[Logging] Adjust 'meal duration' | Be able to input time I finish eating
under review
C
Cosima Travis
Merged in a post:
meal duration
R
Rebecca Schulman
Consider adding an option for a start and end time for meals, like activities.
Meals aren't usually instantaneously consumed, but it's a particularly notable issue for me with things like my coffee/collagen and isopure drinks, which I may consume sometimes over an extended period (even a couple of hours). This makes the cgm data related to the intake a little deceptive.
I imagine others sometimes drink the same cup of coffee (etc.) over an extended period, so this has to be something that would be useful for others as well.
L
Lynette Diaz
under review
Rebecca Schulman My apologies, you are correct. While we did create an opportunity for people to adjust their zone duration, we haven't yet created an opportunity to adjust your meal duration. We don't have work for this scoped yet, but certainly something we'll consider when we revisit meal logs. I definitely agree that speed of consumption is likely correlated with glucose rise.
R
Rebecca Schulman
Lynette Diaz Thanks for looking at this again!
T
Tuna Ertemalp
Lynette Diaz I also would like to add that 3hrs max for a zone doesn't seem to be enough. I just came back from a weeklong vacation. 2 or 3 nights out of the 7, I started eating, usually with people, therefore longish dinners, variety of shared food, with wine, and I would be surprised that my glucose was behaving for 3hrs, but then another hour or two later there would be a spike, making Levels ask me if I did something else after the meal zone ended. The only way around I found was to enter some food towards the end of the 3hr zone to be able to extend it to cover such late spikes. But that feels like a workaround. Maybe the real good solution is to both enable meal durations to account for meal start/stop and base the meal zone end off of the meal stop, but also change the extension limit go down as low as 1hr (like now) and go up 4-5hrs (longer than today's 3hrs). Also, talking to my girlfriend who deals with diabetics every day, there seems there is also a condition that results in late digestion, and particularly for diabetics (but also for non-diabetics) that is an issue that needs to be kept in mind, making that 3hr max too limited for a section of the population.
L
Lynette Diaz
Hi Tuna Ertemalp - agreed, in this case the issue is 2 fold. We don't currently have a concept of 'meal duration' to solve for this I try to log things as they are eaten so the zone window is naturally extended (i.e. appetizers at 7:30pm, main entree at 8:00pm, dessert at 9:00pm) and this tends to solve for the duration issue, so that this window would encompass 7:30-11pm and 12am if I extend the window. The second issue is if there is any alcohol with dinner (not sure if it was here, but tends to be the case when members have dinners out), the alcohol will get metabolized first, and any carbohydrates in the meal will be processed much later, often in the middle of the night. This one is a bit trickier to account for within a zone, but is a well known phenomena. I'll link an article here, https://www.levelshealth.com/blog/alcohol-and-metabolic-fitness. Let me know if this helps.
L
Lynette Diaz
Rebecca Schulman Of course! You're very welcome!
L
Lynette Diaz
complete
I'm happy to report this exists!! Here's a quick loom demonstrating how to adjust the zone times. https://www.loom.com/share/cac813330dc64c87b2db22c6c82333c3?sid=85024284-fcf0-4342-9e58-54fa04a623e3
R
Rebecca Schulman
Lynette Diaz I actually made a similar request and didn't see this one. I would argue that this is not complete. Adjusting the zone time does not have anything to do with adjusting the meal duration. Being able to adjust the zone time is helpful, to some extent, but there is definitely some validity to the question about whether speed of intake impacts blood sugar and would also make it easier to tell how soon after an intake sugar starts to rise.