In need of support!

Hello moe, Welcome. I just got back on this too, and have already dropped 2 lbs. I know that is water weight, but so far I am enjoying the journey.

BTW, I just saw that you are here in the Commonwealth too!!! Good lawd, will the children ever have a full week of school again? LOL!!!!

Go to this link, read the first post and follow the guidelines to ask for a "Mentor". Your user name will be added to a list and a long term MFP user will reach out to you.

http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10035755/2015-adopt-a-noob-official-mfp-thread/p1

As a companion to this I would suggest that people read the post " Logging Accurately " .
http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/1234699/logging-accurately-step-by-step-guide/p1
and visit this link about important posts as it has a lot of good posts and some of the Information in this post is based on a combination of these posts.
http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/833026/important-posts-to-read/p1

I was using MFP for a good 6 months before I found these posts so it is a bit of a personal mission of mine to pass them on to other people who are just starting.

My standard suggestion/tip is to do some reading and buy a kitchen scale!!!
Re-train/calibrate your mind as to what a portion size is..
You will be surprised how small some portions look when you start to weigh them out. The average cereal bowl I have in my kitchen will hold 2-6 portions.

The Food Database

@ arditarose and @ blankiefinder‌ Nailed it when it comes to Logging accurately and selecting food using the search feature.

arditarose wrote: »

Weigh your eggs and find the appropriate entry. Two eggs at 50 grams is typically 140 calories. If you cooked them with olive oil, add that as well.

Don't log 2 eggs as it is a subjective number, where 50 gm. is very concise.

blankiefinder wrote: »

if I haven't found an entry that lists the grams, I keep looking for a different entry. This [ Enter Food ] item is already listed a bunch of times. Better to edit and correct one that is already there than add to the database mess that exists now.

When creating or editing a Food item from the existing database my Personal Bias is to Edit an existing Entry and enter the nutritional values based on grams ( 100 gm ) as it makes the portion size math easy. Especially when you use a scale and WEIGH EVERYTHING.

Rather than creating a completely new entry for a food item and adding to the Disaster/Mess in the Food Database I continue looking through the items until I find one with Grams in it and verify the data against the USDA website.
HINT if 2000 people have confirmed the nutritional value of an item it's a good choice, if 4 people have its questionable.

rabbitjb wrote: »

There are always a range of choices and one inevitably has by weight

If I can't find an existing entry with grams I pick one that has Nutritional Values close to the ones based on Manufacture Label - cross referenced to un-biased nutritional information from the USDA web site at and then edit it by adding a 100 gram reference and confirm the nutritional values based on Manufacture Label again cross referenced to USDA database ( MFP seems to automatically add a 1 gm value in the database). My personal Bias is to use grams ( 100 gm) as it makes the math easy especially when you use a scale.

http://ndb.nal.usda.gov/ndb/search

Some of these links will show up in the other Groups and discussions.

Visit the Eat-Train-Progress group and read the pinned topics. If you click on the little STAR you can bookmark the topic for future reference.

http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/group/10118-eat-train-progress

Read the information at these MFP post. They have links to multiple very good reads.

http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/1069278/acronyms-and-terms-for-new-mfp-members-v-6/p1

Visit these links about building Habits.

http://www.myfitnesspal.com/blog/ihad/view/the-power-of-habit-part-4-making-good-habits-stick-1-000-days-on-mfp-and-counting-698617

Its not practical or socially acceptable to carry a scale into restaurants-friends-family homes so that is where we have to fall back on our memory and estimates of what the portions sizes are. Do be careful about eyeballing as many people have posted how surprised at how small some portions are when they started to use a scale and weigh them out. I know I was. We can never be 100% accurate but the rewards of weight loss are worth the effort.

There is a new post about The Things No One Tells You About Weight Loss it is a good read about the differant little things that differant people have experienced and it has some funnies in it http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/1298704/the-things-no-one-tells-you-about-weight-loss

I'm sort of new as well! I've used this app before, but I've never been able to stick to it for longer than about 4 days....I'm desperately in need of support! I'm in nursing school, so the constant stress and running around shoots my food cravings through the roof. On top of that, I told my friends at school that I'm trying to lose weight and it seems like ever since I told them they have been throwing candy/sweets in my face!! I'm going on day 6 now and hope to weigh in today. Any support is greatly appreciated!!