Your diary is home base — it’s the first thing you see when you open KidneyPal. It shows everything you’ve eaten and drunk for the day, and how you’re tracking against your nutrient limits.
Your Nutrient Budget
The Nutrient Budget dashboard at the top shows your running totals for the day — sodium, potassium, phosphorus, and protein, each against your personal limit. Swipe the card sideways to flip it to the Left Today view, which shows the same numbers as room remaining instead. As you log food, each bar fills up. If you go over a limit, that bar turns red and a warning appears showing exactly which nutrients are over target.
Your limits come from your kidney profile, and any custom numbers from your doctor always take priority. See how your limits are calculated.
- Tap any nutrient to see exactly which foods contributed to it today — handy when you’re wondering where all that sodium came from.
- Tap the chevron on the dashboard to collapse it if you want more screen space.
KidneyPal Pro users can also track optional nutrients like calories, carbs, fat, magnesium, calcium, and vitamin K. Turn them on in Settings.
The Meal Timeline
Below the dashboard, your day is organized into four meal sections:
| Meal | Time window shown |
|---|---|
| Breakfast | 6am – 10am |
| Lunch | 11am – 2pm |
| Dinner | 5pm – 9pm |
| Snacks | Anytime |
The time windows are just labels to help you organize — you can log any food to any meal, at any time of day.
Adding Food
Tap the + button on any meal section, or the big + button in the center of the tab bar. Either way, the Add Food sheet opens with five options:
| Option | What it does |
|---|---|
| Scan | Photo, label, or barcode — learn more |
| Say or Type | Describe your meal with voice or text — Quick Log |
| Saved | Pick from your saved favorites (more below) |
| Recipes | Log a recipe from your library |
| Manual | Type in the nutrients yourself — handy if your dietitian gave you exact numbers |
Tip: The center + button turns into an × while the sheet is open. Tap it again to close.
Editing an Entry
Tap any entry to open it. What you can change depends on how it was logged:
- Scanned and AI-analyzed meals open a review of each detected food. You can adjust servings, remove items the AI got wrong, or update amounts.
- Other entries open an edit sheet where you can change the name, meal, serving size, or nutrient values.
Changing servings scales all the nutrient values automatically. One serving means the full meal as it was analyzed — so if you only ate half, set it to 0.5 and everything is halved.
Deleting an Entry
Two ways:
- Swipe left on the entry to reveal three quick buttons: a heart (save it as a favorite), a copy button, and a trash button to delete.
- Long-press an entry to enter selection mode, then tick off several entries and delete them all at once. You can also start selection mode with the Select Items button at the bottom of the diary.
Copying Meals and Repeating Days
Eat the same breakfast most days? No need to scan it again.
Copy a single entry
Swipe left on the entry and tap the copy button. Pick the day you want — Today, Tomorrow, or Pick a date — and optionally change the meal type. Done, nutrients and all.
Repeat a whole day
At the bottom of your diary, tap Repeat This Day to copy every entry from the current day to another day. You’ll see how many entries will be copied, and an Include water intake toggle if you want your fluids to come along too.
Copy several entries at once
Long-press an entry (or tap Select Items), select the ones you want, then tap Copy in the selection bar.
Saved Foods
Every time you tap the heart on a diary entry, it’s saved to your Saved Foods library. Next time you eat the same thing, tap Add Food → Saved and pick it — one tap and it’s logged with all the correct nutrients. Saved Foods is free for everyone.
In the Saved Foods screen you can search your list and sort by Recently Added, Name, or Safety Level.
Moving Between Days
The week calendar strip at the top of your diary shows the current week:
- Tap any day to jump to it. Today has a ring around it.
- Use the arrows to move back and forth a week at a time. You can’t move into the future beyond today.
- The colored dots under each day give you a quick report card: green means every tracked nutrient stayed within limits, yellow means one went over, red means more than one went over, and gray means nothing was logged.
Yes, you can log meals to past days — just navigate to the date and add entries as usual.
Note: Free accounts can view and edit the last 7 days. Older days show a summary with an Unlock Full History option — full history requires KidneyPal Pro.
Daily Notes
Want to jot down how you felt, a symptom, or a reminder for your next appointment? Tap the Notes card and write a note for that day. Your notes appear in a timeline on the Progress tab — see Progress & Insights.
Your Streak
The flame badge at the top of your diary counts how many days in a row you’ve logged at least one entry. Tap it to see your current streak, your best streak, and your next milestone.
You’ll get a little celebration at 3, 7, 14, 30, 60, and 100 days. If your streak breaks, no worries — your longest streak is saved separately, so your record lives on. There’s also an optional evening reminder to protect your streak — see Notifications.
Weight and Binders
Two more quick-log rows live on your diary:
- Weight — log today’s weight in seconds, or tap through to your full history and trend chart. See Weight Tracking.
- Binders — if you take phosphate or potassium binders, track your doses right from the diary (requires KidneyPal Pro). See Binder Tracker.
And right below the nutrient dashboard sits your fluid tracker — that one gets its own page: Tracking Fluids.
