New to My Fitness Pal and a slight technophobe

Planemaid

Hi all,

Slowly trying to work out all of the features that this website offers - what does everyone utilise that they're finding most beneficial please? I'm determined to keep on track for once!

I've tried to sync up my Garmin vivosmart hr + and both are connected but it doesn't give me the option for it to log my steps. If I go onto steps and press Garmin it's saying "disconnect" which means it is connected - just won't log my steps! It's driving me crazy!

Also I'm looking for support on Garmin - anyone up for step challenges ?!

Thanks in advance guys, hope you have a fab day

Lounmoun

I use the app to log my food. The bar code scanner is handy for packaged stuff. I enter homemade foods using the recipe builder.
A food scale and choosing the correct database entries are helpful things.
You can look up foods with the usda food database to see if an entry here is right.
https://ndb.nal.usda.gov/ndb/search/list
I find it helpful to prelog food.

I use the web site for the forums. I recommend reading all the stickied posts in the getting started and general health and fitness forums. Use the search feature. A lot of questions you may have, have already been asked and answered. Search for your garmin device for example.
If you post a question include relevant information up front to get the most helpful response. If you are asking if your calorie goal is right or why you didn't lose then people are going to ask for your age, gender, height, current weight, activity level without exercise, chosen rate of loss, if you use a food scale. They will probably ask to see your food diary so go to setting and make it public. If you are asking for meal ideas include in the first post that you are a vegetarian with medical conditions requiring you to avoid certain foods.

When I was starting out it was helpful to add some friends with similar goals. Seeing them log exercise or looking at their diaries was inspiring for me.

If you want to do a challenge look in the challenge forum.

I don't have a fitness tracker to sync. I have always just logged exercise manually.

Planemaid

Lounmoun wrote: »

I use the app to log my food. The bar code scanner is handy for packaged stuff. I enter homemade foods using the recipe builder.
A food scale and choosing the correct database entries are helpful things.
You can look up foods with the usda food database to see if an entry here is right.
https://ndb.nal.usda.gov/ndb/search/list
I find it helpful to prelog food.

I use the web site for the forums. I recommend reading all the stickied posts in the getting started and general health and fitness forums. Use the search feature. A lot of questions you may have, have already been asked and answered. Search for your garmin device for example.
If you post a question include relevant information up front to get the most helpful response. If you are asking if your calorie goal is right or why you didn't lose then people are going to ask for your age, gender, height, current weight, activity level without exercise, chosen rate of loss, if you use a food scale. They will probably ask to see your food diary so go to setting and make it public. If you are asking for meal ideas include in the first post that you are a vegetarian with medical conditions requiring you to avoid certain foods.

When I was starting out it was helpful to add some friends with similar goals. Seeing them log exercise or looking at their diaries was inspiring for me.

If you want to do a challenge look in the challenge forum.

I don't have a fitness tracker to sync. I have always just logged exercise manually.

Thanks for your reply, it's really helpful and I appreciate it