New member in the Philippines

Tito_Tim

Hi, I was a long time user of SparkPeople (pre-smartphone days), but they recently switched to SparkAmerica, and dumped support for all foreign users. So... I will switch to MFP and see how it goes. I think this is a much bigger platform, so hopefully I find a niche here.

I started out 115 kilos, got down to 93, and maintained fairly well for a few years. Then covid lockdowns kind of messed it up. At the beginning of the lockdown I was 100 kilo - now 118. Ouch! Goal is 90 kilos, but that will be slow going. When I first lost my weight my wife complained that I lost too much. Not good for my motivation ha ha. Now she is pushing me to lose weight, and I no longer really care. We shall see how it goes...

I am a retired American living in the Philippines. I just want to lose some weight, no desire to get buffed up.

Jthanmyfitnesspal

Welcome! I think one challenging part of this platform is including non-western cuisines in the database. If you eat a lot of such meals, you will have to do some work to input your own foods and recipes. I've done a bit of it myself, and I can say that it makes you analyze what you are eating in detail, which is, in general, very helpful.

For example, if you or your partner make a certain dish frequently, you would enter every ingredient in the recipe into MFP (under "recipes") and determine how much of it you eat for a meal. When you do that, you'll learn how it best fits into your overall diet.

One big "a-hah" moment for me many years ago was to find out the caloric content of granola. Let's just say that there's a reason the serving size is so small!

Best of luck!

Tito_Tim

Thanks for the welcome. Yeah, the food diary was a big reason I never came over here before. I had so much time invested in setting up my recipes and meals on Spark, I dreaded doing it again.