How-to

Tracking what you eat, without the database homework

You have maybe twenty foods and five meals you rotate through — so Fanad learns your foods once, and then logging takes three words.

Turn it on

Most calorie apps make you search a database, pick the closest match from forty near-identical entries, and adjust a slider. Fanad's Diet module works the way people actually eat. It's its own module, off by default:

optin diet

The first time you eat something

Weigh it (kitchen scale, oz or grams) and say so. For a food Fanad has never seen, it makes one guess at the calorie density — and you confirm or correct it once, ever:

eat 4 oz chicken breast

chicken breast ≈ 45 cal/oz (my guess) — 4 oz ≈ 180 cal. Reply “yes” to save & log, send the right cal/oz (a bare number), or “no” to skip.

yes

✓ chicken breast saved at 45 cal/oz — I’ll reuse it from now on. Logged 4 oz chicken breast: 180 cal. • calories: 180 / 2000 kcal

After that, it's canonical and never re-guessed:

eat 6 oz chicken breast

Logged 6 oz chicken breast: 270 cal. • calories: 450 / 2000 kcal

If you already know the number, your count always wins — no guess, no question. eat olives 80 cal saves olives at 80 calories a serving, and from then on a bare eat olives logs one serving. Foods that come in pieces just count: eat 2 eggs.

One number, no macros

One calories number, no macros. That's deliberate — the goal is a total you'll actually keep, not a spreadsheet you'll abandon in March.

Meals: the same breakfast every day

If you eat the same thing most mornings, save it once:

save meal breakfast 2 eggs, skyr, toast 450 cal

✓ breakfast saved at 450 cal/serving (2 eggs, skyr, toast). “eat breakfast” logs it.

Leave the total off and Fanad prices the meal from your saved foods, guessing only the unknowns, behind a single yes/number/no question. Either way, tomorrow morning the entire transaction is:

eat breakfast

Logged breakfast: 450 cal.

Recipes: the pot of chili problem

Home cooking is where calorie tracking usually dies, because a “serving” of something you made is meaningless. Fanad does it the honest way — total calories in, divided by cooked weight out:

recipe chili = 16 oz chicken breast, 8 oz olives @ 28 oz cooked

🍲 chili: • chicken breast — 16 oz @ 45 cal/oz = 720 cal • olives — 8 oz @ 47 cal/oz = 376 cal = 1096 cal ÷ 28 oz cooked = 39.1 cal/oz. Log it with: eat 8 oz chili

(Weigh the whole pot, subtract the pot.) There's also a conversational version — recipe new chili walks you through it a line at a time. Once built, a recipe logs like any other food: scoop out a portion, weigh it, eat 8 oz chili.

The daily picture

CommandWhat it does
target 1800Sets the calorie goal every tally is measured against.
weight 182Logs today's body weight.
tallyShows where the day stands.
undoRemoves the last logged portion — no fixing typos by hand.
foodsLists your library; food set and food del correct or remove an entry.

Two details that keep the numbers honest: the day rolls over at 2:00 am, not midnight, so a 1 am snack still counts against the evening it belongs to. And days follow your timezone — if Fanad runs on a hosted box, set your weather location in Settings so the server's clock matches yours.

The web app adds a Diet report view: daily totals, a weight chart over time, and inline edit/delete on the food log for anything you got wrong.

Why it stays easy

The whole system converges. Every food you confirm makes the next log shorter, until a normal day is four messages: eat breakfast, eat lunch, eat 8 oz chili, weight 182. That's the entire overhead — which is about what a habit can actually afford.