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New Tech for a New Diet

Like many work-from-homers, I’ve gained quite a bit of weight during the pandemic.  I go into my struggles with my weight here if you’re interested.  In short, I try out the keto diet and intermittent fasting to attempt to slim down again.

There’s not too much to this app.  I want to be able to enter my weight every day, perhaps attach a picture, and be able to make a summary in the end.  I knew I would use ReactJS and start on a web version and  I hope to eventually convert it to ReactNative and make a mobile version as well.

I don’t know why, but I’m just in the mood to do something different.  WordPress is huge and doesn’t want to be left behind, so they’ve developed a number of tools to be able to implement a Single-Page Application (SPA) using a WordPress backend.  ReactPress is huge in terms of getting Webpack and Babel working.  That’s already huge.  There’s also a WordPress API where I could theoretically make custom post types to handle the data.

I figure it’s a good exercise since ReactPress will probably be used a lot in the future.  Many companies have apps integrated into their websites.  Since those websites still have blogs and pages, it seems like a logical choice to add the SPA features to WordPress rather than try to add the CMS features to an app architecture.

So, we’re going to build this app considering and including the following:

  1. Weight Tracker (we’ll put in a AM and optional PM weight entry for each day)
  2.  Image Tracker (optional – upload photos of your daily weight progress)
  3. Eating Window Tracker (Tracking your eating time ranges per day or week)
  4. Interruptions Tracker (Days / Periods where Intermittent Fasting was not done)
  5. Diet Tracker (make note of the types of foods you eat – not a calorie tracker)
  6. Miscellaneous Tracker (make note of how you felt during the day, any exercise done, and other with text notes)

The aim of this app is to create a daily log and see what eating windows works for you.  The app also aims to be honest and track days where the keto diet wasn’t maintained.  This is because real-life happens and if grandma is offering you a slice of her homemade pumpkin pie after holiday dinner, you’re gonna eat it no matter what.

I believe the purpose of tracking less-than-ideal behavior with your diet is to see how it affects the weight loss journey and also keep things from getting out of control.

This is in the idea phases right now and I’ll update once progress has been made.