Horrible at logging food

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  • AustinRuadhain
    AustinRuadhain Posts: 2,573 Member
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    JKolb17 wrote: »
    Thank you all for the great input. I will definitely take all of your advice and run with it. I usually create my weekly menu and cook up a bunch of food on Sundays and put it in my fridge. I will start weighing it out before I put it away and that in turn should help my logging. I also won't be so hard on myself for being sloppy at times. Reading through some of the posts on here can be a bit intimidating but I need to keep in mind doing a little is better than doing nothing and I'm not going to perfect.

    Fabulous! Feeling like I need to be perfect is always a block to any progress at all. None of us can manage it.
  • sketch_0518
    sketch_0518 Posts: 7 Member
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    I'm HORRIBLE at this, but have gotten much better as of late. I now do it as a way to keep myself honest and make sure I'm hitting all my macros properly. I know I'm doing the work in the gym, so if I log my food and am honest with myself, I know what follows will be progress or I can adjust as necessary. Still not easy, but the tips & tricks here are all helpful. I've also gotten SUPER regular about meals to keep it simple.

    Good luck!
  • Danp
    Danp Posts: 1,561 Member
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    The effort it takes to start logging is a little bit front loaded. As in at first it's a little bit time consuming but after a short while it's super quick.

    Yes there are millions of entries in the database and yes many of them are terrible and yes finding the right entry is a pain. The first time you put together a meal with, say 5 ingredients you'll spend 1 minute weighing in total and a good 5 minutes for each food item searching in the database and finding an entry. That's almost half an hour just to log one meal. But, chances are for the most part you only really eat a few dozen different things and very quickly, after the first week or so, all those foods you've located will be in your recent list. That same meal that took 30 mins to log last time now takes maybe 2 minutes or less and if you make it into a recipe or saved meal then logging will take all of 15 seconds.

    As for the forgetting to log you can set reminders in the app until logging becomes habit. I have one that reminds me to record my weight each Sunday but you can set them to send you a reminder if you haven't logged a particular meal by a certain time. So if you haven't logged breakfast by 10am then you get a reminder. Or you can set one to send if you've not logged anything for 1 day, or 3 or 7.
  • yuko0407
    yuko0407 Posts: 67 Member
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    JeromeBarry1 wrote: »
    One thing that seems help me is that I keep some paper nearby in the kitchen for writing my notes of the various weights of ingredients I use whenever some recipe is taking several ingredients. I do the cooking, then some time later I take the paper to the computer and do the logging.

    The same here. Very helpful when logging a new recipe.
  • lms_938
    lms_938 Posts: 11 Member
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    There are lots of good ideas here so I'll just add my support for logging food. It's a nuisance but, when I stopped doing it, my weight started to go up again. When I started logging again, my weight started to go down again. Simple! Good luck, don't give up! :-)
  • ktekc
    ktekc Posts: 879 Member
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    i have a little basket with pens, post-its and a calculator on the sideboard by my scale. i tend to log what i'm having beforehand if its on my list and tweak the amounts after. it seems to work well for me.
  • shaun_mossy
    shaun_mossy Posts: 13 Member
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    I seem to have a problem logging Jaffa Cakes...
  • yirara
    yirara Posts: 9,389 Member
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    First time it takes a bit longer. But now if I cook from scratch weighing and logging takes about 1 minute because I like certain foods and reuse them frequently. Cherry tomatoes, chicken breast, garlic, onion, etc.. I always get the things I used before at the top of my list and don't need to check anymore whether they are good or not. And believe me, I do use quite a few ingredients when I cook.

    When I cook for two or three days I log all ingredients, save as a meal and log 1/3 of that. Or I find I don't like it to recook, leave the 2-3 portions in my diary and then divide by however many portions I have and just copy from date for the coming days. So logging for one day might take a short moment longer but will take no time at all on the next.
  • Dreamwa1ker
    Dreamwa1ker Posts: 196 Member
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    I pre-log soooo much. I also cook or prep a lot of stuff on the weekend to eat for the week so I log a lot of that ahead on the weekend when I make it (e.g. all my lunches for the week). When I get to the day of I may have to slightly tweak an amount or something, but that doesn't take long. If you eat the same thing multiple times in a week, you can use "copy meal" to copy to another meal that week really quickly, and then just adjust the weight of some items etc. If it's something you cook a lot, use the recipe feature. You can also save "meals" that you frequently have.

    Also, if you have an Android phone, you can add the Myfitnesspal Widget. You can click the barcode scanner icon and jump straight to scanning mode to barcode scan a food really quickly. Click on the + and it will take you to search for foods, or click on the calories remaining and it will take you to your diary for the day. It is pretty much the only way I use the app now because it saves some clicks. https://myfitnesspal.desk.com/customer/en/portal/articles/1404270-how-do-i-install-android-myfitnesspal-widget-

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