This dialog shows up in a number of situations:
If you are editing an exercise instead of a food, then some of the buttons and fields on this form will be different, but the form works pretty much the same way.
So now you are here, what does everything mean.
This is probably the simplest of the lot. It is just whatever you
want to call the food (or exercise). If are describing a hamburger
with the lot, then put "Hamburger with the Lot" in this field. If
you are describing 100 situps, then put "100 Situps" in here. This
is what appears in the left hand column in the My Food list, and
also in the Name column in the diary view.
Clicking on the button marks this as a favourite food or
exercise. The app gives favourites preference when
recommending food or exercise.
When the My Foods list is displayed, the foods can be grouped together under a set of categories. These categories can be anything you like, as long as it makes sense to you. For example, our Hamburger with the Lot, might be in the "Takeaway" category, and an apple might be in the "Fruit" category. You can either type straight into the field, or if you already have a few categories, then click on the upside down triangle at the end of the field, and select one from the list.
This is just a name to describe in a bit more detail the size of the serve. If your food is "Bread", you might want to put in "Slice" or "Loaf" or "Roll" to describe exactly what you are looking at.
This is where you get to put in all of the calorie (and other) values for the food. This is just a table a bit like a spreadsheet - You type the numbers straight into the fields. Fields that you can type into will be white, and fields that you can't type into will be grey or light blue.
The Serving Size (or for exercise, the Session Size) and Serving
Units are in the second the third rows and the first column of the
table view.
Serving Size | Units |
100 | g |
200 | ml |
1 | session |
1 | serve |
You will hopefully notice by now that you can put almost anything you want in the units field. You can click on the little triangle to get a list of suggestions if you want or you can type into the field.
If you have just added this food from the food database, you will find that some values have already been put into this field - Remember the "Serving Size" list you chose from...
BUT - For all the freedom you have here, there is a but...
Be a bit careful what you use here... It is best to put in the actual weight (probably in g) or volume (probably in ml) if you can. Here's why... Imagine that you have a entry for a glass of milk. You could put the serving in as "1" "glass". Or you could put the serving in as "150" "ml". But lets imagine you decide later on that you want to put in a cake recipe, and it contains 250 ml of milk - If you put "150 ml" for the serving, then you can use that milk entry in your cake recipe (see "Add Other"). You told the computer how many calories there are in 150 ml of milk, so it can quite happily figure out how many there are in 250 ml of milk. But if you said "1 glass", the computer can't work out the calories in 250 ml, since it doesn't know how big your glass is! You really only need to worry about this if this is the sort of thing that you are going to use in a recipe. So...
Another note: You may notice that when you go back later on and edit a food, you can't change the serving size or units. There is a good reason for this (covered under Changing Size and Changing Units).
If you are editing a food for the first time, you can change the
Serving Size value as often as you like. If you are
editing a food that already exists in your database, then the
Serving Size field is locked. You can still edit the
value, but you need to press the button
on the left side of the field. The reason that is does
this is that JXCirrus CalCount needs to ask a couple of questions
before it adjusts the values. Here is why...
Imagine you want to go back and change the serving size of a bowl of corn flakes from 40g to 60g. This could be because:
You entered the serving size wrong the first time, and want to fix it up.
You have started having bigger bowls of corn flakes.
For the first option, you are just fixing the serving size, but don't want the calories to change. For the second option, you are having 50% more corn flakes, so you also having 50% more calories - The computer needs to change all of the calorie, fat etc values.
So - If you press this button, the computer will ask you if you want to change the calories as well as the serving size (and will helpfully adjust them for you if you do).
If you are editing a food for the first time, you can change the
Serving Units value as often as you like. If you are
editing a food that already exists in your database, then the
Serving Units field is locked (and no longer gives you a drop down
box). You can still edit the value, but you need to
press the button on the left side of
the field. The reason is that JXCirrus CalCount needs
to confirm that it has converted correctly between the units.
When you change the serving units, the computer will first ask you what the new units are. After that it will ALSO change the serving size (if it can). If you are changing from, say, pounds to kg, the computer knows what that is and will just change the serving size from 1 pound to 0.45 kilograms. If you are changing from 1 glass to ml, the computer will ask you how many ml in a glass.
NOTE: Changing units will NOT change the number of calories.
ANOTHER NOTE: If you use this food in another recipe, then the computer will also change the units for this food in that recipe.
You will notice that for the first row, this is the same as the serving size, and you can't change it. But if you add other foods to your recipe, then you should type in the amount of that food in the amount column. For example, if you have added milk to this recipe, put in the number of ml (or pints) that you want for this food.
Again, the same as serving size for this food. For other ingredients, this will be whatever unit that food is measured in.
For this food, just put the number in against each value. If you add in other foods, you will be able to see those values, but not change them. The Total just adds all of the parts together.
HINT: The table (handily) will do unit conversions for you. If you record energy in Calories, but you are typing a value in Kilojoules, then type (for example) "1600 kj" into the field, and the system will automatically convert to calories. Similarly, you could enter "400 cal" when you record in kilojoules.
This large field is only visible if you arrived at this dialog after doing a web search - It lets you paste the results you found from the web page into the field so you can see them without needing to flip between CalCount and your browser.
This is mainly used for recording exercise. It has 3 possible values:
This is how you would use this:
This is where you can add another food in as an ingredient for this food. Here is an example:
You tend to have corn flakes for breakfast. You go to the food database and look up "Corn Flakes" and put in enough for one bowl... Ah, but you don't just have dry corn flakes in a bowl. You have milk, and maybe sugar. You could just grab a handy calculator and add the calories for cornflakes, milk and sugar and type them in. Or (far better) you could have a food that is "Milk (1 glass)" and another that is "Sugar (1 tsp)". Create the "Milk (1 glass)" food separately (and the sugar). Then add your corn flakes... After you put in the calories for just corn flakes, press "Add Other" and select "Milk (1 glass)" from the list. This has the added benefit that if you decide to also put in bran for breakfast, when you go to add bran, there is a handy "Milk (1 glass)" that you can add to that too.
You can get to this function by pressing the button on the toolbar..
If you added the wrong other food, just click on it in the table,
and press the button next to that food in the table, and it
shall be gone.
You could use this if you think you might have made a couple of incorrect changes to some of the values for the food. This will go and try and find the food in the food database and fix up the values for you (based on your serve size of course).
You can get to this function by pressing the button on the toolbar.
Sometimes you can end up with two identical foods/exercises in
your database. To merge the 2 together, press the button, and
select the food/exercise you want to merge into this.
Press OK when you are finished. If you press Cancel, you will lose the changes to this food (but that may be what you want if you made a mistake).