Need support pls.. Starting tomorrow.. Dont know where to start?

dsrabinovich

calorie counting and loggin?? What about when you go to a restaurant.. How do you log??

dubird

Start at home with a digital scale. You'll have to weigh EVERYTHING for a while until you learn just how much an ounce actually looks like. And even then, when you eat something new, you'll still need to weigh to make sure you're on track. For the first few weeks or so, just worry about logging. When you have a good data set to start from, you can start looking into alternates to things you eat, where you can cut portions out of things, and you can start reducing your calorie intake. I had to start with just logging because I honestly didn't know just how much I was eating. After a couple of weeks, I was seeing trends and things I could cut down on or eliminate, and was able to start cutting calories. I started with a couple things at first, and once I got used to that, I would change something else. Yes, it's very slow, but it taught me how I should be eating and helped me change some bad habits that will help for the rest of my life.

As for eating out, MFP has a lot of resturant entries in the database, and many resturant chains will have nutrition info on their website. If not, ask the waiter about it. Chances are, they can find out for you. You will lean that resturant portions can be HUGE calorie bombs, so try and look them up before you go so you know what to order.

dsrabinovich

What about excersize?

dubird

I didn't start with it. It was three years before I took a physEd class for my degree and started walking in January. Now, I keep walking even though the class is over because it is slowly helping my asthma. It also does mean I can eat more, which is kinda nice. XD If you already exercise, that's great! If not, it's not necessicary to losing weight, but is good for other reasons.

My personal recommendation is, even if you do exercise, set your diary to Sedentary and add in your calories burned. Be aware that MFP is notorious for over-calculating how much you burn, so you don't want to eat back all of them if you just let MFP calculate it for you. If you wanted to go the route of the fitbit or a similar tracking device, make sure to get one with a heart rate monitor. Those are much more accurate. Not perfect, but a lot better than MFP.

dsrabinovich

Mm

dsrabinovich

How do I see food diaries from people here?? If I excersize more means I can eat more during the day?? How does that works??

Merkavar

dsrabinovich wrote: »

How do I see food diaries from people here?? If I excersize more means I can eat more during the day?? How does that works??

Yeah but eat like 50% of your exercise calories back. Your likely to under estimate food and over estimate exercise.

Just got to start logging. Your bound to make mistakes a long the way.

But logging a lone for me was an eye opener.

Weigh food. Log everything.

If your at a restaurant, log as best you can, for me the more in doubt I am the more I over estimate the food.to be in the safe side.

dubird

MFP = MyFitnessPal

Basicly, you need to eat less calories than you burn over the course of the day. You'll need to figure out your base calorie burn is (what your body would use if you were in a coma just to stay alive), what your activity level is (so you can get an idea what your normal daily burn is) and then eat less than that. I personally rather suck at the math part of calculating things, which is why I let MFP do it for me. It's not 100% accurate, but it's close enough for me that it's working. I have mine set to sedentary because I have a desk job, so a normal day is pretty low calorie-burn-wise. If I go on a walk or we take a Costco trip, that's extra calories burned. Not always a lot, but because I burned more that day, I can eat a little more to keep the same deficit.

Now, I do have an activity tracker that syncs with MFP, so it gives a pretty good estimate of my daily calories burned. You don't have to have one to make it work, and if you're not exercising now, I woudl suggest getting the hang of logging you food correctly and start cutting back on your calories. Get a routine with that first. Trying to do it all at once stresses me out, which is why it never worked for me in the past.

I'm really not good at explaning things, so I'm going to suggest you check out this topic:
http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10005798/nominate-general-diet-and-weight-loss-help-posts-for-announcement-status
It's full of really good informative links that has information that will help and do a better job of explaning than I can! Check out the other announcement topics (they're different in each forum), you'll find a lot of information there.

As for seeing other people's diaries, I'm not entierly sure. I don't look at other people's diaries, but I think it's a link on their profile? You'll only be able to see diaries that are set to public, though, and a lot of people have theirs private.

TimothyFish

At restaurants, if it is a popular chain, the food is probably already in the database. If not, you can make a good guess based on what is. A serving size of meat is about the size and thickness of the palm of your hand. For vegetables and grains, a serving size would fit in your cupped hand without overflowing. Aside from that, you can assume that a fast food meal is roughly 800 calories. A meal at a sit down restaurant is roughly 1000 calories.

snowflakesav

Amazing how many restaurants menus are in the database. Start there.

editorgrrl

dsrabinovich wrote: »

calorie counting and loggin?? What about when you go to a restaurant.. How do you log??

Hands down, the best advice I ever received was to read the Sexypants post. It's full of good "how-to" information: http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/1080242/a-guide-to-get-you-started-on-your-path-to-sexypants/p1

DemoraFairy

Restaurant menus may be in the database, but if you can try to find the nutritional info from the website of the restaurant itself, as that'll be up to date. Restaurants are always changing their recipes, so what's in the database may be wrong. It's a good guess if you can't find the nutritional info, but if you can, always go by that rather than what's in the database. I've seen countless times where what's in the database is different to what's on the website or the menu (if the restaurant is nice enough to put the calories on the menu).

Liftng4Lis

Why put off until tomorrow, what you can start right now?

dsrabinovich

Liftng4Lis wrote: »

Why put off until tomorrow, what you can start right now?

Gm just woke up... Starting right now.. That post was from yestarday