Do u find yourself guessing?

Maybe not disastrous, but a potentially slippery slope.

I have long ago come to terms with the fact that SOMETIMES it's gonna have to be a guesstimate. I keep that risk down by only eating with family/friends and dining out 1-3 times most weeks. Not daily.

Generally when I go out...say Chinese food...I look up 3-4 of the same item from various places and go with one that is medium to high in calories/fat/sodium. I never just quick-add a guessed number because I don't think I'd feel quite comfy with that even after logging every day for over a year now.

My husband and I are both on MFP and cook most of our meals at home and use the recipe builder. It's not 100% accurate that way but it's pretty close, I think. Love that tool and I can't believe I was on MFP for about 7 months before I started using it. I used to avoid it because I thought in order to use it to calculate a recipe I had to share it with all of the world on the MFP database (you don't).

Good luck!

I usually find everything I'm looking for when I search. Sometimes I check a couple of the entries if it's generic, like fruit, and then use the higher one. I think you can also input food into the database. When I eat out, I check ahead of time to see what things I might be able to eat, and it usually gives the nutrition information. If not, I search for it by name, like 'vegetable omelet,' then try to find one that matches what I ate. Hope this helps.

If your just counting calories and don't need to worry about high sodium or cholesterol than logging known calories is usually okay. It's better to log the whole foods so you know what you ate and can see trends.

150 calories on Tuesday two weeks ago could be anything if you don't recall.

Was it a banana, or toast, or a candy bar, for example. Major differences.

Get in the habit of logging everything and it gets easier and easier. Log ahead of time if you need to, or between commercial breaks while watching tv, etc. If you know what dinner is the day before, log it ahead of time.

Also for chinese food, etc, you can usually estimate things but it'll never be easy because every place is different. You can put you ate 3 crab rangoons and they could use either high quality cheese and real crab in theirs or use low quality cheese and immitation crab and the rangoons could be 400 calories or 600 or something drastic, and be 14g of fat or 7g, no way of knowing for sure. They could be frozen and purchased or freshly made, etc. Same goes for anything else they serve. Best bet would be to feel out the estimates and round up or down based on portion sizes.

I cup of fried rice, 10 pieces of orange chicken, 3 crab rangoons, and 3 spare ribs, for example of what i'd consider a large dinner portion would be something like 1400+ calories. Fried rice is at least 300, 10 pieces of orange chicken with dark meat is another 300-500, 3 crab rangoons another 300-400, and 3 spare ribs are another 250. Then too it be something like 30+ grams of fat, 3000mg of sodium or much more, etc.

Which is why I hardly eat out anymore than I must and when I do I usually eat smaller portions than above (as I used to eat DOUBLE OR TRIPLE THAT AMOUNT). Cup of white rice, 6 pieces of chicken, 2 crab rangoons, no spare ribs, and instead eat a vegetable spring roll or two if they're small. Call that about 800-1000 calories to be safe and drink plenty of water to flush it out.

Only for spreads on sandwiches really. I know how much mayo I like on my sandwich and it's about 75% of one serving so I don't weigh that I just put it on my sandwich and enter 1 serving.
I wouldn't do it with many other things though. It can add up over time along with other possible inaccuracies

I used to do something similar. I would look for a food, but when there were a dozen or more conflicting entries I often didn't spend the time to determine which was correct. Or if I couldn't find a food I'd just pick something that sounded close.

I honestly don't know what these people who say it takes 10 min to log their entire day are eating. Sometimes it would take me 20-30 min just to log my dinner.

For me, I like to eat at a lot of local restaurants instead of national chains, and if I can't find the actual info, I'll pick something that seems similar, guessing on the high side just to be safe

Same here. I don't go to chains very often unless it's the ONLY option on a road trip or a meal out with my dad. I do enjoy the convenience of logging a burger at Steak N' Shake versus a local diner...but in most situations local, non-chain food is soooo much more delicious, it's worth the fretting over whether my entry was correct or not.

I honestly don't know what these people who say it takes 10 min to log their entire day are eating. Sometimes it would take me 20-30 min just to log my dinner.

I log as I go. The most time consuming items are those that I'm cooking or blending from scratch. A lot of food is easy, though, thanks to bar codes and smart phones.

I always log my foods, and have a record that is 500+ days long. I recommend logging everything as specifically as you are able. I am fortunate to have a smart phone and do all of my logging there as I go along. I know some people who plan a whole day at a time and log it into their computer at the beginning of the day. It works for them. Having good records is a big help when you want to check on nutrition, are stuck on a plateau, need to look for hidden problems, or have a doctor's appointment where a blood work up is under discussion. I use my actual products and personal recipes whenever I can, but sometimes use a generic item from MFP. The nutrition and calories may be off just a little when you use a generic item, but it is still close enough to be useful. Logging everything has been effective. I've lost the weight I needed to lose and am now healthier and have more energy than I've had in many years. I think careful logging would bring you similar results if you stick with it.

Nope. I am too exacting to do that.

I cook almost everything from scratch and very few of my ingredients have bar codes. I guess maybe that is the difference.

Same here, but for me I've found that being more precise and weighing has actually made the time go down and it really doesn't take any time since I do it as I cook. Weighing the ingredients and noting the weight is just a few extra seconds per ingredient. Then when there's a break I walk over to the computer and log. If there's something more elaborate, where I actually want servings, I might write everything down and then go create a recipe, but usually I don't even do that. Could be I'm just normally a pretty simple cook.

If it took an extra 20 mins per meal, I wouldn't do it, but I've found with weighing as I cook it takes a lot less time than trying to find a comparable entry. The only things I hate logging, because it's a pain, are restaurant meals and having to remember and guess the ingredients and estimate. When I first started here I thought weighing everything was nuts and that estimating for most things was good enough, but being able to use 100 grams saves me time over what I used to do estimating cups and so on.