Include nibbling in food diary?

if you want to lose.. log everything. Otherwise you may turn into one of those people 'eating 1350 cals' per day and claim to not be losing.

the easiest way to account for all those snacks is to use quick tools to quick add calories. sure, it won't track your protein, carbs, etc, but it does track the most important number, which is calories. even adding a rough estimate is better than omitting it completely.

someone earlier posted about a sip of apple juice. for example, take a look at the serving size and calories of the apple juice. if a serving is 8 oz and you took a small sip (1 oz), just quick add 1/8 of the calories of the serving. it takes about 10 seconds to log. i tend to log my snacking at the end of the day when i log my dinner, unless i have had some time during the day to add it on the spot. if i feel like i'll forget about it later, i make it a priority to add it earlier.

i tend to estimate on the high side because if my estimate is off, i'd rather have eaten less calories than i thought than more calories than i thought.

im my opinion, your desire to get your logs exactly right matches your commitment to lose weight and get healthy. the more commited you are, the easier it is to make yourself get everything logged.

Every bite

I don't record every little thing that goes into my mouth. When I am making lunch for the next day and I measure something out that should be 40 grams and it ends up being 42 grams, I might just pop that extra piece into my mouth. Or I might taste something I made for lunch. Or I might steal 3 M&Ms. If I stop losing weight I might be more careful, but I am not gonna get obsessive about this.

I agree with this.

It adds up so yes.
It made want to pick less because it was such a PITA to log it all

I second the 'nibble dish' idea someone else suggested - mine has cashews, dried cranberries and dark chocolate baking chips for about 135 calories. I take it to work every day and pick from it when I think about grabbing one of the other snacks left out at work (donuts, candy, you name it).

I love the idea of a nibble dish. I'll have to try that.

It made want to pick less because it was such a PITA to log it all

This. I've actually stopped nibbling because I don't want to figure out how to log one bite of ice cream or one cashew.

Easy solution:

Make yourself a nibble dish in the morning, and weigh it out or whatever you do to measure. Nibble from that.

This is a great suggestion. I've been weighing out a handful of cereal here or two cashews there. This method would save me a lot of time. :flowerforyou:

If you put calories in, they belong in your log. Otherwise you don't get an accurate picture. I use my log to follow trends. Why did I crave a certain snack? Am I more or less hungry on certain days, and if so, what's going on on those days? The only time I don't log is on a rare occasion when I'm under my calories, grab a bite of something that won't put me over, and am not near my computer. But that's so rare that it's happened maybe twice in over a month.

Some people will say you have to log every single thing you put in your mouth, but I think something like stealing a french fry, having a bite of someone else's meal at a restaurant, etc is going to be almost impossible to log with any accuracy. I'd suggest leaving some leeway in your calories for that sort of thing. But be honest with yourself about it. If you're doing it all day long, it's going to add up and maybe throw you off track. If your progress seems too slow or stops, that might be something you'll want to reassess. You're the only one who knows how much you do it and how it might be affecting you.

I'm also on 1200 calories and I under-record my exercise 'cos I think MFP is way too generous with calorie counts for things like walking. I often don't make my calorie goal, but it's good to aim for and if I'm on or near it most days, I lose.

My personal take on this is that it under-records the values. Case in point, zumba, which isn't on the list of activities here, you can record it as aerobic dance and log it as roughly 450 kcal burns on here for 55 mins, but if you go to calorieburnedhq.com it can be up to 200 kcal more adding on weight and intensity.

I don't stress about the variance as I use what this site tells me it's worth because I'm more about doing it than to figure out how much I can eat after. I understand that some may need to be more vigilant than others to achieve there goals. I log to say, "but did you do this today?" and if it's yes, then all is well.

Oh yes.

The truly magical thing about tracking my food was once I started, I stopped nibbling all together as I didn't want to have to track it.

And then I lost 90 lbs!

If you're "nibbling" every day, then definitely log it, but if you take a bite of someone's steak or whatever just to taste it, I wouldn't bother logging it as long as you're not someone who has difficultly losing weight.

If you are someone who struggles losing weight (lots of plateaus or very slow loss or slight gain weeks), then I'd log everything if I were you.

I log everything. In the event I'm unsure of what a bite or two of something will add up to, I add "quick calories" to my daily total. I'm not much of a "nibbler" however: maybe once of twice a week.

logging my food has made me more careful of my choices, period. When I start thinking something sounds good, I will think "do I want to log this?" or perhaps "Can I afford this calorie-wise?" It has made me make more wise choices.