Target Bars Set to Reach Minimums Instead of the Goal Being to Stay Under Maximums

Shikamoo

Let me first say that the work you people are doing at Cronometer is CHANGING PEOPLES LIVES! Know that as you clock in for your work today and everyday, know that the work you are doing with Cronometer is helping people achieve their goals and live happier, healthier lives. How cool is that?

I have a lot of feedback, but let me start at the top of the list because the way the Target Goals are set up seems completely backwards to me.

Looking at the Diet Profile on the Target Settings, it makes no sense that your bar charts in Targets show the Minimums as your daily goal, as if most people are shooting to reach a minimum amount of calories or a minimum amount of carbs or a minimum amount of fat every day. For protein, yes I can see that you would want to target a minimum goal of protein, but for 90 - 95% of us, I'm pretty sure the daily struggle is to stay UNDER a MAXIMUM amount of calories, carbs and fats.

By adjusting the scale of the Target bars to the user defined maximums, it would make so much more sense, and then perhaps somewhere to the left of the end of the bar, you could also add little hash marks for the minimums as well.

Karen_Cronometer

Thanks so much Shikamoo - we're blushing over here!

We have a colour-coded system for reaching minimum targets (green) or exceeding maximums (red). If you have the default Fixed Targets, just as you have noticed, there are no maximum values set for carbohydrates, protein and fat.

You can set your own custom values in a snap! If you are on the web app, scroll down to the nutrient targets and you can click right on any of the nutrients to edit them. You can set a maximum and then your target bars will update with green when you've reached your minimum and red if you go over the maximum value that you have set.

Shikamoo

Thanks for the reply, kkelly, I didn't know about the green and red colors on the target bars, but that's good to know. For me, however, I just want to look at the bars and see how much is remaining until I hit my maximums, so what I ended up doing is, I set the values on my minimums to my personal maximums. Having the bars set up this way makes a lot more sense to me and I'd imagine a lot more people are focused on how close they're getting to their maximums and not their minimums.

leaf

Shikamoo,

if you click on whatever you want to track you can see for yourself how much you've got left. (after you filled in your own maxxes)

In my opinion i like this way of displaying, cause it reminds me to eat. It reminds me that food is fuel & not the devil!

It is a bit of a personal challenge to pick the most nutrient rich - low calorie foods so i can get as much green bars as possible. To get the most nutrient bang for my caloric buck so to speak.

greetz,
leaf

Shikamoo

But food is the devil! LOL.

I lost 59 pounds in three months last year, but coming off of that, I knew that the even bigger challenge would be in keeping it off, which means trading in the crash diet mentality for a healthy lifestyle mentality. It's over a year later now and yet I still have trouble pulling myself out of the crash diet mentality, but . . . I do know you're absolutely right when you place the emphasis on fueling the body.

I still think for most people however, we'd rather know at a glance if we're under our own personal maximums for calories and carbs and fats for the day.

The perfect solution would be to add a setting where the user could choose having those target bar charts set to meeting minimums or staying under maximums.

Skwizgaar

I actually agree with this.

Ill give you a scenario where the current set up does not work. Although the Color coding system works 90% of the time, one change to reach maximums instead of minimums would really help a lot.

Lets say caffeine or Alcohol for example. I may want to make those minimums 0. But I have not cut myself off completely from them. It does not allow me to put 0, because the system assumes 0 means "No target" where I want it to know minimum is literally nothing. So instead I put .01. Now if I have caffiene or alcohol at all, it comes to %41981239845 (slight exaggeration but you get the point!) Setting it to allow no minimum with a max would fix this.

We may not even need a setting change for it. Just allow the minimum to be Null, and if minimum is null, and there is a value for maximum then you can change goal percentages to just look at the max number.