, and "sorry, one egg and an apple" does both. While the meal is updating, the microphone and the barcode button wait for it. A photo always starts a new meal and replaces whatever is open and not yet saved. One window is one meal: once your meal is on screen, the send button becomes Save whenever the message field is empty, and the first letter you type hands the arrow back, so you can keep working on the meal. Saving takes you straight back to where you came from with a short confirmation. After every change the app confirms it in one short line, like "Added 3 eggs.", and briefly lights up the row that changed. To copy a message, press and hold it and choose Copy; the app's reply lists the foods and their weights, so that is the one to hold when you want the meal in words.

Changing one ingredient. The meal card sits at the top of the screen, folded; open it with the chevron on its right and you see every food in it. Tap a row and a panel opens for that one food. A food you counted - "10 eggs", "half a Snickers" - opens on its count, with plus and minus, and the weight underneath follows it; type a weight instead and the count follows back. Below them you see what that much of it is worth. The bin in the panel's header takes the food off the meal, and removing the last one takes the whole meal out of the conversation. The meal's hour and its type are the two small labels in the card's head: tap the hour to move the meal in the day, tap the type to pick another from a list (Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner, Snack or Drink). Every one of those changes is confirmed in the conversation underneath.

Give a number you know. Once a meal is on the card in the hi.fitness app, or when you correct a saved meal with Add or fix ingredients, you can type or say what something really had: "the rice had 300 kcal", "the chicken has 40 g of protein", "rice has 130 kcal per 100 g", "one egg has 80 kcal" or "the whole meal was 700 kcal". The app writes that number exactly as you gave it. You can also give just the difference: "the rice had 50 kcal more", "add 10 g of protein to the chicken" - the app adds it to the number on the card. When the sentence does not say which ingredient you mean - "change the calories to 500" with several items - the app changes nothing and asks which ingredient the number is for; answer with its name, or say "the whole meal". A number in the very first description of a meal is only part of the estimate, so say it again once the meal is on the card.

What follows your number: give an ingredient's calories and its protein, carbs and fat follow in the same proportion while its weight stays. Give one macro and only that macro changes; on an estimated item the calories are then worked out from the macros again, while an item whose calories came from a scan, a label or you keeps that figure for as long as the macros still fit it. With a number for the whole meal, the items that already have a reliable figure - scanned, read from a label or given by you - stay as they are and the estimated items take up the difference; if there are no estimated items, or they would have to more than double or halve, every item moves in proportion instead. If you give a number for a scanned product, yours is the one that counts in this meal; the product itself is not changed.

Estimates are approximate, so feel free to tweak the amount before or after saving.

Your meal photo or voice clip is kept only until the estimate is ready, and then deleted. Location data is removed from photos before they are stored. The text of a request and its estimate are erased shortly after.

Scan a barcode

In the hi.fitness app, tap the barcode icon at the top of the Log meal screen. Point the camera at the barcode on the package and hold it inside the frame - there is no button to press. The light toggle helps when the code is on the underside of something.

Fresh and chilled food often carries a different code from the usual barcode: a GS1 DataBar - narrower, sometimes in two rows, with the use-by date and the batch number printed under it. The scanner reads it the same way, and also the square GS1 DataMatrix and a QR code that carries the product's number (a GS1 Digital Link). A QR code that only leads to a website is not a product, so the camera keeps looking.

A scan never logs anything by itself. The product comes back as a card you check first: its name, its brand, and the macros for a sensible serving. When the package says what one serving weighs, the card opens on one piece - the whole bar, not 100 g of it. Drinks, milks and oils are shown in millilitres: the values on the card are per 100 ml, and a package opens as its whole volume, for example 500 ml. Step the count, type an amount, then add it to your diary when it looks right.

Sometimes a scan finds the product but knows only its calories: the protein, carbs and fat were never entered for it. The card then shows a dash in their place, and the meal's totals show what is known with a plus, such as 12+. Tap Photograph the nutrition table on the card and take one photo of the table on the package: the values are read and the food is filled in. When the photo also shows the package weight, the food becomes the whole package, unless you already changed the amount yourself. Your next scans of the product open on the whole package too. When it shows no weight, the food keeps the amount from the scan, and the reply asks you to check it. Save waits until that is done. When the table is clearly readable, its values also go to the shared food database, so the next person who scans the product gets its macros without being asked. If the table cannot be read, take the photo again. The calories count in your diary either way, also when you save without a photo.

If we do not have that product yet, the note says so along with the number you scanned and offers two ways to add it:

• Take photos of the product. Photograph the front of the package, then the nutrition table. You see each photo before moving on - retake it if the text is blurry or cut off. The label is read and the product is saved straight away: it appears as a card, ready to log, with no second scan and nothing to type. When the photos show no weight, the card opens on 100 g or 100 ml and the reply asks you to check the amount. If the label cannot be read, the note says so and lets you take the photos again or add the product manually.
• Add manually. Fill in the name, the brand and the values from the label - per 100 g, per 100 ml or for the whole package with its weight - and save. The product appears as a card right away, ready to log, with no second scan.

Either way, the next time you scan that package, it is found. A product you add by hand is saved as your own and does not go into the shared food database. When the label in your photos is clearly readable, the product may also be added to the shared food database, so other people's scans find it too; otherwise it stays your own product. Products that several people add may later join the shared database once the team has checked them.

Reading the label or a nutrition table does not count against your daily limit. The photos and the values read from them are kept with the shared food database, so the team can check the product later if needed; they stay there even if you delete your account. Reading keeps going even if you leave the Log meal screen: what was read is still saved, and your next scan finds it.

Many of the products a scan finds come from Open Food Facts (openfoodfacts.org), a free database of food products available under the Open Database License (ODbL).

Scanning never counts against your daily limit for describing, dictating and photographing meals.

How calories are counted

A row's calories always add up from its own macros: protein and carbs count 4 kcal per gram, fat 9 and alcohol 7. That means the calorie figure you see always matches the protein, carbs and fat beside it. One exception is a number you give yourself: say how many calories an ingredient had and that is the figure we keep, with its macros adjusted to match.

When the app recognizes a packaged product and knows the energy printed on its label, it uses that figure instead. A label accounts for things plain arithmetic does not, such as fiber, which is counted inside carbohydrate but carries roughly half the energy.

Drinks count their alcohol. A 500 ml beer at 5% holds about 20 g of pure alcohol, which is roughly 140 kcal on its own. Beer, wine and spirits are logged with that energy included, so a night out shows up honestly in your day.

Editing your entries

In the hi.fitness app, open a meal from your diary to change it. Tap an ingredient to change its amount or to remove it - the change is saved right away, and a note under the ingredients says what changed, for example Ingredient updated. Tap the meal type to pick another from a list, or the time to change it; those are saved right away too. An ingredient logged in spoons, slices or pieces, with no weight, can be removed there, and its amount is changed with Add or fix ingredients. At the bottom, Copy to another day adds the same meal to another day, and the three dots hold Add or fix ingredients and Delete meal.

Say when you ate it

You do not have to log a meal the moment you eat it. Mention the time and it is understood: "I drank a cola at 1pm", "oatmeal at 7:30", "a coffee an hour ago". The meal opens with that time already filled in, and you can still adjust it before saving. Works whether you type it, dictate it, or add a note to a photo.

Times only ever land on the day you are looking at, so to log something from an earlier day, move to that day first.

Ate it again? Copy it

If you have eaten the same thing before, you do not have to describe it twice. Go to the day it is on. In the hi.fitness app, open the meal and tap Copy to another day at the bottom. A calendar opens: pick today or any day from the last four weeks, then press the button that shows that date. The whole meal - every ingredient, with its amounts and macros - is added to that day. The day gets a tick, and you can pick another day straight away to copy the same meal there as well.

A copy to today is logged at the current time, and the meal type follows that hour: a breakfast copied at nine in the evening is logged as dinner. A copy to an earlier day keeps the time and the meal type of the original. Days after today cannot be picked.

The original stays exactly where it was.

Change a meal by describing it

Already saved a meal and realized something was missing? In the hi.fitness app, open it, tap the three dots at the bottom and choose Add or fix ingredients. Then say what changed in one sentence: "add one spoon of butter", "only half the rice", "that was turkey, not chicken", "drop the coke", "the rice had 300 kcal".

You see the rewritten meal first - ingredients added, removed or re-weighed, with the calories and macros recalculated - and it is only saved when you press Update. Until then your diary is untouched, so you can rephrase and try again as often as you like. If a change cannot be applied you are told so, and nothing is saved either way. If the sentence does not say which ingredient a number is for, the app asks instead of guessing. In the hi.fitness app answer in the chat with the ingredient's name or "the whole meal".

This works on meals with ingredients grouped under one name. A single standalone item is edited directly instead: in the hi.fitness app, open it and tap the ingredient to change its amount.

Your plan's meals, on the day

In the hi.fitness app, if you have a nutrition plan, each day also shows what the plan has you eating. Planned meals sit above your log, greyed out until you eat them. Tap one to open its recipe and add it to your diary. Once logged, it moves down into your food log and the suggestion disappears - so what stays on top is always what you still have left to eat.

Opening a planned meal now shows the recipe behind it, not just its numbers: the dish's photo where there is one, what it is in a sentence, its ingredients, and how it is prepared, along with servings and preparation time. Each ingredient shows a picture of the food and how much goes in; tap one to see its calories, how they split between protein, carbs and fat, what 100 g of it is worth and its share of the meal's calories. The preparation is laid out as numbered steps.

It is a page to read, with one action. The save button in the top right logs the meal as eaten, and asks you to confirm first - it writes several diary rows and closes behind them. To change an amount, log it, then open it from your food log and tap the ingredient.

Not in the mood for what the plan says? The swap button next to save offers dishes that FIT the meal you are replacing - the same balance of protein, carbs and fat, each already portioned to that meal's calories, so swapping does not quietly rewrite your day. The list has the same tools as every recipe list in the app: a search that looks through names and ingredients, a row of pills (Mine and the kinds of dish, with the planned meal's own kind already picked) and the Filters button with prep time, eating style and foods to avoid. A button at the end opens the full recipe library, with the same tools, when you want to pick something else entirely. Either way you land on the dish itself - photo, macros, ingredients and method - and swap it in from there, so you never replace a meal with something you have only seen a line of. What the ingredient list shows is exactly what goes into your diary, at the planned meal's own time, and the meal you skipped drops off the day. Your plan is not changed: the same dish comes back next week, because a swap is about today, not about the plan. To change the plan itself, edit it in My Plan.

In both swap lists the Mine pill shows only the recipes you created, each marked Mine in the list, and an Add your own recipe row sits at the end. Write the dish there from the list of foods, and when you save it you land on it straight away, ready to swap in. On an own recipe's page the menu in the corner also lets you edit or delete it. See Planning meals on mobile for the recipe editor.

Daily limits on describing, dictating and photographing

Describing a meal, dictating one and photographing one all lean on the same understanding step, and each account gets a set number of those per day: 5 on the free tier, 40 with a subscription. Once you have used them up, the app says so, and offers to subscribe if you are on the free tier. The limit resets at midnight UTC.

Nothing is lost when that happens. You can still add foods by hand, log a meal from your plan, scan a barcode, copy a meal from another day, and edit anything already in your diary - none of that counts against the limit.

Requests that are still being worked on are held against your daily limit until they finish. One that could not be finished for a technical reason - the connection dropped, something went wrong on our side, or it took too long - does not use up a request, and neither does one you stop before its estimate is ready. A request that got an answer does count, even when the answer is that no food could be found or that a correction could not be applied, and so does one stopped after its estimate was ready. The one exception is when the app asks which ingredient a number is for: that question does not use up a request (up to 20 such questions a day). Leaving the Log meal screen stops anything still in progress there (except reading a product label, which keeps going), and canceling a dictation stops it before anything from it reaches your meal. If the app says there are too many requests just now, some of yours are still being worked on - give it a few seconds and try again.

Voice notes stop on their own. When you record a meal, the recorder stops by itself after a set number of seconds (15 by default) and sends what it heard. A countdown appears for the last few seconds so you are not cut off mid-sentence. Recording again is always available if you want another go.

An estimate keeps going if you briefly switch to another app, and the result is waiting when you come back. If a meal takes unusually long to come back, or you lose signal partway through, the app tells you which of those happened rather than leaving you watching a spinner.

Log from Apple Watch

Add the Nutrition complication to your watch face. Its lime ring shows the calories you have eaten today; the grey part is what remains to reach your goal. Tap it to see calories and P/C/F at a glance, then swipe to review today's logged meals. Add by voice opens the microphone, and you still review the recognized meal and macros before saving it. Opened this way, calories fill the whole screen: there is no close button, because pressing the Digital Crown takes you straight back to your watch face.

If you have a nutrition plan, the list button beside Add by voice opens Today's plan. Tap a planned meal to mark it eaten: it is added to your diary exactly as planned, the row receives a checkmark, and the calorie and macro progress updates.

The complication keeps showing the latest snapshot received from your iPhone even when the Watch app is closed. Opening hi.fitness on the phone refreshes it after your diary changes.