Please Add Sugar Alcohol as a Trackable item like Fiber

Poobah1972

Good Morning Everyone,

I've just recently have comback to Myfitnesspal after a fairly long hiatus.

Generally the particular diet I've always had the most success on has been Keto (more Strict) or a Less strict Low Carb diet. Obviously Always with a reduced calorie intake lower then my Basal Metabolic Rate. My first stint now over 20 years ago I lost 250 pounds of fat in 1.5 years and gained ~50-60 pounds of muscle during the same time. In fact at my peak fitness I was about 260 pounds (36" jeans), benching 380 Pounds of free weight, and handling the largest dumbbells' at the gym (100lb each) for 9 reps of DB Presses. Squatting in excess of 500 pounds to the below 90 degree knees for reps, and dead lifting in excess of 700lbs for reps.

And I was also jogging the Laurentian trail in sudbury (7-8km)...

So it was a herculean accomplishment in just a 1.5 years starting at somewhere over 500 pounds and a 65"+ waist. To be honest my transformation is probably one of the most amazing such transformations in short amount of time i've ever seen. But I was literally weight training 3-5 days a week for 2+ hours a day, and walking, jogging and eventually running every morning at 5:00am before work and more so on weekend. It wouldn't be crazy to suggest at one point I was training at an Olympic level.

The point is Keto treated me well... And I find it very easy to do and It's my preferred mode of weight loss.

Unfortunately of course after a number of years I ended up moving far out of town, stopped working out and eventually went back to hold eating habits... And well it hasn't been pretty. (calories calories calories for life, I know and is probably the trickiest bit to sink in long term)

I just purchased the Premium version of myfitnesspal which does allow me to track Net Carbs... Which I find most useful given the fact I prefer the Keto / Low Carb diet. However I would like the app to also track Sugar Alcohols and treat it like fiber when calculating Net Carbs.

This isn't a game breaker by any means... But the nutritional information is available on the label of all such Low Carb specific foods I have typically used and it would be easy enough to account for it in any database should the effort be made to do so. And the addition of such tracking, could easily be added to the Diary Settings menu for Enablement for those that wish to use it, so It's not infringing on anyone that doesn't need or want such information.

Carbs - Fiber - Sugar Alcohols = Net Carbs

I think for large number of Low Carb followers out there, this would be a much appreciated addition to your Website and App.

And just for fun here's a pic from back in the day when I first lost a ton of weight... This is a pick fairly early on probably 6 or 7 months around the time I started weight training. Up till then it was just the 5am, walks then jogs etc.



Oh and heck here is where I started.



And I was weight lifting for about a year in this pic...




Thank you,
Jonathan

kshama2001

Congrats on your weight loss! Stunning!

ETA - oh, I just saw you'd gained some weight back. Well, you know you lost it before, you can do it again

Poobah1972

kshama2001 wrote: »

Congrats on your weight loss! Stunning!

ETA - oh, I just saw you'd gained some weight back. Well, you know you lost it before, you can do it again

Ah thank you. And yes I'm pretty well back where I started. Took me 14 or so year to put it back on. But your right, I know what's possible. (I don't plan to be an olympic weight lifter this time round though, all things in moderation.)

Cheers Mate!

lemurcat2

MFP would have a hard time doing what you ask, because the database is huge and user sourced and tons of foods don't have the sugar alcohols on the label (I don't think MFP has even collected that information when entries are created).

A couple of suggestions: (1) when you eat something note the sugar alcohols in the notes box and then you know you can subtract that; or (2) maybe figure out how many g of sugar alcohol you tend to eat in a day and then raise your net carb goal by that amount.

Also consider joining the low carbers group: https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/group/394-low-carber-daily-forum. Lots of people with lots of experience and some stickies with tips and information.

You can definitely do it again!

Poobah1972

lemurcat2 wrote: »

MFP would have a hard time doing what you ask, because the database is huge and user sourced and tons of foods don't have the sugar alcohols on the label (I don't think MFP has even collected that information when entries are created).

A couple of suggestions: (1) when you eat something note the sugar alcohols in the notes box and then you know you can subtract that; or (2) maybe figure out how many g of sugar alcohol you tend to eat in a day and then raise your net carb goal by that amount.

Also consider joining the low carbers group: https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/group/394-low-carber-daily-forum. Lots of people with lots of experience and some stickies with tips and information.

You can definitely do it again!

When I suggested it would be easy, as a self taught programmer from back in the day and old hand at Excel from the basic stand point it is just the addition of additional fields of information. Granted it would take some minor effort in the grand scheme of things to add it to the app and website. The greatest time and effort would involving the updating of products, which could be crowd sourced for lack of better term by the community (I assume that's where the original library of foods comes from). But it certainly could be done, if the will to do it was there.

As for knowing how to calculate it myself... I appreciate your comments, and I certain know how to do that... I had a whopping 18 grams of sugar alchohols today which drops my true net carbs to sub 20. It's all good, but I also paid for this product, and it would simply be nice if over the long term I can see all this data at a glance without doing th quick calculation (and googling such food items to remind me of the sugar alcohol contant.).

As for a lot of foods not requiring to print such information on the label... That may be true, but for product that I can think of That I use, and I would venture to say most people familiar with the Low Carb diet and the various marketed low carb products... This information is generally on the nutrition label. (I know as I look at every such product I buy and see it on there).

I think this is an addition that would be worth the cost of the premium member ship to a very large community of Low Carber's out there. The addition of such information would be a valuable asset to add the MFP product and likely lead to increased sales. While for everyone else not following a low carb life style the sugar alcohols can continue to be rolled as they are now.

I've seen the comments before suggesting it be to much work, or talking about food labels not needing to display it... But to me that's like suggesting to elon musk you can't make electric cars viable. Of course it's viable, and it would be an additional selling feature to a large amount of people out there.

So lets get it done!

Poobah1972

Small correction... As the more I think about it. The original gym (YMCA) I started at had 90lb Dumbbells'. When I finally moved to a new GYM, they actually had 120lb dumbbells, it was those I could managed at 3 reps of 9 at the height of my strength changing. (Just want to get it right...) this was 16-17 years ago at this point, so Its taking a bit to come back to me.

AnnPT77

Poobah1972 wrote: »

lemurcat2 wrote: »

MFP would have a hard time doing what you ask, because the database is huge and user sourced and tons of foods don't have the sugar alcohols on the label (I don't think MFP has even collected that information when entries are created).

A couple of suggestions: (1) when you eat something note the sugar alcohols in the notes box and then you know you can subtract that; or (2) maybe figure out how many g of sugar alcohol you tend to eat in a day and then raise your net carb goal by that amount.

Also consider joining the low carbers group: https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/group/394-low-carber-daily-forum. Lots of people with lots of experience and some stickies with tips and information.

You can definitely do it again!

When I suggested it would be easy, as a self taught programmer from back in the day and old hand at Excel from the basic stand point it is just the addition of additional fields of information. Granted it would take some minor effort in the grand scheme of things to add it to the app and website. The greatest time and effort would involving the updating of products, which could be crowd sourced for lack of better term by the community (I assume that's where the original library of foods comes from). But it certainly could be done, if the will to do it was there.

As for knowing how to calculate it myself... I appreciate your comments, and I certain know how to do that... I had a whopping 18 grams of sugar alchohols today which drops my true net carbs to sub 20. It's all good, but I also paid for this product, and it would simply be nice if over the long term I can see all this data at a glance without doing th quick calculation (and googling such food items to remind me of the sugar alcohol contant.).

As for a lot of foods not requiring to print such information on the label... That may be true, but for product that I can think of That I use, and I would venture to say most people familiar with the Low Carb diet and the various marketed low carb products... This information is generally on the nutrition label. (I know as I look at every such product I buy and see it on there).

I think this is an addition that would be worth the cost of the premium member ship to a very large community of Low Carber's out there. The addition of such information would be a valuable asset to add the MFP product and likely lead to increased sales. While for everyone else not following a low carb life style the sugar alcohols can continue to be rolled as they are now.

I've seen the comments before suggesting it be to much work, or talking about food labels not needing to display it... But to me that's like suggesting to elon musk you can't make electric cars viable. Of course it's viable, and it would be an additional selling feature to a large amount of people out there.

So lets get it done!

If you look at a detail food database entry in the phone/tablet app, the field for sugar alcohols is present. It doesn't seem to be listed on any of the nutrition report pages yet, though AFAIK none of my foods have sugar alcohols, so I can't be sure it would appear nowhere if they did. I'm not interested enough to try adding a food, to see if I can populate the field, or to see if it shows anywhere, though I know that the sugar alcohol field appears on the "add food" page and is typeable. (I don't believe the field is available in the web version of MFP, which doesn't seem to receive all the same new features as the phone/tablet apps do. Again, I'm not positive, because I have no particular reason to research this.)

That suggests to me that full function for the field (perhaps showing up on report pages) may be planned at some future point, even if it isn't there already.

I'm somewhat skeptical that adding a database field is as easy in an a complex, multi-platform industry-scale app as it was in your programming experience as a self-taught programmer. I say that as someone with a professional history that included design & programming of moderately large scale business systems . . . but because I'm not familiar with the internal architecture of the MFP apps, I wouldn't want to speculate as if I had actual knowledge.