logging whole foods takes FOREVER.

marywilsoncline

Sometimes I do. I eat a lot of fresh fruit everyday and I don't eat out much so I make just about everything I eat at home. Logging this sometimes feels like a chore to me too:ohwell:

danimal5867

Make sure that you take advantage of the recipe option. My wife and I have favorite dishes that she prepares regularly. Once I've created the recipe, adding it to my diary is quick and simple.

vtmoon

Once you start using the same ones over, they appear in your "recent" foods making it even easier. I eat hardly any packaged foods and logging daily takes me no longer than a minute or two.

This!

Maybe at first they take a while to enter but after a month they are already in there and just have to find them. Of Course if you are some sort of super exotic Chef who travels the world and cook different types of foods every week then that is a different story.

nkyjennifer

The only issue I have is with the recipe feature. If I want to change the amount of an ingredient, I have to look up the item all over again. It would be nice to edit the amounts within the recipe builder.

Agreed. I prefer the "My Meals" section for that reason.

I've calculated and entered a lot of my own recipe as food, using my username as the "brand", too. Not everyone's homemade lasagna has the same things in it.

bushidowoman

Like everything else, it takes a bit of time when you first start and are learning how it all works. Then you get it all set up, find your groove, and it becomes second nature. Stick with it.
Are you just on the computer or are you using an app on your phone? I find it much quicker to add things from my iphone. Just a few clicks, and I'm done.

momof3kiddos34

I actually diid find it annoying, but now, since I eat mostly the same things, I just spent some time making my recipes. That has made all the difference in the world!!

hiker359

It can be laborious at first, but start saving your commonly created confections as 'meals' or entering recipes will save a good deal of time down the road. The nice thing about meals is it still has everything listed out individually, so if you happen to put a little extra mayo on your sandwich, you can modify it.

shrinkinginQualicum

The only issue I have is with the recipe feature. If I want to change the amount of an ingredient, I have to look up the item all over again. It would be nice to edit the amounts within the recipe builder.

Yes, this. That annoys me a lot. Plus I would like to bring an item out of the recipe and use it somewhere else, like another recipe. Otherwise the logging is mostly quick once you've done it awhile and have most of your foods in already. I suppose the more accurate you wish to be the longer the initial logging would take, but if you are weighing and measuring your own foods, most of them will be reused for the next time, and you can just put together the combinations you want.

LoraF83

Logging foods takes all of 5 minutes every day. Honestly, it's worth 5 minutes a day to not be fat.

luckyinlove2

I use the recipe function a lot! Then I save my recipes just for myself and can click and add serving amounts/sizes quickly. Also my recent foods function helps me, because I can just click, change the portion size if needed and add.

MzFury

I agree with luckyinlove about the recipes function and recent foods, also saving MEALS - took me a while to find that function. Finally, I use a scales that has a grams option and tend to now log in produce, for instance, by gram weight as there's always the 100g option at the bottom.

T34418l3angel

Once you've found them once then they should show up in your recent/most used list - and I've always been able to find individual whole foods.

This

newcs

It was a pain at first for me but now between my recent list and using the "my recipes" section, it's not bad. I do tend to eat the same things week to week though and will cook a lot one day to eat throughout the week. I also cook, log the recipe, freeze portions and then I can easily log it when I go back and eat it later on so that I don't have to eat the same thing 8x in a week and can mix it up.

sun33082

For vegetables or fruit just type in the vegetable and the word "raw". This will bring the non-user added whole food to the top of the list. Example "broccoli raw"

For meats, I type in how I cooked it. Example "porksteak broiled" then I look for the one that says this. If you use this website: nutritiondata.self.com/ it has all kind of meats listed cooked various types of ways. Just search for it. You'll find that MFP has these same entries and you'll learn how to search for them easier.

MrsGSR

If you eat the same whole foods in a meal frequently, you can save that list under 'my meals'. That way, the next time you have it, the list is already populated.

I found it took ages to log meals, until I found the 'my meal' bit. it's so much easier once all of the meals we eat most often are in there!

betoarango

I guess I just dont complain about things I cannot conceive on how to do better. I cannot think of another way to log this, and maybe this is my limiting factor, If you have a better idea then perhaps you should put it out there and maybe it would be implemented. By the way the barcode scanner idea is genius, whoever came up with that rocks.

I don't believe it is fair to complain about logging meals in MFP, when compared to what the rest of the planet goes through every time they want to log a meal, including looking up, or googling each ingredient, and then each nutritional aspect. That is when they have google as opposed to a big fat 10 year old book in a library. Example i not only monitor my calories, I also monitor my carbs, sat fat, fiber and potassium. Imagine doing this manually for each of the ingredients.. I also use the add recepie function for everything from my salads, to meals and even for my coffee. One useful trick, for example as I usually have eggs for breakfast is i have the basic omelet already set up (oil, eggs, cheese, salt), and just plug in the daily ingredient changes, ie broccoli, asparagus, beef, spinach etc.

RunsOnEspresso

This is whta makes MFP easy also you can "copy" meals to the nest day you can also create a meal and save it.

But you can only copy to the same meal the next day. Typically I have dinner and take it for lunch the next day. I'd love if I could copy dinner yesterday to lunch today. It would make it much easier.

And I must have a messed up most used list because the items on that I haven't used in over a month but ones that I eat everyday never show up on there. I'd prefer my recent to have a continuous scroll, rather than 4 seperate pages. But thats just me. It doesn't mean I'm lazy or making excuses but I can usually search for the food quicker than scrolling through 4 pages of recent looking for the item.

I could go on and on about how this site could be much easier but I will end here. Its free. It has an android app that was free unlike livestrong which I was using.

Kamalka

Most of my foods are not in the list as I live in Belgium and very few Belgian came on this site...but most of my foods are fresh vegetables so they are there. Still it was taking me ages to add 1 onion, 1 carrot, 1 pepper, 1/2 eggplant, 2 tomatoes and 1/2 courgette...so I putt these together in my recipes and I take off the one that I don't use. I just have to add patoes or rice, but here I put "raw basmati rice" for example, I don't care if uncle ben's is different from waitrose or the one I use, idem for green lentils or whatever, I just use the ones there and I always find something very close...I have my breakfasts in my recipes and basically, the pain in the *kitten* is only if I eat out, otherwise it takes me less than 1 minute. For me this is the best from all the apps I tried, but everyone has different needs and expectations.

Now I don't log in to get the perfect numbers, I just want a "red light" that tells me "how my gosh I did not know 250g of peanuts was 1400 cal" or "if I take a small piece of chocolate now, I am over-calories today" to help me maintain my habits. I think I entered 5 products by myself, the rest is through assismilation of existing ones. I noticed that using "raw" before the element I want is better for me. Sometimes I have to try 2 or 3 but then I stick it to the end. Hope it helps

ihave42cats

i've had problems in the past. looking for something like "butter generic" gets me weird searches like "butter flavored crutons" or "butternut jelly". although i can't say i've hadany issues recently, but thats mostly because i quit logging stuff for a little while here and started keeping a journal on my compuiter instead.

lax75

What I find annoying is that, sometimes I'll enter a food (say, brocolli) and it pulls up 2-3 entries for brocolli. none of which are consistent in their numbers, plus another 60 or so recipes with brocolli in them. Then, once I find the one I'm after, it's measured in weight, not volume - I have no idea how much space 45g brocolli fills , but I know I had approximately 1 cup. Lots of googling to make the translations.

So, yes, it's a bit of a pain - which is NOT an excuse for those in the peanut gallery who are itching to chime in thusly. It's an annoyance of the TOOL, not the logging exercise itself. There is room for improvement in the search / catalog tool

For fresh foods I use the original (i.e. not starred) entries because they give a lot of options of how to measure - weight, size, volume, shredded vs. sliced, etc. And they always include all the nutrients, not just calories. (Often people who add foods to the database just include calories, which is not so helpful.) I find if I include the word "raw" when I'm searching for fruits/vegetables the unstarred entry almost always comes up near the top of the list, so easy to find.

letjog

Yeah I find it annoying too. Escpecially when i make a quinoa salad with loads of veg in it.

vtmoon

The only issue I have is with the recipe feature. If I want to change the amount of an ingredient, I have to look up the item all over again. It would be nice to edit the amounts within the recipe builder.

ya it's weird that you have to do that on the website. That is why I now mainly edit my old recipes on the android app because it allows me to change the amounts without having to look for them again.

yo_andi

I just do it.

florymonde

I guess maybe it depends on the level of precision you are looking for. I'm pretty loose about following a recipe so it would take forever to log precisely, but I if I have penne with shrimp for dinner, I'm content to look up "homemade pasta with shrimp" and use that, if the stats seem about right. Yes, this will not give me high precision logging, but it suits my purposes.

3foldchord

After a couple of weeks, your foods are in there and you just 'copy to a different day' or use 'frequent used foods'...

osualex

After a couple of weeks, your foods are in there and you just 'copy to a different day' or use 'frequent used foods'...

^^ this. There's like space for 20-some foods I think in the frequently used foods tab, also there's the recently used tab with the same amount. I eat mostly whole foods and I haven't had a problem.

The_New_Christina

The only issue I have is with the recipe feature. If I want to change the amount of an ingredient, I have to look up the item all over again. It would be nice to edit the amounts within the recipe builder.

^^THIS!!

Koldnomore

What I find annoying is that, sometimes I'll enter a food (say, brocolli) and it pulls up 2-3 entries for brocolli. none of which are consistent in their numbers, plus another 60 or so recipes with brocolli in them. Then, once I find the one I'm after, it's measured in weight, not volume - I have no idea how much space 45g brocolli fills , but I know I had approximately 1 cup. Lots of googling to make the translations.

So, yes, it's a bit of a pain - which is NOT an excuse for those in the peanut gallery who are itching to chime in thusly. It's an annoyance of the TOOL, not the logging exercise itself. There is room for improvement in the search / catalog tool

I completely agree on this one. Also given that the size of a 'cup' varies depending upon your location on the planet and probably the MFP tool has it in US standards which pisses me off because it should be by WEIGHT and that way everyone could use the same one. This means that I am constantly over calories because USA cups and CDN cups are NOT the same size but I really don't have that kind of time to go find the weight of liquids then do the conversion between US and CDN cups. If everything was weight based it would be nice.

The only issue I have is with the recipe feature. If I want to change the amount of an ingredient, I have to look up the item all over again. It would be nice to edit the amounts within the recipe builder.

Also annoying because I do not follow recipes when I cook , never have and never will. I add a 'dash' and a 'pinch', I taste what I cook and adjust as needed as most people who love cooking do. I weigh everything of course but some days I will use .025g and another time .035g and to have to re-make the whole recipe is just annoying. I don't want to have it in 'my meals' because something like marinara sauce has about 20 separate ingredients. So first I make the recipe and then because I can't use MY RECIPES to cook other things with..like say..veal parmigiana with my marinara sauce I have to make a whole new entry under 'my food' - which I then have to change every time I make a new batch of sauce.

But you can only copy to the same meal the next day. Typically I have dinner and take it for lunch the next day. I'd love if I could copy dinner yesterday to lunch today. It would make it much easier.

THIS would be awesome! Normally I can find it in 'recent' but it would be a time saver to be able to copy directly.

belgerian

Or just use the Create a Meal tab I pretty much eat the same things on a regular basis so I just created a meal and just add that whole meal done did.

Shayztar

Not sure if this has been said before, but someone once made this suggestion to me and it has saved a ton of time.

Put your plate/bowl on your scale and zero it. Add food to plate/bowl, get measurements, add to MFP, zero the scale. Add next food to plate/bowl, get measurements, add to MFP, zero the scale. So on and so forth.

As for recipes....there is no faster way of logging them. But I did learn that you can edit them if you want to change up the recipe slightly. Some days call for more garlic, you know what I mean? :laugh: