Today’s ProsoPlate update brings three interconnected features that deepen how you can observe your eating patterns. Each one emerged from research and from my own experience using the app daily.
18 Emotions, Zero Shame
Most eating trackers focus on food. ProsoPlate focuses on what’s happening inside you - and that means tracking emotions.
But emotion tracking done poorly can reinforce negative patterns. Done well, it builds what researchers call emotional granularity - the ability to distinguish “lonely” from “bored” from “tired.” In How Emotions Are Made, Lisa Feldman Barrett reports that people who make these fine-grained distinctions regulate their emotions markedly better - around 30% more flexibly, in the studies she cites.
I landed on 18 emotions, in three groups:
Core triggers (8 emotions): Bored, Stressed, Anxious, Sad, Lonely, Frustrated, Tired, Overwhelmed - these have the strongest research evidence as eating triggers.
Secondary triggers (6 emotions): Irritable, Worried, Down, Tense, Restless, Empty - moderate evidence, often variants of the core triggers.
Positive emotions (4 emotions): Happy, Excited, Celebratory, Content - because research shows positive emotions increase food intake more often than negative emotions decrease it. Most apps ignore this entirely.
What I deliberately left out: Shame never appears in ProsoPlate. The research is clear - shame creates spirals that reinforce problematic eating patterns. Guilt (“I did something I regret”) can motivate change. Shame (“I am bad”) links to pathology. This is a firm design boundary.
I’ll be honest - I’m still experimenting with whether to group emotions or leave them flat as they are now. How best to present them in the Evening Review remains an open question. But the app records everything, so don’t skip this step. I’m fairly sure it will start showing you patterns within a few weeks.
Seeing the Spaces Between Meals
When we think about mindful eating, we focus on the meal itself. But what about the gaps?
This update introduces meal timing awareness:
- Hourglass tiles show the time between meals - whether it’s “2h 15m” or “45m”. No judgment, no targets, just information.
- Time Since Last Meal appears on your home screen, answering a surprisingly hard question: “When did I last eat?”
- Yesterday’s reminder - notes from your Evening Review appear the next morning on your home screen.
I’ve already found patterns I never noticed: a seven-hour gap between lunch and dinner on office days, completely different spacing at the weekend, a lot more snacking when I work from home. None of that shows up in a calorie count.
The Mindful Awareness Timeline
This feature appears in both Evening Review and History: a multi-dimensional visualization of your eating day.
The Timeline shows six data series:
| Symbol | What It Shows |
|---|---|
| Orange circle | Craving intensity before eating |
| Teal diamond | Hunger level before eating |
| Empty square | The Promise - what your mind said you’d get |
| Filled square | The Reality - what you actually experienced |
| Carrot icon | Snack logged |
| Wine glass | Alcohol logged |
This is the part of the app where I have high hopes and am still experimenting. More changes coming soon.
The Curiosity Principle
Throughout these features I follow what I call the curiosity principle: the app helps you notice patterns with interest, not track compliance with goals.
- No streaks
- No targets or ideal distributions
- No comparison to other users
- No red flags or color-coded judgment
The assumption: awareness precedes change. When people see their patterns clearly, they make their own adjustments. ProsoPlate makes patterns visible. What you do with that visibility is yours.
Try it
All three are in the update, nothing to configure. Use ProsoPlate as you normally would and see what turns up.
Record a few meals with the full flow, log some snacks, then open your Evening Review and explore the Timeline. Tap the legend items. See what happens when you focus on just craving, or just the Promise/Reality gap.
The pattern might surprise you.
ProsoPlate is available on the App Store. Built on the Clarity Method - tracking experiences, not calories.