Edibles 1.3 adds many new and exciting features. Among them:
Hello, and thank you for purchasing Edibles. I'm Dawn DeVoe, one member of the family team that makes up Random Ideas, LLC. This program was developed by our company at my request.
I have struggled with my weight for most of my adult life, and as a result, have tried Atkins, WeightWatchers, South Beach, and various other diets. I have found with all of these lifestyles, that the key to my success hinges on my ability to efficiently and easily track what I eat.
Since I bought my iPhone, I have been keeping track of my food in Notepad. It gets the job done, but what a pain! Edibles changes that! Edibles was designed to make tracking and logging your food a breeze. I worked carefully with the developer of Edibles to streamline the interface and make it as easy and efficient as possible. I'm pleased to say we have succeeded. This, however, is only the beginning! We have ideas for many new features and we'd also love to hear from you, the user, what features you'd like to see and any ways we can improve your experience with Edibles. So feel free to send us feedback. Our email address is at the bottom of this help file. In the meantime, read on for instructions on how to use Edibles!
You can change the units to suit whatever eating plan you use. In the settings application on the iPhone there is a place to change that setting. For instance if you count calories as part of your eating plan change the Custom Units Label to Calories. In that menu there is also a place to make a Custom Units Abbreviation. Set that to how ever you'd like calories abbreviated. The same things can be done with Carbs, Points, Sodium or whatever it is you are tracking.
This screen is an overview of the current day. Here, you will be able to see all of your information at a glance.
This was added to track any weekly extras you may allow yourself. If you use Weight Watchers you would put your "weekly points¨ allowance" here. If you count calories and allow yourself some splurge calories during the week you would put them here too. These "units" will be used after any exercise units have been exhausted. To set this value touch the Weekly Units Available row. You will be presented with a screen to input whatever value you'd like. You will need to click the reset allowance button at the end of every week to reset the allowance on these points. Alternatively, you can configure the points to automatically reset on a specific day each week. Simply go into the preferences application and set the day there.
This is where you keep track of any exercise you've done, be it calories burned or Points¨ earned. If you have used all of your Daily Units Available, Units will be taken from here. To set this value touch the Exercise Units Available row. You will be presented with a screen to input whatever value you'd like.
This is where you set your daily units allowance. If you are an Atkins user this is where you'd enter your daily carbs. Others would enters Points¨, calories, etc. To set this value touch the Daily Units Available row. You will be presented with a screen to input whatever value you'd like. This line will also keep track of the amount of Units you have remaining for the day.
This row is a running total of the units you have used today.
Selecting this row will allow you to see all of the foods you have entered for the day and their value as well as a summary of your units used. You may delete the items by selecting the Edit button in the top right corner or by sliding your finger across the item you'd like to delete.
Selecting this row will take you to your custom food database. When you open the program for the first time this will be empty. To add foods to your database touch the "+" in the top right corner of the screen. Each food type consists of 3 values. The first is the food type. This can be something like "Coke" or "Rye Bread." The second field is the "Serving Size." The Serving Size is for you to track the size of a typical serving of that food. In the example of Coke, this might be "12 oz", or for Rye Bread, it might be "Slice." Finally, "Units." Units is for specifying how many of whatever you are tracking is in the serving size specified. For example, if you were using WeightWatchersª Points, and there's 3 points in a 12 oz can of Coke, you'd enter 3 here. If you were tracking calories, you'd enter the calories (140).
Select done when all of the fields are filled in. At this point you will be given the option of filling in the number of servings you've eaten and logging the food ("Log This" button). This is the key concept to understanding Edibles. Edibles will take your "Servings" value, and multiply it by your "Units" value for your given food, and log it against your Unit allowance for that day. So to extend our example, if you drank half a can of Coke. You would enter "0.5" for "Serving." Edibles would then deduct 70 calories from your daily allowance, or 1.5 Points.
All of the foods that you enter will be saved in your database for future use. Later, you may edit any food item and its value by selecting the Edit button on that foods main screen. To delete a food from your database simply slide your finger across the row you want to delete and hit delete.
The Historical list is where you will find all of your previously entered days food logs. You may delete them at any time by either selecting the Edit button in the top right corner or sliding your finger across the row to be delete. You can also add new log entries if you forgot to enter them for a given day. On this screen, your exercise units will be displayed as two numbers, in the form #Left/#Total. So if you earned 100 calories via exercise on a given day, and then you ate something that had 80 calories and those were taken from your exercise calories, it would show 20/100.
A word of warning, do not delete "Today" unless you want everything for the current day deleted.
Its fairly simple to change eating plans in Edibles. Change your Units in the settings area. You will need to adjust your Daily Units to your new eating plan. The next thing you'll need to do is adjust your Units in your database, which at this time will need to be done manually. Just edit the foods as described in the Log Food section of this document.
Edibles 1.1 adds the ability for you to categorize your foods. This helps you to track your servings of particular types of foods. For example, if your diet plan requires that you track how many fruits, vegetables, liquids, milk and oils you eat, then you would create categories for each of these and set your foods within each of these categories. The number of servings of each of these items that you have eaten on a given day is tracked on that day's food list. To view this for today, touch the "View Today's Log" button on the main screen.
The categories themselves can be configured in the preferences application on your phone. The categories are defined as a comma-separated list.
So, for example, to create the categories for Fruits, Vegetables and Liquid. You would set the categories setting to be 'Fruit, Vegetable, Liquid'.
Warning: Changing these categories after you have configured a food in the database requires that you verify and re-set your categories on your foods.
Many diet plans require that you calculate a value for foods based on known quantities and then track that value. You can use a plain old calculator for this, but Edibles provides a built-in programmable calculator that you can use instead. By using the programmable calculator you can configure it to prompt you for specific values and then to give you a result based on those values.
Before using the calculator, you must configure it with a formula. A formula consists of an expression made up of variables, functions, operations and constants.
If you're using one of the existing diet systems, here's a few formulas to get you started. Just find your diet, and enter the appropriate formula, exactly as you see it into the formula screen:
Atkins:
<Carbs>-<Fiber>
Weight Watchers (According to the formula as published on Wikipedia):
(<Calories>/50)+(<Fat>/12)-(MIN[<Fiber>, 4]/5)
Glycemic Index:
(<Carbs>/<Meal Carbs>)*<Carb GI>
Body Mass Index:
(<Weight in Pounds>/(<Height (in.)> * <Height (in.)>))*703
If the formulas above don't help you, or you want to hack about with the calculator, read on! Edibles is the only food journal on the iPhone that allows you to completely configure the calculations it uses.
In describing each of these parts, I will use quotation marks ('like this') to surround the thing you would put into the formula. When you put the item into the formula, you should not include the quotation marks.
Variables - A variable represents a value which you will be prompted for when you are performing the calculation. These are delimited in the formula by surrounding the variable name with angle brackets ('<>'). So for example, to define a variable called Calories you would put into your formula '<Calories>'.
Functions - Functions are mathematical operations which extend beyond the normal addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. Currently, there are three functions provided. They are MIN, MAX, and ROUND. Functions are entered into the formula by typing the function name, and then the parameters to that function in square brackets. For example, to calculate 7/10 and round it to the nearest first decimal place, you would put 'ROUND[(7/9), 1]' This would yield .8 since it would round .77777 to .8.
All current functions require two parameters. For ROUND, the first parameter is the value being rounded, and the second parameter is the place to round it to. For MIN and MAX, the two parameters are the values being compared. Parameters are passed to these functions via square brackets. So, to find the MAX of 4 and 5, you would do 'MAX[4, 5]'
Operations - These are your addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division operators. To use these in your formula, you simply type '+' for addition, '-' for subtraction, '*' for multiplication and '/' for division. So, the operation '10/2' would yield 5. '5*2' would yield 10, and so forth. To ensure your calculations get performed in the appropriate order, you should use parenthesis to group them how you want. So for example, to calculate '(10+2)/(4-2)' would calculate first 10+2, to yield 12. Then 4-2 to yield 2. Then it would divide 12 by 2 to yield 6.
Constants - A constant is a set value. These can be any number, but you are not prompted for them.
For the purposes of illustration, let's pretend that we're setting up Edibles for a hypothetical weight management system that uses Calories, Protein and Carbohydrates for calculating it's food value. Let's say that this system requires that you take the value for calories and divide it by 10. You then take the greater value of Carbs or Protein and then add that value to the calories value we got above. Finally, we round our result to the nearest whole number.
In this hypothetical system, the variables would be Calories, Protein and Carbs. The constants would be 10. Operations would be division and addition. And the functions would be MAX and ROUND. We would enter the formula into Edibles as follows:
This would result in the calculator screen having 3 values the user is required to enter, Calories, Carbs and Protein. Once entered, the larger of Carbs or Protein would be added to Calories divided by 10. Finally the value would be rounded to the nearest 0 digit, which means the nearest whole number.
I realize this all may sound very complicated, but the truth is, if you understand that <> allow you to define variables, and functions are invoked like MIN[4, 5]. The rest is pretty straight forward. Using this system, the Edibles calculator can be configured for any diet system in the world. All you need to bring to the table is the formula.
Thanks again for choosing Edibles. And remember.... Success is the progressive realization of a worthy goal or ideal. ~ Earl Nightingale
We are currently investigating an issue with the ROUND function in the calculator. It may not be working for rounding other than whole numbers. We hope to release an update soon to address the issue. We're sorry for any inconvenience this might cause.
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