My photos are being analyzed as high. Why is this?
Generally when this happens, the photos are zoomed in and the food looks massive in the photo.
Taking photos with a bit more perspective or from a distance of a few feet should help with accuracy. As long as it’s in focus, cameras are generally sharp enough so you don’t need to get extremely close up.
You can also always type in details. For some obvious things it isn’t necessary, but it is always available as a way to share more details about what you ate. Especially if you didn’t eat exactly what is in the picture, like more or less servings.
How can I take better photos?
Some people will put their hand or a fork or a banana or other landmarks for scale. Even AirPods or something can work.
Still, try not to have other meals or items in the shot that aren’t part of the food, but it will generally understand the context and focus on what is in the foreground.
How much effort should I put in?
The goal here is to make it really easy to consistently log every single thing you eat. That doesn’t mean the system will be right every single time, but you can decide how much effort you want to put in.
Study Ten people who said they could not lose weight on under 1,200 calories a day had their actual intake and burn measured in a lab for 14 days. They had underreported what they ate by an average of 47% and overreported their exercise by 51%. What it means: Estimates from memory can be far off. A photo taken at the meal is a record you do not have to remember later. |
On one extreme, you can just take a photo and let it decide, YOLO mode. Even just doing this on every single thing you eat is better than logging some things super-precisely and then missing others entirely (the all-or-nothing approach). Here, just simply taking well-framed shots can help, just like if you were sending it to your friend and wanted them to understand what you ate.
The middle approach can be adding helpful labels: clarifying the ingredients, specifying if something had sugar or how much you ate exactly. A few more seconds per item can improve the accuracy further.
Study In a 24-week online weight-loss program with 142 people, those who lost at least 10% of their weight opened their food log more often, 2.7 times a day versus 1.7. Average time spent logging fell from 23 minutes a day in the first month to under 15 by the sixth. What it means: How often people logged mattered most. Logging food used to be a 20-30 minute a day activity. Now with Food XRAY, you can accurately log your meals within just 1 or 2 minutes per day. |
The most extreme approach (though it isn’t really much more work) is to weigh everything you eat. This used to be a lot of work, but now with the camera you can simply take a photo of the item on the scale. Just a few more seconds to position it gets you the highest level of accuracy ever possible. And a nice food scale is just about $10 on Amazon.