The Food & Mood Journal in the Practice Better client portal lets you log what you eat and drink, track how meals make you feel, and share that data with your practitioner. This guide covers every way to log an entry, how to edit or delete one after saving, and how the Journal connects to recipes and meal plans your practitioner shares with you.
In this article:
- Logging a Food Entry
- Choosing a Meal Time
- Editing or Deleting an Entry
- Tracking Mood, Hunger, and Location
- Logging Multiple Entries at Once
- Copying Entries to Another Day
- Viewing Nutrient Details
- Logging Water Intake
- Reporting a Nutrient Discrepancy
Logging a Food Entry
Click the Fast Action Button in the bottom-right corner of your Client Portal home screen or Daily Journal Summary page, then select Log food to open the "What did you have?" pop-up.
From here, you have several ways to log what you ate. Pick whichever fits the moment: quick search for common foods, a barcode for packaged items, or a free-form note when you're eating something homemade.
Searching the Food Database
From the "What did you have?" pop-up:
- Start typing the name of your food into the search bar at the top of the pop-up.
- Suggestions are pulled from the Nutritionix database as well as any foods or recipes you've saved. Select a suggestion from the picklist, or press enter to view all matching results.
- Choose the food you had, and then enter the meal time, date and time consumed, the number of servings, and, if applicable, the serving size.
- At this step, you can optionally select to save this food to your custom foods, to easily reuse for another food entry.
- Click Save.
Using the Barcode Scanner (Mobile App Only)
From the "What did you have?" pop-up:
- In the mobile app, select the barcode icon in the top-right corner of the pop-up.
- Hold the barcode on the packaging inside the scanning area. The food is detected automatically.
📍Note: The Barcode Scanner is only available in the Practice Better mobile app. On web, you can still log any food using search, free-form entry, a photo, or by adding a custom food or recipe.
Practice Better's nutrition database, Nutritionix, is based in North America. The Barcode Scanner may not recognize products outside of Canada and the United States. If a barcode doesn't scan at all, log the item with a free-form entry or as a custom food instead.
Reporting a discrepancy is for when a food is found, but its nutrient data looks wrong, not for items the scanner can't find. See [Reporting a Nutrient Discrepancy] below.
Entering a Free-Form Description
From the "What did you have?" pop-up:
- Select Add a free form entry.
- Type a description of your meal, for example, "grilled chicken with rice and broccoli." You can also type specific units of measure if applicable (ie. 1 tbcp hummus with 6 cucumber slices).
- If nutrient details are enabled on your account, suggested ingredients and their nutrient values will appear as you type.
- Click Use data to include the suggested nutrients with your entry, or Ignore to skip them.
- Optionally attach a photo, then set the date and time.
- Click Save.
Uploading a Photo of Your Meal
From the "What did you have?" pop-up:
- Select Upload a photo. On the mobile app, you can also take a photo directly with your camera.
- Add a description of your meal alongside the photo. This works the same way as a free-form entry, including the option to use suggested nutrient data.
- Set the date and time, then click Save.
Logging a Custom Food or Recipe
Can't find something in the database? You're not stuck with free-form text. From the "What did you have?" pop-up, select either Add a new food or Add a recipe and you can create and save your own food or recipe with your own macro values, including your preferred unit of measure (grams, ounces, cups, and so on).
You can create a new saved food or recipe starting from the “What did you have?” pop-up, or go to the Nutrition section of the client portal to save your custom foods and recipes.
Under the My Foods or My Recipes tabs, you can select from already saved foods and recipes.
Creating a custom food or recipe is its own workflow. See the respective articles, Adding a Custom Food and Adding a Recipe, for full instructions. Once saved, that food or recipe becomes a selectable entry point here, just like a database item.
📍 Note: If you later edit a saved food or recipe's nutrient values, it won't retroactively update any journal entries that already used it. You'd need to log a new entry to reflect the change.
Logging a Shared Recipe from a Meal Plan
If your practitioner uses That Clean Life and has shared recipes or a meal plan with you, you'll find them under the Shared Recipes tab.
- Select the Shared Recipes tab, or type the recipe name into the search bar. Shared items are labeled Shared Recipe in the results.
- Select the recipe or meal.
- Optionally update the meal time, date and time, and number of servings.
- Click Save.
Nutrient values populate automatically from the recipe your practitioner shared, so there's nothing extra to calculate.
📍 Note: The Shared Recipes tab only appears if your practitioner uses That Clean Life and has shared recipes or a meal plan with you. If you don't see this tab, your practitioner hasn't shared anything yet, and that's fine. All the other entry methods work regardless.
Choosing a Meal Time
Every entry gets tagged with a meal time. You will see preset meal times as empty entry points where you can easily click the Add entry button to get started.
You can also adjust the meal time in the food entry pop-up at any time.
The preset categories, in order, are:
- Wake-up Snack
- Breakfast
- Mid-morning Snack
- Lunch
- Mid-afternoon Snack
- Dinner
- After-dinner Snack
- Bed-time snack
Water intake is tracked separately from food entries; see Logging Water Intake below.
Editing or Deleting an Entry
Deleting an entry works the same way regardless of how it was logged: from the journal summary page, click the 3 dots (More Options menu) next to your entry, then select Delete. Confirm your choice by clicking the Delete button in the confirmation pop-up.
To edit an entry, click the 3 dots (More Options menu) next to your entry, then select Update.
Editing works a little differently depending on how the entry was created:
- Shared or saved recipe entries: You can update the date, time, and number of servings. Nutrient values come from the recipe itself and can't be edited directly in the entry. To change the nutrient data, update the recipe in your Client Portal, then log a new entry; existing entries won't update retroactively.
- Free-form or photo entries: You can update the description, date, time, and photo. Changing the description prompts a new Use data option so you can refresh the suggested nutrients.
- My Foods entries: You can update the date, time, serving, and serving size. Nutrient values come from the saved food; editing that food later won't update past entries.
💡 Tip: Need to move an entry to a different day? Click Update to open the pop-up and then select the desired date to backdate an entry.
Tracking Mood, Hunger, and Location
You can add more details to your food entry logs either at the time of making the entry, or later. These details are associated with the meal time, not each specific food listed under that meal time.
Before you have saved your entry, click the Edit (pencil) icon above the Save button.
After you have saved your entry, click the Edit (pencil) icon under the meal time.
The available fields to add context to your entry:
- Where did you eat this meal?
- Level of hunger before the meal.
- Level of hunger after the meal.
- How did you feel before you ate?
- How did you feel after you ate?
Logging Multiple Entries at Once
- Use the +1 button when saving an entry to log it and immediately start another.
- From your Recent Entries list, select Add multiple, click the checkbox next to the entries you'd like to log, and click Next to review and submit them together.
Copying Entries to Another Day
Already logged a meal you're having again? Save yourself the re-entry.
- On your Daily Journal Summary page, click Copy entries in the top-right corner.
- Select the date to copy from using the date picker.
- Click the checkbox next to the meals you'd like to include.
- Click the Copy button in the pop-up.
You can browse and copy from as far back in your saved journal history as you need.
Viewing Nutrient Details
If your practitioner has enabled nutrition details in your food journal, you can click the nutrient breakdown icon beside any food or meal in your Daily Journal Summary to open a full nutrient profile, including macronutrients, carbohydrates, fats, protein, vitamins, and minerals.
You can open multiple nutrient profiles at once to compare specific foods, foods against meals, or one day against another.
Logging Water Intake
Track your water from the Fast Action Button on your Client Portal home page, or from the Daily Summary widget on your Daily Journal Summary page.
- Select Log water from the Fast Action menu, or click the Add water button from the Daily Journal Summary page.
- Enter a numerical value for the water you consumed and click Save.
- Or, use the quick-add buttons to add water to your daily total, or click Edit total to set the exact amount consumed.
📍 Note: Your water is tracked in either liters or fluid ounces (one glass equals 8.5 fl oz), depending on your practitioner's measurement settings. If your practitioner has set a daily water goal for you, it's optional and will appear alongside your total; not every practitioner uses this feature.
Reporting a Nutrient Discrepancy
If a food's nutrient data looks incorrect, whether you found it through search or the barcode scanner, you can report it directly.
Learn more about Reporting Food Nutrient Discrepancies →