Three years later…

boomerising

Hi. I'm back, three years later. I worked with MFP fitfully in 2013-14 after a relocation ordeal (whence the "Boomerising" handle) took about 15 lb off me that I wouldn't have lost any other way. Thrills and chills. That weight loss got me out of the borderline-obese area of the BMI range, but I was still overweight. I should have grabbed the reins of momentum and cracked the whip, but, you know, life.

Toward the end of last year I let stress overwhelm me and pretty much lost all control of my eating habits while also rebelling against the fairly decent workout discipline I had established. I've been to the gym once since August. That, obviously, has to change too and will, difficult and annoying as it is in winter. All of the foregoing shows on the scale, 10 lb over my best weight three years ago.

Last week I spent a day looking at digital tools to help me accomplish the things I need to do in 2018, and I returned to MFP hoping the developers had applied a little grease to it. Unfortunately it's still a royal pain doing the food diary, but I think it's probably the best tool for me at this time. I particularly appreciate these mature and robust message boards where I'm sure I'll find some good ideas and support. I already have read with interest some of the comments about Weight Watchers and how it compares with using MFP. But that's for another post.

Obviously that's not me in the photo… but MFP is all about aspirations, isn't it.

Best of luck to everyone.

tinkerbellang83

boomerising wrote: »

Hi. I'm back, three years later. I worked with MFP fitfully in 2013-14 after a relocation ordeal (whence the "Boomerising" handle) took about 15 lb off me that I wouldn't have lost any other way. Thrills and chills. That weight loss got me out of the borderline-obese area of the BMI range, but I was still overweight. I should have grabbed the reins of momentum and cracked the whip, but, you know, life.

Toward the end of last year I let stress overwhelm me and pretty much lost all control of my eating habits while also rebelling against the fairly decent workout discipline I had established. I've been to the gym once since August. That, obviously, has to change too and will, difficult and annoying as it is in winter. All of the foregoing shows on the scale, 10 lb over my best weight three years ago.

Last week I spent a day looking at digital tools to help me accomplish the things I need to do in 2018, and I returned to MFP hoping the developers had applied a little grease to it. Unfortunately it's still a royal pain doing the food diary, but I think it's probably the best tool for me at this time. I particularly appreciate these mature and robust message boards where I'm sure I'll find some good ideas and support. I already have read with interest some of the comments about Weight Watchers and how it compares with using MFP. But that's for another post.

Obviously that's not me in the photo… but MFP is all about aspirations, isn't it.

Best of luck to everyone.

What about the food diary do you find a pain? I find it relatively quick and painless.

boomerising

I assume it will get easier as I use it more, and with more skill. For example I need to create a few more "meals" that can be added in one click. It also helped when I went back to the Web site and realized it was easier/faster to consult the database that way than via the iOS app. I do love the app's ability to read bar codes, but that helps me primarily with tracking snacks, which I need to eat less of. When I do eat a proper meal once or twice a day, it is always either homemade from scratch or breakfast/brunch at a diner. My own from-scratch meals are almost always one-dish combinations—soups, salads, yogurt-nut-cereal combos. Since I'm a single gal, these meals consist of odd small quantities of each ingredient that I don't normally measure. So that gets laborious. I do already have a "meal" set up in MFP that I called "large green salad" which is probably good enough to cover any variations of that, with meats and/or beans entered as a separate food when I add those.

I do greatly appreciate how MFP has already smacked some sense into me by refreshing my grasp of portion size, nutrient ratios and the almighty calorie counts. But there is a tendency to feel like it's controlling what I eat a little too much because it's easier to log foods with brand names and bar codes. I remember that bugging me on the first round three years ago. Hopefully I'll balance all that out this time.

[edit] More broadly viewed, the other problems with the food diary are (1) adding to my life's already uncomfortable burden of tedious detail work and clerical chores and (2) making me spend more time THINKING about food, which, given my particular underlying issues with eating wrong or too much, is a two-edged sword Any type of food logging will do those things, though. At least MFP helps me do a better and more functional job of it.

tinkerbellang83

Rather than using Meal to save things you regularly put together, try using the Recipe function instead, it's a lot quicker to amend and log. I have these now even for the simplest things that I eat regularly like my workday breakfast cereal & milk, so it's just one quick entry from my recent foods.

The app will get easier once you're into the swing of logging, because your most used items will be found in the recent food list, which I find a lot easier than the search function on the website.

There is also the ability to copy meals to/from dates, so if you're eating the same thing a couple of times in a week, you can just copy the whole thing in a couple of taps.

Be wary of barcode scanning, it can still lead you to erroneous user entries, so it's wise to double check your labels the first time you're logging them.

I also find it helpful to pre-log my days either first thing in the morning on my way into work or the night before, then I just need to tweak size/weights if anything changes and I think of this as just another thing I do in the course of my day like brushing my teeth.

boomerising

Thanks! Sorry I missed the notification for your reply until now.

I do have a few recipes stashed from my first crack at this three years ago. More recipes than meals actually. I can’t see any difference between those two options in the iOS app but I do need to try to implement them more so will go to Recipes first. “Quicker” is, obviously, better!

One behavior of the app that I like is that search defaults to my own “recent” entries, which for me is faster than actually scanning the list. Quite a long list by now. I am impressed that MFP saved all my junk for three years.

Speaking of junk I’m all too aware of how much of it there is in the database, and I’m the OCD type so I always compare the barcode readings with what the label says. Yes, sometimes they don’t quite match.

Pre-logging is a discipline I don’t think I could ever adopt. Hat tip to you on that one.

tinkerbellang83

boomerising wrote: »

Pre-logging is a discipline I don’t think I could ever adopt. Hat tip to you on that one.

In fairness I plan a week ahead what I am eating for shopping list and meal prep so it's fairly straight forward for me.

boomerising

And another hat tip