not progressing the way i want

Yep..what's get measured,get done.

No,not easy...

I m still struggling myself,log food dairy & esp.posting for all view,kinda push me to b discipline.It's been 1 wk ne,since I started joining MPL community & challenges.

All the best to you.

Its not that easy to track everything you eat because tracking some foods that are not user friendly with MFP is not a true reflection of what you actually ate during the day. It gives a general idea of what you consumed but its still an inaccurate account of documenting your food diary

It's true that you're getting an estimate (that's just the nature of the beast) but there are some things you can do to make your diary as accurate as possible.

Weigh your food on a scale instead of eyeballing or using measuring cups.

Log foods by raw weight, and search the database that way. Instead of searching "steak" which will give you tons of results, most of which are user entered and may be inaccurate, type "raw New York strip steak" and choose the entry that does not have an asterisk. These are the foods that have been checked against the USDA database.

For rice, quinoa, or pasta, log the dry weight. Because cooking alters volume and it won't be the same each time, dry is going to be your best bet.

Don't give yourself "free" foods or drinks. If it has calories it needs to be logged. That includes your coffee, coffee creamer, condiments, oils, veggies, etc.

Use the recipe builder. Don't use other people's recipes that they've put in the database unless you have no choice, because they are certain to be different that whatever you ate. If you ate at someone else's house and don't have a way to get the calorie information those entries can give you a rough estimate, but if you cooked it you should create your own recipe.


I disagree that it's a pain or is time-consuming. At first it might be, but once you get in the habit it's almost no time at all. I spend about 10 minutes per day logging food. I enter recipes into the recipe builder and then reuse them. I save the meals that I eat over and over into My Meals so I can pull them up easily. I use the recent foods list for things I eat all the time. Logging doesn't have to be this huge hassle that everyone makes it out to be. It's definitely worth 10 minutes per day to me to be a healthy weight.

weight loss isn't a linear thing. Expect to gain and lose water throughout. With that said if you aren't consistent with it, don't be surprised if you start gaining it all back with ease, particularly if it was water weight. For the best results, get a measuring scale, and try to keep an accurate log.

If you're logging exercise souly with mfp, they tend to be over estimates. Eat back those calories, but perhaps not all of them.

IF you know something is not working, why continue on month after month? Like others have said - get honest with yourself.

Close your diary and start being brutally honest - weigh/measure everything; log every morsel that goes in your mouth.

Track your calories and exercise for at least 2 weeks (being brutally honest about what you're eating and using hrm/etc. to calculate your calories burned) and then if you still haven't started losing again, come back here and ask again.

I was keeping track of my food intake on a daily basis for the first few months. I just got bored and sick of it.

Okay, then why are you surprised at the lack of progress?

Really, you cannot expect results when you aren't putting in any work. Knowing the amount of calories you are consuming is one big part of the equation.