Can someone help me with logging food, confused!

missyme10

I'd like to log my food intake but every time I take a look I get confused.

I think the problem lies in that most of my food in home cooked so not in the lists.

I thought ok I'll add my own and that's where I don't get it.

I know how many calories in a portion that I'm eating as I work it out on the whole batch of food and divide by portions.
But I don't know the fat, protein, carbs etc.

So I don't seem to be able to add my own foods, is there an easier way to do this?
Or is my only options to work out how the food in broken down, or just put X amount of calories for that meal - the latter I don't feel is worth logging as nearly every meal would end up being logged like this.

What do I do?
By the way, I do log in a diary at home, so have a record but if I ever need help or advise, my diary isn't viewable hence I'd like to log on here.

Thanks

Sweetchaos66

When I cook @ home I use the recipe builder and then I have to approximate the serving size. I am sure its not exact but its close. Good luck!

concordancia

Use the recipe builder under the food tab. You put in the individual ingredients and it does all the math.

elyelyse

For homemade food, you will either log each ingredient separately for each meal, or if it's a recipe you make often, use the recipe builder, which lets you enter the ingredients and divide it into a certain number of portions. Yes, either way, you have to find and enter each ingredient. It may seem tedious, but it gets faster once you get used to doing it, and your often used foods will be easier to find on the "frequent" foods tab.

martyqueen52

Easiest way is to weigh and divide by portions.

Example:

- I made a protein cheesecake last night.
- I totaled all ingredient calories & how many grams I used in total for each ingredient.
- I divided the cake into 8 pieces on weight making it an even 200g per slice based off of 1,600G worth of ingredients
- So take your total calories for all ingredients and diving by 8. And your done

Any leftover I just stored in a separate container

Toadlily

hi -
i think it's under the food tab - but you can create your own recipes, and the program will automatically calculate the protein/carbs/fat in your food -
for example - i made a new recipe called Tomato Soup - i entered that it would serve 5, then added the ingredients from the database - a can of diced tomatoes and raw onions, you can even add the water - search - municipal water -

this food will now appear under the recipes section of my food tab and i can see how many cals, protein, carbs, etc are in each serving.

i know this is a very sketchy description, but i hope it helps.
the idea is basically what you already do, it sounds like - but does the additional calculations using the foods in the database that are already measured for protein, carb, etc.

Zaftique

One thing I do wish is that all the "official" food automatically went to the top, so when I look for "garlic" I'm not scrolling after tons of "olive garden: garlic chicken" and "chilis: tomato surprise in garlic sauce" whatevers in order to get to the "Garlic, raw" that I'm actually looking for.

missyme10

Thanks all, I never knew you could build your own recipes so will go have another look.

I take it after a few weeks of logging, you'd find that 90% of what you eat is in your own list and it's only new stuff that you have to look up and figure out?

Also, how do I know if my diary is open and visible to others? Can others see it?

Brianna716

Home -> settings -> diary settings. It's private by default, I can't see it now.

fortally

I've started putting more & more in the recipe builder. Even 2-ingredient things (like hamburger & seasoning packet). Like others said - it does the work for you.

Recipe Builder is awesome. It helps me control specific nutrients that I'm watching for health reasons. For example - the other day I entered a cookie recipe. I'm watching my sodium intake, and the recipe called for baking soda. Baking powder is much lower in sodium - simple switch. Same with other ingredients. Recipe calls for 2 eggs? Enter it and see how much fat that is in each portion. Change it to an egg & 2 egg whites to lower the fat. Being able to see the changes in nutrients really helps me make simple swaps for healthier options.

Recipe Builder also really helps me determine reasonable portion sizes. For example - in the past I would make a big pan of lasagna, cut it into servings, and then try to figure out how many calories were in a serving. Now I enter the entire recipe in the builder and then change the # of servings until I get the # of calories I want to eat in each portion. MUCH easier to go about it from that perspective. Sometimes I'll go to the trouble to actually weight each portion to make sure they are the same, but sometimes I just eyeball it and reason that over the coarse of a month it evens out calorie wise.

oneloopygirl

Use the recipe builder. It works very well. I do a lot of home-cooked foods, too. That's how I make this work for me.

missyme10

Thanks for the help everyone, I've just put in my first recipe - easy when you know how!

And I now know how to change my settings so my food diary can be seen.

A couple of weeks of logging my own recipe's and it will be really easy x

CynthiaT60

- I made a protein cheesecake last night.

Protein cheesecake?? <antenna up> recipe?

Any leftover I just stored in a separate container

Leftovers? :huh: