Posting to your diary on MFP

I know what you mean. Alot of my meals are traditional homecooked meals and I can't find the exact foods on MFP. I just do my best to estimate or you can quick add calories. This method is not perfect, so I tend to put my calories per day at a lower rate than what I would normally. So I put down sedentary and lightly active rather than moderately active to adjust for those changes.

I also try and keep the rest of my day pretty accurate as to the foods I eat so when it comes to eating that meal/foods I can't find on MFP, I allow myself some leg room.

I don't know if that helps at all, good luck! Rutts are tough but just keep logging in and doing your best.

If you're not tracking the food to count calories and macros, don't worry about it. I meticulously log food just to make sure I am getting the right number of calories and such. MFP should be a tool to help YOU so if you don't want/need to log, don't do it. Simple as that. Right?

Does anyone else find themselves in a rutt with posting what they've ate in their diary. I am having a hard time logging in just to track what I ate. Mainly because what I eat isn't in MFP and to add my own recipe is hard because sometime I don't know all the ingredients or measurements of what's in what I ate.

Maybe I'm at my plateu of posting and logging but I just can't seem to get over the rutt. Any suggestions tips to get over the rutt. Just looking for some motivation/support and to know if I'm the only one who feels like this or if others feel this way at times.

How your weight loss going? Pretty easy answer.. if you are losing weight then keep doing what you are doing. If you are not then you might need to be more serious about it. The point of logging everything (and creating recipes) is to keep yourself accountable if you can't manage to do that don't expect to reach your goals for losing weight as easily as someone who chooses to be more dedicated.

I cook almost everything from scratch and yes it is a pain to enter things but it works. If you can't find your food then use the MFP one (I prefer the entries they make to the ones other people make anyway) When you first start it takes a little time yes but after a while it's really just a 5 minute thing.

I generally make 100% of my food, and have to log either every ingredient individually or create a recipe. It isn't hard. If you want something bad enough, you learn to embrace it good luck.

I think it gets easier as it becomes routine, it is tough when starting out logging but once you have your favourites list up and running it gets easier. Maybe I'm a bit predictable but there are certain foods/meals that I tend to cook fairly often and I have about 20 recipes added. The meal function is great because if you tend to eat the same foods together you can just remember them as a meal for next time, then when you add them back to your diary you can always make a small change by adding or deleting one of the items. Finally do/can you use the smartphone app? I actually find that much easier and more convenient to use, you can add things as you go, scan the barcodes, and the search function is better as you can search just through your recent or frequent foods .

Ultimately like other people have suggested if you are losing weight, and you must be because your clothes are looser, then what you are doing is working so maybe it doesn't matter right now. Like you I eat at around 8.30 or sometimes later, once I have the kids sorted and have prepped/packed my food for work the next day. I usually don't log at all until the end of the day when I sit down after dinner and spend 10 minutes or so logging. Although sometimes I have my phone on the kitchen worktop and log whilst I'm cooking dinner, in between stirring and throwing ingredients in! Also I'm a huge fan of cooking ahead, I know what you mean about throwing dinner together at the minute as I'm all too guilty of that sometimes and it's usually then that I don't eat as well as I'd like. That's why I try to spend some time at the weekend cooking up meals like stews,chilli, pasta sauces that are easy to store in the fridge or freezer and defrost as needed. That way I have something homecooked plus it's easy to log as I've already logged the recipe.

I'm sure you'll find something that works for you, it's hard juggling, home, kids and work, but I'm sure you'll make it happen :-)

Pre-log and plan as much as you can. For the nights when things get thrown together, just make best guesses and take a few seconds to write down what you had. Then when you log on the next day at work you can update it. And I'd suggest the same thing for weekends... Before I had a smart phone I'd just do the old fashioned food tracking and use pen and paper to log what I was eating then on Monday morning when I got to work I'd take a little time to update my food and exercise diaries. It's not perfect but it's better than nothing.