Help with the food/meal tracker, please?!

susabellle

Hi Im a newbie too and I started dieting on Thursday; my husband hopped on the bandwagon today. So, because my hubby was so willing and Im so excited that we can support each other and eat about the same things, I wanted to use the meal tracker/macro tracker thing. Is that what you call it? Anyway, as I was entering the foods we ate today into the "tracker" I saw that there were several of the same foods, with the same weight with different and obviously inaccurate calorie/carb/fat amounts listed. Am I doing/using this incorrectly? Do I have to search every single food we put in our mouths and then try to find the one that is actually closest to accurate info? If so, it seems like way too much work, time consuming and way too inaccurate to make using it worth while. I mean if you are living by your macros, it should be accurate, no? Im really hoping Im just not using it right, like maybe Im not looking up the foods the correct way. For instance, tonight I looked up 5 ozs of baked chicken breast. First I cant find 5oz, and I couldnt find a way to alter the amount to 5oz. Then, there are no less than 15 entries of 3oz of baked chicken and the macros on each of them are different. PLEASE HELP ME. lmao

Megan_smartiepants1970

Hi there.....I enter USDA then enter what food I am looking for followed by grams or oz. Also look for entries that have been verified by other users (and more than 1 user) a lot of entries are grams, oz, Tbsp etc. and you are able to change the 1 oz manually to 3 5 etc . I hope that helps

RAinWA

A couple of things - check out this thread:

https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10621050/how-to-use-the-usda-food-database-mfp-food-database-for-accurate-logging/p1

And once you have a food entered, it stays in your recent or frequent foods so it's easy to find again. Worth it to get an accurate entry to begin with. I actually create a lot of my own foods and save them in "my foods" and don't share them in the database where they can be altered. That way I know the entry is accurate.

susabellle

@Megan_smartiepants1970 @RAinWA I was aware that once the correct name of the food,weight, calories and other stuff is entered into my daily meal list, it will be available in the future; But thanks for that. Although I have found that a specific food can only be repeated for the same meal and some things that have been entered previously dont pop up in the list for some reason. i.e. if I had chicken for dinner the day before and entered the info for dinner, and I had chicken again for lunch the next day - it wont pop up again to just "x" it. Im still having a horrible time with finding an accurate macro amount to enter into my daily meals. I have tried doing the USDA thing and then looked it up myself on USDA and even many of those are wrong and/or dont include all of the nutritional info. Seriously, I tried looking up 4 oz fried pork steak in the fitness pal thing and a list of about 30 different ones popped up, all with different info listed (by a lot!); so I took out the 4 oz part and searched again and about 40 more popped up but the same thing happened; so then, I thought I would just google it but every single macro website had a different answer, as well. I ALWAYS weigh or measure my food and write it down. But it can take me HOURS to log in my meals because of this problem. And then, Im thinking to myself: I am trying to follow the plan but what if the numbers I finally chose from the list or USDA were wrong? Did I short myself in food? Did I think I was within my macros, but really I was not? Even a thing like a half of an avocado brought up @50 different (very different) calories and other nutrients. And the ones that were kinda close didnt include any info except for the calories. AND again, even when Googling it - every single website gives a different answer. Some of the foods have the info right on the package and there is no entry that matches the box info, but there are all kinds of incorrect entries - sometimes they are all wrong. It's almost got me to the point of giving up because 4 hours to log both me and my hubs food is too long. When you have to search the list for something that looks close to what you think the macros are (guessing of course), double check it to find the majority opinion on the internet and USDA, (means reading several websites stuff AND googling/searching) takes WAY too much time and effort and you dont even know if the info is correct. And then, once you throw a dart at one of the choices and pick one, you find that all the other stuff except calories are wrong or completely missing - (30 minutes later for one ingredient in your dinner) it just doesnt seem to be worth it. Now, Im not talking about rare or weird things. Im talking about chicken breast; ribeye steak; avocado, sugar free jello and pudding; Honestly I havent found an accurate listing yet (or assuming accurate because it sounds about right for the food item or there is more than one person confirming it). And even if people put their names or a code next to the entry they use all the time - anyone can change it at anytime or maybe they chose to enter the info from a website that doesnt have the accurate nutritional info . Today I went over my calories by 500 and I am sure that it is incorrect from using the wrong calorie choice in the list. Im just so frustrated with it. I mean, a chicken breast is a chicken breast - right? Why do I find that 4 oz of chicken breast has somewhere between 75 and 400 calories? Fitness Pal should clean up those basic foods so that everyone is getting the same and accurate info. AND so that it doesnt take so long. Do you double check the nutritional info on every food off website to confirm it is accurate and that nobody changed your entry info?

ceiswyn

Stop trying to look up the exact weight of the food. You set that in the portion size.

Also, unless it's a specific product that comes out of a packet, it's a bad idea to look up something like 'fried chicken breast' because the number of calories varies wildly depending on how much oil you use and how big the chicken breast is. Similarly 'half an avocado' - how big an avocado? Everything needs to go on the kitchen scale, at least when you're starting out.

As to how I do it...

Say I've got 180g of chicken breast that I'm gonna fry.

I look up 'chicken breast raw' and find an entry that looks reliable (isn't crazy compared to other entries, portion size in grams, maybe has the characteristic USDA phrasing or a green checkmark).
Say that entry is 'Chicken breast boneless and skinless, 100g'. I have 200g of chicken breast, so I enter 1.8 portions. There we are, 180g of chicken breast logged.
I'm going to fry it in 15ml (1 tbsp) of olive oil, so I go through the same process for the oil.
Voila, fried chicken breast logged. Now I can go ahead and fry it and get it in my face.

Now that's a bit of a pain, but once I've done it that chicken breast entry and that oil entry are the first things to pop up next time I use the app so it takes me no time to log the same meal next time.

ceiswyn

...oh, also, it's worth noting that MFP's database is sourced from users around the world. So some of the 'wrong' nutritional information will be because of differing standards in different countries. For example, in the EU the 'carbohydrates' number is actually net carbs.