Logging - how do you know what you ate?

A food scale would probably solve most of the trouble you're having.

I love it!!! Lol!

Thanks Twinkiemon, I needed an answer for that too. Thanks for all the response as well. Will get me a food scale tomorrow when the shops are open.

One thing that was neglected in this thread is that MFP does have an option to create custom recipes. I cook from scratch a lot, and leave the iPad app open on my kitchen counter as I'm preparing my meals and just add ingredients to the recipe as I am adding them to the app. If I add more of something I just adjust the recipe. I don't worry too much about accuracy for things like spices, but if I'm adding more fat or other high calorie ingredients, I make sure the recipe is adjusted. Same with salt (sodium).

If it's difficult to weigh every time, it's worth weighing a couple of times just to get an idea of what a portion looks like. Then you can estimate at other times. If you're dishing out the food, and know the calories of the whole thing, then you can try to judge your portion of it. For instance, if I'm cooking a meal for me and my son, often I'll work out the calories for the whole recipe, then give him 2/3rd and have 1/3rd myself. It saves weighing my portion individually. It's not so accurate as weighing everything, but it's sometimes more practical.

Exactly. Too many people worry about being under their calorie goal but that's not even what they should be watching. Macros are more important as well as what kind of foods you're actually eating. I weigh/measure everything I eat. Dipping a spoon into the peanut butter jar does NOT mean that you had one tbsp of peanut butter.

At the risk of beating a dead horse: food scale and measure everything.

As a side note, leaving 77 calories "available" isn't going to help you. It's about food QUALITY more than QUANTITY and calories are only a fraction of the whole scheme.

Don't make it more difficult than it is. For most people calorie reduction IS the answer. Quantity beats quality when you're talking about weight loss every single time.

You might want to read about the twinky diet:
http://edition.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/11/08/twinkie.diet.professor/index.html

A nutrition professor that went followed a twinkie diet and lost 27lbs and became HEALTHIER in the process. That's not to say that some food choices aren't better than others, but it does show that weight loss equals calorie restriction.