Newbie!

I'm Kim. I'm fairly new to mfp. I'm looking for friends. I'm a 46 year old mother of 2 children. I'd like to be friends!!

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!!!

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.

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.

Merkavar wrote: »

What? Where are the *s? I don't think I have ever seen on and also if I did see one I didn't know that no * meant it was a my fitness pal entry.

JPW1990 wrote: »

Go to the database and look up something like poptarts or doritos. You'll see an asterisk before the first letter of every food on the list. When you look up something like tomato or chicken breast, there should be at least one entry without one, that's official from MFP via the USDA site or similar, and a bunch of others entered by users that start with the asterisk.

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

For Nutritional values start with the values from the product label and confirm it with the un-biased nutritional information from the USDA web site at 100 gm.

Try the USDA site as a cross reference for nutrition values of different food diary entries.
http://ndb.nal.usda.gov/

http://blog.myfitnesspal.com/the-next-step/

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/833026/important-posts-to-read/p1

http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/categories/getting-started

http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/1234699/logging-accurately-step-by-step-guide/p1

http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/1080242/a-guide-to-get-you-started-on-your-path-to-sexypants/p1

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-1-why-habits-matter-688130

Some of these links will show up in the other Groups and discussions.
There are lots of other good groups and discussions with really good information and some with a more Social aspect.

Hi and welcome we are all in the same boat here and the more friends you get the more you see what other like minded people are achieving in weight lose and it will help you keep on track. I use a Polar loop tracker wrist band along side this app it works well and keeps me going. You add me as a friend if you like ? GOOD LUCK