Past & Future Nutrition
Track your nutrition history and preview future nutrition based on planned meals.
Past Nutrition
Section titled “Past Nutrition”Viewing Historical Data
Section titled “Viewing Historical Data”Review your nutrition intake from previous days, weeks, or months:
- Open tracking dashboard
- Select time range (yesterday, last 7 days, last 30 days, custom)
- View averages for each nutrient over that period
What You Can Learn
Section titled “What You Can Learn”Daily trends:
- Which nutrients you consistently meet
- Which nutrients you struggle with
- Day-of-week patterns (e.g., weekends vs. weekdays)
Weekly patterns:
- Average intake vs. targets
- Variability in your diet
- Impact of meal planning
Monthly insights:
- Long-term adherence to targets
- Seasonal eating patterns
- Progress toward health goals
Stored Nutrients from Previous Days
Section titled “Stored Nutrients from Previous Days”Some nutrients can be stored in your body for future use. Platebreaker tracks this:
How storage works:
- If you exceed your target for a storable nutrient (e.g., vitamin A, calcium)
- The excess is stored up to your body’s storage capacity
- Stored nutrients count toward future days’ targets
- This appears in your dashboard as “stored” or “carried forward”
Example:
- Monday: Consumed 200% of vitamin A target
- Excess 100% is stored for future days
- Tuesday: Even if you consume 0% vitamin A, you still meet 100% from storage
- Wednesday: Storage continues to deplete until you replenish it
Learn more about nutrient cycles and storage
Export Historical Data
Section titled “Export Historical Data”(Coming soon)
- Download nutrition logs as CSV
- Share with healthcare providers
- Analyze trends in spreadsheets
Future Nutrition
Section titled “Future Nutrition”Previewing Planned Meals
Section titled “Previewing Planned Meals”See your projected nutrition based on meals you’ve already added to your planner:
- Open tracking dashboard
- Select a future date (tomorrow, this week, etc.)
- View projected intake based on planned meals
What You Can See
Section titled “What You Can See”Today + planned meals:
- Nutrients you’ll get from today’s remaining meals
- Whether you’ll meet all targets by end of day
- Nutrients you still need to focus on
Tomorrow preview:
- Complete nutrition breakdown for tomorrow
- Based on all meals currently in your planner
- Updates in real-time as you modify your plan
Weekly projection:
- Average daily nutrition for the upcoming week
- Helps ensure week-to-week balance
- Identifies nutrients to focus on in upcoming meal planning
Making Adjustments
Section titled “Making Adjustments”Use future projections to optimize your plan:
If a nutrient is projected low:
- Search for recipes high in that nutrient
- Add to an empty meal slot
- Or swap a currently planned meal
If a nutrient is projected high:
- Consider removing or reducing a meal with that nutrient
- Balance with lower amounts on other days
- Adjust portion sizes in planned meals
Example workflow:
- Check Sunday’s projected nutrition
- Notice vitamin C is only at 60% of target
- Search for “high vitamin C” recipes
- Add orange and spinach smoothie to Sunday breakfast
- Projection updates to 105% vitamin C
Confidence Levels
Section titled “Confidence Levels”Future projections have different confidence levels:
High confidence (today):
- Meals already logged are certain
- Planned meals are likely to happen
- Projection is fairly accurate
Medium confidence (tomorrow):
- Based on your current plan
- May change if you modify meals
- Good for planning purposes
Lower confidence (next week):
- Assumes you stick to your plan
- Many variables can change
- Useful for general trend awareness
Combining Past & Future
Section titled “Combining Past & Future”Nutrient Cycles
Section titled “Nutrient Cycles”Platebreaker tracks nutrients over multi-day cycles:
For nutrients with storage:
- Past intake contributes to future needs
- Future projections account for stored nutrients
- Balance achieved over days, not just today
Example: Vitamin D (stored for ~6 days)
- Saturday: Consumed 180% of target (80% stored)
- Sunday-Friday: Need only 20% daily because of Saturday’s storage
- Week average: 100% target met despite daily variation
Planning Ahead
Section titled “Planning Ahead”Use historical data to inform future planning:
- Review last week’s gaps
- Plan this week’s meals to address those nutrients
- Preview this week’s projection
- Adjust meals before the week starts
- Execute and track actual intake
- Review next Sunday to see how you did
Logging Missed Meals
Section titled “Logging Missed Meals”If you ate a meal but didn’t log it, your tracking and projections will be inaccurate:
Impact on tracking:
- Historical data is missing nutrients you actually consumed
- Search rankings assume you didn’t get those nutrients
How to fix:
- Search for a similar recipe and add it to the correct date
- Add it before your next search so rankings account for those nutrients
- It doesn’t matter when you log it—just add it before searching
For older missed meals: The default storage cycle is 7 days. If you’re logging a meal from more than 7 days ago (or beyond your custom storage period), the impact on current rankings will be minimal since those nutrients would have already been accounted for in previous days’ targets.