Paradox: Unhealthy food is often easier to track.

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  • bulbadoof
    bulbadoof Posts: 1,058 Member
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    I can't afford restaurants often, but when I do I go with things I can log individually - a steak and some steamed vegetables (hold the butter pls). They usually tell you the size and type anyway, and if I estimate the veggie portions incorrectly, whoops, I guess I'm off by 20 calories.

    As for convenience, I just eat my fruits/vegetables whole instead of bother with portions. Meat's a little trickier.
  • lemurcat12
    lemurcat12 Posts: 30,886 Member
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    segacs wrote: »
    lemurcat12 wrote: »
    Anyway, why assume I mean generic US chains?

    'Cause those are the only ones that provide nutritional information for their menus. At least here, that's the case.

    And, like you, I prefer to eat at restaurants I enjoy.

    And my point was that that's not true, not here.

  • TR0berts
    TR0berts Posts: 7,739 Member
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    segacs wrote: »
    TR0berts wrote: »
    Eat part of a bag of chips - I don't know how much to log.

    You can weigh the chips.


    Yes...And that makes logging the chips harder than logging the meat from my example.
  • 50sFit
    50sFit Posts: 712 Member
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    Being fit and healthy is not the easy path.
  • alazio
    alazio Posts: 44 Member
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    When I used to do weight watchers, i would find myself grabbing for pre-packaged, pre-portioned foods all the time, because it was soooo much easier to track. But my body did not feel good, even though the weight was coming off. Over time I've learned that some things in life are worth the extra effort, and nutrition is most definitely one of them. But I 100% agree that, ironically, what's easiest to track is not the stuff we should be eating. The nice thing about MFP is that once you've been using it for awhile, most everything gets pretty easy to track if you've eaten it before.
  • DeWoSa
    DeWoSa Posts: 496 Member
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    __drmerc__ wrote: »
    I don't think it's a paradox

    Don't let your laziness dictate what you eat

    There's no such thing as laziness, just higher energy output and lower energy output. Like there are no good or bad foods, and there are no healthy or unhealthy food choices. It's all just energy!

    This is the most Derridian community I've ever met outside an English Ph.D. candidate social.

  • rivka_m
    rivka_m Posts: 1,007 Member
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    Recipes are particularly annoying with the new recipe tracker. I don't know about everyone else, but my measurements are slightly different each time I make a recipe, particularly when it comes to vegetables. I'm not going to chop up 3/16 of a carrot and put the rest back so the weight matches exactly, or refuse to substitute rutabaga for potato if I only have rutabaga, so that my recipe matches what's already entered. That's not to mention the accidental changes - I accidentally added extra canola oil in a recipe last night.

    I think that's more of a rant about the awful new recipe tracker though.
  • JoRocka
    JoRocka Posts: 17,525 Member
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    Elsie_Brownraisin wrote: »
    JoRocka wrote: »
    TheBigFb wrote: »
    Or you could go the other way, dont eat anything that has a bar code, then its all healthy
    what does that even mean???

    everything you purchase has a bar code.

    Not so, I buy all my meat, fish, poultry, bread, cakes/pastries and cheese from places that don't have barcodes.

    and if they got big enough- even the farmers market would invest in barcodes- the presence or absence of a barcode doesn't indicate a plus or minus or anything about said food other than it is tracked through a digital system instead of by paper.
  • IHateThinkingOfAUsername
    IHateThinkingOfAUsername Posts: 568 Member
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    We had a similar thread not too long back and I think the two need to go hand in hand.

    I do eat more pre-packaged food/items since starting losing weight because it allows me to stay in control. Sure I can cook from scratch and be as in control over my portions as I am with pre-packaged food, but for me it comes down to whether I can be arsed. And 9 times out of 10 the answer is no I can't be bothered.

    http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/comment/30135431/#Comment_30135431
  • segacs
    segacs Posts: 4,599 Member
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    herrspoons wrote: »
    There's nothing wrong with nuking a processed meal for lunch at work provided it fits into your overall eating regime.

    Never said there's anything wrong with it if that's what you like to eat. But it seems like lots of people admit to switching from homecooked to pre-packaged food in a semi-regular basis once they start a calorie counting regime, due to ease of tracking, not because they actually like the meals better.
    IHateThinkingOfAUsername wrote: »
    We had a similar thread not too long back and I think the two need to go hand in hand.

    http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/comment/30135431/#Comment_30135431

    Yes, lots of stuff in this thread mirroring exactly what I was trying to say. Though I don't like the term "lazy" here -- clearly, most people doing this aren't being lazy, but are doing it because, like you, they want more control over what they eat.
  • lemurcat12
    lemurcat12 Posts: 30,886 Member
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    rivka_m wrote: »
    Recipes are particularly annoying with the new recipe tracker.

    I can't get it to work. I just use the old one.

    I mostly don't do recipes, though, because mine change too much depending on what I have on hand. I just log as I cook.
  • lemurcat12
    lemurcat12 Posts: 30,886 Member
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    segacs wrote: »
    But it seems like lots of people admit to switching from homecooked to pre-packaged food in a semi-regular basis once they start a calorie counting regime, due to ease of tracking, not because they actually like the meals better.

    Do lots of people do this? There was one guy, in a recent thread, and most participants in the thread thought that was silly. He also claimed to like the prepackaged meals better because he cooked with tons of salt and oil and didn't think his own food would taste good without them.

    I can't imagine switching from home cooked to prepackaged food because of logging, if you were someone who otherwise preferred to eat homemade food, because it's simply NOT difficult to log homemade food and logging makes me think more about what I am eating.

    I admitted that I've slipped into the habit of buying lunch from places that have calorie counts rather than bringing lunch, but to put that in context before I started losing weight I bought lunch every day. After I started I brought most lunches from home (and logged them in advance). Now I am back to buying, but am more restrictive in where I buy. Here, most places where you can buy a meal quickly and return to your desk (as I do) have calorie counts, and they range from unhealthy or not diet friendly to extremely diet friendly and tasty (the gazpacho I got a lot in the summer as part of a meal, many salad + protein options or sandwiches with fresh ingredients on whole grain bread). IMO, the benefit to bringing my own lunch is controlling the ingredients and macros--I like more protein and more veggies than you can find many places--so if I find options that meet those needs, I'll buy lunch. If not, I don't, no matter how convenient logging might be. If it spoils your food plan for the day, it's not convenient.
  • NoelFigart1
    NoelFigart1 Posts: 1,276 Member
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    I figure I'm going to be going a lot less wrong screwing up the amounts on a bunch of lettuce or chopped peppers than something pre-packaged.

    If I wanted to be really anal about it, yeah, I could use a scale and weigh it. I don't bother because I'm losing with what I am doing.

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