Home cooking

GordonCamous
GordonCamous Posts: 1 Member
in Introduce Yourself
I am enjoying the MyFitnessPal app
It's making it easy to be accountable to myself for foods consumed.
A source of frustration is there is way, way, way too much emphasis given to store bought pre packaged foods and not enough flexibility for home prepared food. I almost never buy prepare foods
A good example is tonight I sauteed an entire red cabbage (it was getting old) with sweet sausage and carroway seeds. That was supper for a family of 4. Now try and log that. .
And if you have any hair left after the convulated experience of logging such a home made meal I have more for you to experience.

Forget about logging exercise if you do resistance training. I'd spend more time calculating calories burned than the total time I spent working out.

If these two gripes were addressed then I would give MyFitnessPal high marks
As it currently is, it is mediocre.

Replies

  • earlybirdlady
    earlybirdlady Posts: 121 Member
    I hear you! I also cook at home a lot and get tired of creating recipes. I usually just find something that sounds similar and/or estimated to be around the same amount of calories and just log that bc I can’t be bothered! But I think it’s great that we do home cooked meals and it benefits us even if we’re not putting it in exactly.

    As for exercise, I use the “strength training” one under the cardio category. Again, probably not exact with calories but maybe in the ballpark? Hope that helps!
  • mtaratoot
    mtaratoot Posts: 14,221 Member
    @GordonCamous

    Welcome! I am glad you are enjoying the tools here. They can help a lot! I use the iOS app and also the website.

    I'll answer your first gripe first; weight training. First of all, strength training burns fewer calories than many people realize. That's OK; it's still really REALLY good for you! You burn more calories doing cardio than weight/strength training, and even cardio only adds a small amount to your daily calorie budget. Here's what you need to know: When you do strength training, instead of going to strength training and trying to log each exercise (yes, it's a pain in the rear - I have done it and probably will again), go to CARDIO to log it. Yeah, I know. There you will find an entry for "Strength training (weight lifting, weight training)." Pick that one and log how many minutes you did. Boom! Be aware, though, this may overestimate the calorie burn. I logged just under an hour yesterday, and it gave me credit for almost 200 calories. I "earned" closer to 400 calories just from my daily steps and such.

    Second, er, uh... first; I love to cook. I cook a LOT. There's lots of ways to log your home cooked meals. Perhaps for your situation where you're cooking for more than yourself is to create a recipe or meal. Go to the recipe tab and enter all the ingredients that go into your meal. In this case the cabbage and sausage. Make sure all the entries it picks are correct. Yes, that can take a little time, but it's worth it. I wouldn't worry too much about the caraway seeds, but I would make sure to log the oil you use to saute and any other ingredients. Next, when the meal is ready, weigh how much there is. When you save the recipe, the number of "servings" is either the number of grams or the number of "100 grams." Then when you serve yourself, weigh out how much you serve, and that's how many servings. Pro tip: weigh each of your pots when they are empty and write the tare weight on them so it's easy to subtract from the full weight.

    If you don't have a digital food scale, now is the time to invest twenty bucks.

    Does MFP get higher marks now? Good! I thought so.

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