Logging your caloreis

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harass33
harass33 Posts: 12 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
What is the best way you have found to log your calories especially when it is homemade food?
When do you log your food? Do you log it before you eat it? Right after you've eaten? At the end of the day?

Replies

  • HerpDerp745
    HerpDerp745 Posts: 223 Member
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    Find ingredients and greatly overestimate the results. I generally plan and revise.
  • stevencloser
    stevencloser Posts: 8,911 Member
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    Write down the ingredients, log everything when you're done.
  • kd_mazur
    kd_mazur Posts: 569 Member
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    When making things at home I use the receipe builder part of this site. I usually log everything but dinner 1st thing in the morning. When I determine what dinner will be I log it after.
  • mschicagocubs
    mschicagocubs Posts: 774 Member
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    If it something like a homemade meal, I log after I am done. I like to make sure that is what I actually ate before I log. But some people like to plan their meals out. It really depends on what holds you accountable.

    Use the recipe maker for homemade meals. They are a life saver. I make recipes for just about anything that I use more than 4 ingredients for. And it saves so if it is a new recipe, you have the recipe right here :)
  • AJ_G
    AJ_G Posts: 4,158 Member
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    I log my entire day of eating the night before, but I am a college student and I have the luxury of only cooking for one person, so what I eat is the sum of the ingredients I used to make it, simple as that. My advice is to pre-log whenever you can, when you can't, and there's guess work involved, always err on the side of overestimating calories in the food you eat.
  • sarrah_n
    sarrah_n Posts: 192 Member
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    I log as I am cooking. For homemade food, use the Recipe tool. It's super easy!
  • MyM0wM0w
    MyM0wM0w Posts: 2,008 Member
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    Recipe Builder
  • Shell_1384
    Shell_1384 Posts: 80 Member
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    I log my food as I eat it, or shortly after.
  • bizco
    bizco Posts: 1,949 Member
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    I weigh everything using a digital food scale. I log it after I eat it. I also use the Recipe function.
  • csk0018
    csk0018 Posts: 219 Member
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    I will add new recipes on MFP by going to Settings | My Foods and Exercises | My Recipes. It helps me figure out the calories of all the foods I make at home and saves it there for when I make it again. You can go in and tweak the ingredients too if you change your recipe the next time. :bigsmile:
  • peleroja
    peleroja Posts: 3,979 Member
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    I weigh/measure everything as I'm preparing it, log it as I go, and then eat it. Only takes a minute more than the preparing.
  • antt109
    antt109 Posts: 16 Member
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    If there are certain recipes you use more than others, use recipe or meal tool here on My Fitness Pal to set it in your profile for quiock adding.

    I tend to update my diary during my meal. The advantage of having a smart phone. If you plan your meals and pack it with you try to add it all at the beginning of the day and update accordingly.

    Best wishes to you.
  • Bounce4
    Bounce4 Posts: 288 Member
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    I am struggling with that recipe builder so I just use a best guesstimate based on something already in the database.

    The reason I struggle is

    a) I don't really have recipes - so I have to enter the entire shebang when I'm cooking - not always reasonable for me.

    b) I make really large quantities of food. For example I made chicken noodle soup. 14 cups of broth but all the other ingredients added in results in much more than 14 cups of food. I just don't know how to quickly and easily get a serving out of that unless I re-measure it all - and that isn't going to happen. That part of my day just has to many things going on at once already.

    Not a perfect plan but seems to be working well enough and better than not logging at all in the attempt to maintain a system that doesn't 'fit' with my life in the name of perfection. I'm trying to pscyh myself up here that every move in the right direction is a good step even if it is a step and not the entire way to perfect.

    Now my lunches and snacks are individual things so I can do that very precisely with barely any effort - and I do.

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