Greetings.

I'm new to MFP but not new to calorie logs in general.

I'm 5'8", I used to weigh 140lbs in my early 20s, then I quit smoking and slowly, over a few years, reached a rather impressive 250lbs. I was never horribly bothered by my weight, but finally my doctor convinced me that it wasn't awfully healthy and productive state of being. So, back in 2006 I used a different flavour of calorie counter, exercised intentionally pretty much first time in my life, and reached about 215 lbs in a few months. Everything was going very, very smoothly... up until...

We moved (from Europe to North America). The counter I had grown accustomed to no longer worked, there was n+1 times as many fast food restaurants around, everything in grocery stores was different and generally less healthy, and going out for walks took much more planning and effort. So, pretty soon I had managed to undo all the progress I had made.

I tried to get back on track with couple different calorie counters, had some success, but eventually gave up on them because they weren't quite as good as the one I had gotten used to - the food databases were severely lacking, meaning too much manual entry, or the search functions didn't produce proper results (like, searching for "chicken soup" returned everything from pea soup to chicken nuggets).

I don't think weight loss should be horribly difficult for me. I have no cravings, and I can settle to smaller portions and healthier choices in just few days. It's just that when I don't mark everything down, I end up eating and cooking like a moron. I'll easily eat a loaf of bread in one sitting, or half a dozen Boston Cream Donuts, or an XXXL triple cheese pizza. When I DO mark everything down, I seem to have no problems sticking to proper foods at proper amounts.

What I need from the counter software is that it takes next to zero effort to use - an intuitive UI, minimum amount of clicking around, minimum amount of scrolling, a huge (user submitted) database that contains Canadian food items, and a search function that defaults to AND operator, not OR.

So far, MFP seems to fulfill my requirements

I'd like to see the weight progress report scaled a bit better; now its really hard to see much progress. I'd like to see a line in the nutrition reports that shows where your goal or RDI goes. Other than those, I've been pretty happy during my stay here.


Also; hi!