Consistency with entering food in MFP

olinka79

I was wondering how everyone is doing with being consistent esp when foods like salads have so many ingredients and you have to list them all. By the time I finish entering lettuce, tomato, etc I can't see myself doing this every day. And not just salads, it's much easier to scan a boxed food than to stand there and start weighing how much chicken I am eating and then thinking back how it was coated in bread crumbs and how many. I just don't find this easy. Please can someone offer some perspective or advice on how to be consistent with logging food in? I stop after a day and fall back to my old eating habits. Look forward to hearing your experiences and advice!

britzen

1 consistently enter my food, but I tend to eat very similar items so after a few days I end up checking boxes of stored foods. I found without a doubt I eat better being accountable and especially at night I ask myself if I'm really hungry or just thirsty?

Biomisty

I create a food in my diary. So if I make the same salad everytime, all I have to do is go to "my meal" and it pulls in the entire thing and changes are easy.

punkrockgoth

It also gets much easier with time. You find your own groove and find a way to fit it in to your habits.

emdeesea

Well... look at it this way. You either want this or you don't. Yes, it's a pain in the butt. But like other posters have said, once you enter these items, they're there for future reference. I tend to eat some of the same things every day, and now it takes less than a minute to log everything.

You'll get out of it whatever you put into it.

VeryKatie

Um... I usually just look up a restaurant salad and log it as a serving larger than what I ate. I've been losing weight, so looks like it's working... I'm so lazy. I really only do that for tossed salads though (and then enter in the dressing separately). But I suppose I may tend to under estimate my calorie burns too so it all balances out.

MissAmyx

olinka79 wrote: »

I was wondering how everyone is doing with being consistent esp when foods like salads have so many ingredients and you have to list them all. By the time I finish entering lettuce, tomato, etc I can't see myself doing this every day. And not just salads, it's much easier to scan a boxed food than to stand there and start weighing how much chicken I am eating and then thinking back how it was coated in bread crumbs and how many. I just don't find this easy. Please can someone offer some perspective or advice on how to be consistent with logging food in? I stop after a day and fall back to my old eating habits. Look forward to hearing your experiences and advice!

You either want to do this or you don't, the reality is if you want to really be in control of what youre taking in each day you are going to have to weigh....everything! Yes it can be tedious yes it can be boring but you've just got to stick with it, if you want this to work you have to accept that yeah the weighing everything part is not fun but it is worth it!

scooberooni

I had a hard time getting used to logging foods as well. I cook most everything from scratch. What I do is copy my recipe into MFP and scan the individual products, when possible, that the recipe is composed of. Most of my meals feed my family of four with no leftovers so I mark them as four servings (I use about a pound of meat per meal, but will change my recipe based on the size of the package each time). I figure that I can then eat one fourth of the entire dish. Yes, I eyeball it. With something like lasagna, I'll measure out in inches what looks like a serving and then do the math based on the number of those servings that the entire dish had. Once the recipe is saved and logged the first time, it is so much quicker the next time I make it. I don't weigh my foods. I know that this is not the most accurate method, but it is easy and has been working for me. I am down over 6% of my body fat and I haven't deprived myself. I still eat all of the same things as before, but I am learning what a proper serving is.

humbled2015

I really can't stress enough the importance of accurate logging. As others have suggested, use the tools to record meals, or create your own recipes. Over time you will build up a collection of foods you use and the logging gets a bit easier.

rmitchell239

I log mostly everything I eat. They are right that being very consistent is the most important thing. It does get faster as you are using it. I use a slighly different method. If im not quite sure of the calories of something I typically just look up "lasagna" find a fairly high.calorie one and log a single serving as 1.5. Then if I do cardio or whatever ill take my 20 min jog and log it as 15. Advantages to this:.easier (im lazy), not accurate, lose more weight. Disadvantages: not accurate, wont know macro intake salt tntake etc, you WILL get less food. I may have to get really more accurate eventually but I doubt ill weigh stuff. Id rather run five miles a day than do that. I wonder if that makes me more or less lazy.

indyrunning

Have you tried the My Recipes part of the app/program? You can enter exactly a meal that you eat each day and it becomes much, much easier, too.

missh1967

I'll take entering each ingredient in MFP any day over the old fashioned method I used to use to track my macros: pen and paper.

But once you enter a food item, it's always in your recent items. So if you use the app, all you have to do is start entering the item and the app auto-fills the search bar. Alternatively, the website keeps 4 pages of recent foods you have entered. It really isn't very time consuming once you have a routine.

bodyrep

I plan out all my food and snacks at the end of the day for the next day. Over time after scanning as many barcoads as possible of my favorite healthy foods It become easier and quicker to log my meals. To get proper fiber I always use psyllium husk. Very important to max your fiber out every day. Beans and more beans for me works well but still have to take the husk to reach my goalmof fiber. Also itsva mustbto have oa good food scale to proerly log your food. It has become a fun way of cooking for me butni love to cook. If I genthe late night munchies i will precook meals and by the time im threw it satisfies my craving to eat. Sounds funny but it works for me!

RodaRose

Definitely preplan the day before.
Use the Recipe tab to build your meals.