Best tips for consistently reporting food/fitness

clark_lunt

I just signed up and want to start a more accountable fitness journey. Who's found certain things that help keep them updating their meals & workouts on this app?

mtaratoot

Welcome @clark_lunt

I found the most important thing is to keep showing up. Just stick to it. Every day. I've been doing it for years, and it does work.

A good place to start is some of the "Most Helpful Posts" like:

• Most Helpful Posts - Getting Started (Must Reads)
• Most Helpful Posts - Health and Weight Loss (Must Reads)
  
• Most Helpful Posts - Success Stories (Must Reads)
  

yirara

The thing is consistency. Consistency similar to getting up each morning, brushing your teeth, etc. This kind of consistency. You don't need to convince yourself to do this, but you just do (well ok, the judge is out on getting up). I guess one way of getting there is by making things not too hard, not running a too big deficit, eating food you enjoy (though experimenting with new food is totally encouraged)

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Lietchi

You can set reminders in MFP to help you start the habit of logging.

csplatt

i pre log most of the food for the day in the morning. make most of your decisions ahead of time.

AnnPT77

It takes a while to kick in, but the huge quality of life improvement from being at a healthy weight and getting good overall nutrition is now the main thing keeping me logging, but I've been doing this since 2015. (That was just under a year to lose from class 1 obese to a healthy weight, the years since to stay there.)

Before that, it was watching friends my age (or near) start heading down the slippery slope toward multiple health conditions, multiple medications for those conditions, reduced mobility, etc. . . . and seeing some of the early signs in myself. For me, a key trigger was not wanting to take a statin: I figured I'd already given up enough cognitive bandwidth to chemotherapy; I didn't need the statin brain fog on top of that. Early in weight loss, they also took out my gallbladder, not because of stones or sludge, but because of a rarer condition called adenomyomatosis. When they took it out, it was an ugly, thickened cholesterolized thing with actual holes in it. That was motivating, too.

Honestly, a lot of that possibly could've been avoided in the first place if I hadn't been fat for so long: The cancer was one that's more probable when overweight, the high cholesterol (leading to the statin recommendation) ditto, and of course the ugly gallbladder. If you're younger than I, you might be able to dodge future health consequences by reaching and staying at a healthy weight now. (I was 59-60 when I finally lost weight. I'd been athletically active starting in my late 40s/early 50s after cancer treatment.)

Ultimately, though, the question comes down to your personal level of commitment. If you decide to log, and mean it, you'll do it.

Best wishes for success: It's worth the effort!

cmriverside

You could take pictures of your food when you eat away from home...I'm not sure what your issue is regarding "consistency."

I just log as I go. It takes me about one minute to log a meal. As I'm preparing it, I'm using a digital food scale and if I think I can't remember the numbers, I'll write them down while I'm preparing it. I have a small notepad on the kitchen counter for this purpose.

ridiculous59

I'll admit, I'm an early bird so I'm at my peak at about 6 a.m. (but then, sadly, it's pretty much all downhill from there). As I'm drinking my morning coffee I log my meals for the day. I eat basically the same breakfast every day (berries and yoghurt) and lunch is always some kind of salad or soup and some protein. I then figure out what's for dinner and any snacks I might fancy and log that. I'm open to making changes during the day, but the basics for the day have been logged in about five minutes.

Pre-planning is your friend. Making decisions on the fly is more difficult. For example, I made the decision that I would no longer grab food from the coffee area at work. I found that was easier than looking at the box of donuts and muffins, trying to decide which was the healthier option, or which one would fit best in my calories for the day. I told myself that I was no longer a person who ate the treats offered at work. Most of the time it worked 🙃

zebasschick

What kept me logging was my blood sugar - when I started with MFP, my blood sugar was 300, which is dangerously high, but I didn't want to take medication. I lost weight gradually, and my blood sugar is now normal. So all this logging and learning new habits really paid off.

zebasschick

always keep a food scale on the counter. the more accessible it is, the faster and easier it is to log your food. cmriverside's suggestion to keep a pad on the counter is a good one, too.