Software Dev Project (Calorie Accumulator)

Diet and Nutrition
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Hello, I’m a student programmer in the UK. Recently I was given an open project and I thought I’d use the opportunity to combine my studies with something I love and have genuine interest in.

Thus I have been spending a lot of time coding a program to keep me on track with my fitness goals. The main function of the program is the calorie accumulator. It has many other features like weight and measurement tracking which I will illustrate below.

Unfortunately I have come to a dead end in terms of ideas for increased functionality and am in need of some feedback. Who better to give feedback then likeminded individuals who are also the target user for a program like this…

I’ll drop a few images of the program in action below tell me what you think could be added or presented better:

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The main function of the form… The calorie Accumulator.

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This feature creates a pyramid chart to illustrate to the user where their calories are coming from.

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Allows the user to edit the nutrional information db. They can add their foods here…

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The user can save data from the calorie accumulator. This data is then stored in a database and can be displayed in a seperate window with a nice chart :slight_smile: You’ll see I like my charts…

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This second half of the program is the weight/measurement manager… Here is the summary page.

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Here is the summary page of the measurements section. The other tabs have individual graphs for each body part.

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I think thats about most of it to now… Please give me your thoughts…

Oh and if anybody wants to play around with the applicaton pm me and i’ll send you it. It needs testing anyway…

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The pyramid chart is confusing me. Why is it a pyramid? Make it a pie chart.

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How about stats on macro breakdown? In any case, it looks cool man nice work.

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[quote]ethanwest wrote:
How about stats on macro breakdown? In any case, it looks cool man nice work.[/quote]

Do you mean in the calorie history window? As it is now its just date and total calories. I guess it would be an idea to log the macro nutrients along with it. And maybe even the meals that make up the values…

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Just the first things that popped into my head:

  • I second the pie chart comment. The pyramid chart is a bit meaningless to me.

  • What about macronutrient totals for each meal, as well as the daily total.

  • Is 6 meals the limit or can you add more?

  • Can you go one step further and breakdown the fats into SFA, PFA, MUFA?

  • I suppose you could go even further and say how much sugar and salt is in the diet.

  • A minor thing, but you’ve spelled protein wrong.

Looks good though.

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The pie chart can be changed with ease… I went for the pyramid to mimick the common food pyramid, but if pie charts are more meaningful then pie chart it is.

Macronutrient totals for each meal is a good idea.

6 meals is the limit at the moment as I didn’t want to make the screen look too busy but an option to add more would be handy I guess.

And if I am to include sugars,salts and fat breakdown then the user will have to add these values for each food they enter into the databse. Effort vs. benefit here. Oh and my bad on the spelling… Visual studio doesn’t have spell check :stuck_out_tongue:

Cheers for the feedback

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[quote]pop-eye wrote:
And if I am to include sugars,salts and fat breakdown then the user will have to add these values for each food they enter into the databse. Effort vs. benefit here.
[/quote]

True.
I personally track sugars and saturated fat because they are both on food labels so it’s easy to do. Sodium is too but I don’t bother tracking that. I guess the other fat information would be a bit more tricky to get hold of.