We are pleased to announce that on March 4, 2025, an updated Rich Text Editor will be introduced in the MyFitnessPal Community. To learn more about the upcoming changes, please click here. We look forward to sharing this new feature with you!

Newb question about logging food

rjdunn87
rjdunn87 Posts: 385 Member
edited February 8 in Food and Nutrition
Hi everyone!

I'm brand new to the site (as well as to calorie counting and working out consistently) and am really looking forward to finally getting myself healthy and where I want to be.

I have a question about logging calories, I apologize in advance if this has been addressed already, but: how do you guys go about logging meals that you make from scratch? Do you just input the entire recipe, or do you add each ingredient one by one? I'm vegan and do a LOT of cooking at home. I don't own a food scale (yet) but could certainly be diligent about measuring out my ingredients carefully. I still feel like some of it will be guesswork, though.

Any thoughts or advice would be appreciated :)

Replies

  • LosingItForGood13
    LosingItForGood13 Posts: 182 Member
    I try t log every ingredient including spices and salt my drug of choice lol
  • rjdunn87
    rjdunn87 Posts: 385 Member
    I try t log every ingredient including spices and salt my drug of choice lol

    Haha, yeah, mine too! Okay, thanks. So, I guess my question then would be… do you log the ingredients for the entire recipe, or just for one serving? I mean, I might make a recipe that calls for a cup of chopped onion, but the serving I actually eat wouldn't contain that entire cup. Does that make sense? Sorry if I'm asking really stupid questions.
  • psuLemon
    psuLemon Posts: 38,438 MFP Moderator
    I have about 40 recipes and meals that I commonly eat. When I make chili, it serves four. So I go into "create a recipe" and list all of the ingredients and make sure the serving size is 4. It then tells you how many calories per serving it is.
  • BenjaminMFP88
    BenjaminMFP88 Posts: 660 Member
    I would suggest creating a recipe for the meals you commonly eat. You'll add the ingrediants based on entire plate, you can calculate servings from there.

    On the more random meals, I add each ingrediant to the best of my abilities.
  • cokekitty
    cokekitty Posts: 26
    MFP has a recipe function that allows you to create recipes by entering all the ingredients, and MFP will calculate nutritional value. You can tell it how many servings it makes, then record however many servings you eat as you go. I'm a vegetarian (almost-vegan) and also do a lot of home-cooking, so I know exactly what you're feeling haha. The recipe function is GREAT. You can't make recipes on the mobile version as far as I know, however.
  • Pedalpush
    Pedalpush Posts: 246 Member
    I create a recipe nearly every day. It gets to be a pain, but totally worth it. It really wraps your head around serving sizes and just how many calories are in each ingredient.
  • ruthlesswr
    ruthlesswr Posts: 114 Member
    I do what psulemon does. When I have a meal that I know I'll probably make again in a very similar way, I go into "create a recipe" and enter in every ingredient. I make sure to set the number of servings based on what I call a serving of that thing and there you go! Then it's there the next time and I don't have to enter it all in. I also use a lot of recipes from food.com and just enter those as "my foods" since food.com does the nutritional breakdown for me.
  • Capt_Apollo
    Capt_Apollo Posts: 9,026 Member
    pick up a food scale. very useful item.
  • Swiftdogs
    Swiftdogs Posts: 328 Member
    Put your recipe in the Recipes tab with all the ingredients, and determine how many servings the whole recipe makes. Then all you have to do is log servings when you eat it. I make my definition of one serving fairly small (e.g. 1 cup of soup) so it's easy to log multiples.
  • superfox12082
    superfox12082 Posts: 512 Member
    You can add recipes and you can add meals. That makes things a little easier. I do a lot of home cooking also and yes, it is a pain to log it.
  • rjdunn87
    rjdunn87 Posts: 385 Member
    Thank you guys, I'll have to try creating a recipe with my dinner tonight. :)
  • KerryITD
    KerryITD Posts: 94 Member
    If I know I'll have more than one day's worth of leftovers OR I'll be making a similar dish again, I use the recipe builder. Otherwise, I just log the ingredients used. On the plus side, even if you don't build a recipe, the ingredients will be in your Recent Foods section, so if you have one day of leftovers they are easy to find.
  • MinnieInMaine
    MinnieInMaine Posts: 6,400 Member
    I tend to remake the same things in a 2 week rotation so the recipe builder works well for me. If you do end up logging things as a meal instead and then decide you may end up making that again, you can use the Remember Meal function on your food diary as well.
  • DopeItUp
    DopeItUp Posts: 18,771 Member
    Are you weighing and measuring all of your food?
  • rjdunn87
    rjdunn87 Posts: 385 Member
    Are you weighing and measuring all of your food?

    I don't have a scale yet, but yes I'm measuring everything. I've only just started this today, so I measured out all of the ingredients in my green smoothie rather than just dump them in as usual.
This discussion has been closed.

Categories