When To Enter Food

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1978kell
1978kell Posts: 3 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
Sorry if this has already been asked but couldn't find anything similar.

Now this might sound daft but when does your day start and end on My Fitness Pal? By that I mean, if you get up at 10am Monday then any food you enter is for Monday. But if you don't go to bed until 2am Tuesday and enter something on My Fitness Pal at 12.30am then it's entered for Tuesday. So is it better to enter all food under the day you got up if you eat past midnight, or keep it as the 24 hour clock and enter it on the next day? Hope that makes sense and please no comments about how it's bad to eat late, I work shifts on my job, although on furlough at the moment, and often work until 3am so my eating pattern fits around that.

Replies

  • Avidkeo
    Avidkeo Posts: 3,190 Member
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    I change midnight simply to keep things simple. So if I am called into work at 1am and have a snack while there, I track for that date.

    But honestly it doesn't matter, as long as you track it.
  • Lillymoo01
    Lillymoo01 Posts: 2,865 Member
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    Do whatever works for you. I personally have my day from when I wake in the morning to when I go to sleep at night. If that schedule were 10 am to 2 am then I would have that as my day. KISS (keep it simple stupid) is my motto really.
  • TonyB0588
    TonyB0588 Posts: 9,520 Member
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    I don't work shift, so don't have that problem. But on the rare occasion I have a snack after midnight I'd enter it based on amount of calories remaining from the previous day. If its already high, the snack goes as part of the new day.
  • bmeadows380
    bmeadows380 Posts: 2,981 Member
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    You can bank calories from one day to the next; its technically the weekly deficit that matters. So if you had something that was say 100 calories that was technically for Monday but you ate it at 12:30 AM on Tuesday, if you had 100 calories left over on Monday and go over 100 calories on Tuesday because of that item than it all comes out right in the wash.

    However, I can see how that for me would end up being very confusing, so I'd probably count it as Monday's food and consider the reset for when I get up, i.e. I would count day 1 as whatever my waking hours were, regardless of the clock's reading, and just put my entries in based upon that.
  • lgfrie
    lgfrie Posts: 1,449 Member
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    It doesn't matter, as long as the food gets logged.

    Me personally, I use a strict midnight rule. At 12:00 am, it's "the next day" for the diary. I've found this has a beneficial impact on my urge to binge late at night. Knowing it's gonna screw up my whole next day helps keep things in check; it can be the difference between eating an entire bag of cookies and having just one Triscuit to shut my stomach up LOL
  • Strudders67
    Strudders67 Posts: 984 Member
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    Obviously MFP rolls at midnight but, personally, I log a day as being from the time I get up to the time I go to bed. However, as everyone else has also said, it doesn't matter as long as you log everything.

    Like many people, I look at the weekly average (on the app, it's not a feature on the website) and just make sure I'm on target week-to-week. That smooths out blips such as you're describing (which presumably doesn't happen every day) or a higher-than-planned calorie day.

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