Accurate Food logging

jbug100

I successfully lost 25 lbs with MFP 2 years ago. 10 have crept back on, so I am back to logging to keep myself honest. I am finding logging my cals a bit frustrating and here is why. I regularly concoct my own recipes depending on what I have in stock. I will use leftovers from last night to make a completely different meal tonite. I try to be creative, and use what I have. I find it challenging and rewarding to make healthy food with my available resources. The problem is, it makes being accurate with calorie counting challenging. I am never sure what the calorie count on my concoction is! I know that I can probably find a comparable recipe in the data base or I can enter the ingredients to get a more exact number, but I want this to be EASY! Can anyone relate here? Or can someone just tell me to quit wining and making excuses:)

LittleMissDover

Enter the one meal as a recipe then the following night you have 0.5 of that recipe with whatever else you added for example.

MG_Fit

Enter the one meal as a recipe then the following night you have 0.5 of that recipe with whatever else you added for example.

That's what I do too.

kimberly728

I successfully lost 25 lbs with MFP 2 years ago. 10 have crept back on, so I am back to logging to keep myself honest. I am finding logging my cals a bit frustrating and here is why. I regularly concoct my own recipes depending on what I have in stock. I will use leftovers from last night to make a completely different meal tonite. I try to be creative, and use what I have. I find it challenging and rewarding to make healthy food with my available resources. The problem is, it makes being accurate with calorie counting challenging. I am never sure what the calorie count on my concoction is! I know that I can probably find a comparable recipe in the data base or I can enter the ingredients to get a more exact number, but I want this to be EASY! Can anyone relate here? Or can someone just tell me to quit wining and making excuses:)

i always enter my meals as recipes so that i can get the most accurate number possible.

ezwryder

I kind of feel the same way but I've sort of hit on what works for me. When I'm figuring up a meal from what I have on hand, I focus on the most calorically significant ingredients, so something with flour, eggs, pastas, butter, sugar, meats, etc... I kind of know what the calorie counts are for the big things. Vegetables, I don't really count. then I roughly figure what portion of that meal I had.

Its hardly exact but I don't spend a half hour trying to figure it out either. To even it out, I am more conservative on my exercise calorie calculations. Instead of using weight * distance * .65 to figure running calories (calculation from here: http://bit.ly/WX9DPR) , I might dial it back to W*D*.5 to give myself some cushion.

d.

jbug100

Thanks for the ideas everyone. The issue with entering recipes for me is I may never make that thing again, so why take the time to enter it. Bottom line is, I managed to do this before, so I just need to stop whining and just do it, even if it is a little time consuming. I like the idea of under-reporting exercise d. Although I might miss the satisfaction of posting that big number after a good workout:)