Hello....and can someone help me with a novice question? thanks!

Hoya62

I am successfully logging the foods I eat under the relevant heading (breakfast, lunch, dinner, snack) by clicking on "ADD FOOD" on the Diary tab. However, I want to pre-load my favorite foods now, so that i just have to click on them as i'm racing through the day. For the life of me, i cannot figure this out! Everytime i think i am adding a food to the database, it appears as though i have consumed it today. Please don't say to click on "Foods" in the "Meals, Recipes & Foods" tab because that tab is empty. THANKYOU! (Could it be that i have not splurged for the Premium membership?)

tamisteffens

I'm not sure you can pre-load, but as you go, the foods you've logged will show up in the "recent" tab when you click "Add Food". That doesn't help at first but after a short bit, it saves you a lot of time. Does that help?

There's also this I found in the help pages:

How do I add an item to "My Foods?"
1 year ago Updated
The "My Foods" list displays foods that you have added to the food database. If locally produced, homemade, or unusual foods are not already in our database, you can add them yourself to make MyFitnessPal's database more complete.

MyFitnessPal will automatically add your "Frequent" or "Recent" food items to those lists in your diary, for easy reference. However, if you would like to to build your own custom list, we suggest using the "My Meals" feature.

For spacing purposes, those using MyFitnessPal in languages other than English may find the contents of the Recent, Frequent, and My Foods tabs combined in a single tab labeled "Recent" or "Food"

nossmf

Do you do your logging via a desktop/laptop internet browser, or using a phone app?

If using a browser window, upon clicking "add food" you should be taken to a screen showing several tabs, labelled "Recent", "Frequent", "My Foods", "Meals", and "Recipes."

"Recent" shows foods you've included recently on your log (last few weeks).
"Frequent" shows those foods you've added most commonly since you first opened an MFP account.
"My Foods" is unique foods you've personally added to the database. (I've never used this feature in over a decade here on MFP.)
"Meals" shows a single header for a meal you've created in the past. For example, you enjoy a meal of baked chicken, potatoes, green beans and a roll. The next time you have that same meal, you can add each item individually. Or you can click "quick tools" in your main diary, "remember meal" and give that meal a name, say "baked chicken". This list of foods now appears in your "meals" category. Now the next time you eat it, click on "add food", click on "meals" and "baked chicken" and now every item in that menu gets added to your diary. You can change the amount as normal from your diary page.
"Recipes" does the same for recipes you custom create in the same manner as above. What's the difference? Not much, really. Use "meals" for overall meals, like the baked chicken example above. Use "recipes" if you want to be hyper-exact on a specific entry, say tracking every single ingredient which goes into making a pot of chili. I use the "meals" extensively; I know a couple others who use "recipes."

If using an app, then you still have the same tab options above, but there's a bonus feature: when you click on the "entry line" at the top and begin typing in, the app will try to anticipate what you're typing and give you options that all start with "chi" for example.

nossmf

I will also add, being "premium" has nothing to do with my post above. I've never paid for premium membership, and can navigate and record everything I need just fine.

nossmf

One final note: you can absolutely "pre-load" meals on future days to give you an idea of how many calories you have left for the rest of the day, if you're going to be light/heavy on protein or sodium, etc. I do this often, after I go grocery shopping for the week and know what my dinners are going to be, to help plan what I should pack for work lunches.