Hello. I’m new here and i have some trouble with the app like how can i put my calories if I don’

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Hello. I’m new here and i have some trouble with how i can put my calories cuz i cook my own food and sometimes the food i bring from outside doesn’t show the calories

Crochetluvr

There used to be an option to add Quick Calories, but I don't know if you can still do that or if maybe it's only available with Premium.

AnnPT77

You can still quick add calories, I think even in free MFP. Premium optionally lets you specify macros for the calorie quick add, which I believe free MFP doesn't.

There are other ways of estimating outside food that doesn't have a calorie/nutrition label, and they're probably close enough unless outside food is very frequent.

In the US, large chain restaurants must have calorie information on the web. I can't speak for elsewhere, and don't know where you are.

For too-small chains or independent restaurants here in the US, one option is to look up a similar dish from a chain, and use those to estimate.

If that's not possible, I look at what other users have put in MFP. If there's an entry for a similar dish that has a real serving size (inches, cm, measuring cups . . .) or weight, I might use those unless they somehow look unreasonable based on home-cooking experience.

Beyond that, I might use one of the dumb-ish "1 serving" options (with no info about actual measured size, volume or weight) and choose one with a middling high calorie count. (I figure those have better odds of being close than outliers that seem very high or very low.) Obviously, if the portion I have seems unusually big or small compared to experiences elsewhere, I might log what I ate as 0.8 servings or 1.25 servings - whatever seems reasonable.

In cases where it seems reasonably straightforward, I might mentally deconstruct the dish and add the estimated ingredients separately. That works better as I've developed better intuition about food weights from weighing and cooking at home.

Silly simple example: What's this breakfast skillet? Looks like a couple of cups of hash brown potatoes, half a cup of broccoli, quarter of a small onion, couple of sandwich-sized slices of Swiss cheese . . . etc. If it seems especially rich, I might log an extra tablespoon or so of oil/butter.

If actually eating at a restaurant or similar, and it can be done politely, I'll use my phone camera (flash turned off!) to snap a photo of my full plate making sure to include something of pretty standard size, like my fork, in the photo. That helps me estimate portions later.

There are a few dishes I might choose on repeat at favorite restaurants. I usually work harder to develop (and fine tune) estimates for those, and save them in MFP as a meal. For one-time things (like when traveling and eating unusual foods) I'm fine with rougher guesses.

This may not be accurate enough for someone who eats outside food lots and lots, I dunno.

I probably eat out 2-4 times in an average week, have logged this way for over 9 years, and my weight has been quite predictable from my total calorie estimates. YMMV.

Best wishes!