How do you log? When do you calculate your calories?

I log everything in the morning while I have my cup of coffee, sometimes the night before. I can always edit as I go, but it is better for me to have a plan of action for the day!

95% of the time I log my food for the whole day. The other 5% is for when we eat at other people's homes.

I'm trying to make a lifestyle change that I can live with that will help me loose, so I log as I go. I know I'm not going to spend my life planning all my food in advance, so I'm not doing that now. But I am buying healthy stuff so that when I go to look for something to eat, there are healthy choices in the house. The rest of my family (husband, 2 teenage boys) are eating "regular" food so I have "regular" food too - just healthier versions and less of it.
As to healthier versions: they're getting the benefit too by me modeling good choices and helping them learn to pay attention to what they're eating. Hopefully my boys won't struggle with their weight their whole life like I have.

I have a (flexible) meal plan set out over 4 weeks. This means I can usually log each morning what I have planned for that night. If I've taken my lunch with me to work, then I can log pretty much the whole day shortly after eating breakfast.

This way, I know how much I have left over for snacks, and what intensity exercise I need to do (sometimes I'm over goal even before I've tucked into lunch, in terms of what's logged).

I try and do it either prior to eating or soon after...as long as I am home, if I am out with my daughters and we decide at the last minute to eat out I try and pick the healthiest option but sometimes it turns out to no be that healthy. So yeah I am one of those people that you had mentioned that will log my food later on after eating out and look at the calorie count and go "What the heck???!!!!" and I learn not to get that again.

I have seen posts like, ooops, I ate that & logged later & didn't know it was 4 times as many calories as I thought. I just cannot understand that. It would kill me to eat something if I wasn't reasonably sure of the calorie content. Am I making sense? Anyone else like me?

How do you calculate and log your calories for both food you prepare as well as food you don't?

If you're out and get something to eat and don't have a cell phone with the app on it, it's very hard to guess at the calorie count when you are eating out or at an event or something. So you just have to take a guess on what you think is the healthiest and go from there.

I TRY to log everything BEFORE it goes into my mouth (I create all my own recipes in advance and base my diary on these recipes) ... still I find I can't always do this.

For example, I don't know what my mother-in-law puts in her dishes so I don't even bother to log those days ... however, that said, and as much as possible, I avoid having meals at my in-laws.

Another exception to the rule are my cheat days ... sometimes but not always ... depends on how dirty my cheat day is! On really dirty cheat days I don't always bother logging my foods because I don't want to have to deal with the feelings of guilt that are oftentimes associated to cheating, as guilt is counterproductive. On these days I'd rather eat mindlessly and enjoy it knowing with great certainty I'll be back on track the next day.

Another exception occurs when, in spite of logging my entire day in advance and then posting it, I deviate from my original entries and have to go back and re-log to make sure my food diary accurately reflects my intake. This might happen as a result of a super busy day outside the home. Sometimes I think I'm only going to be a couple hours and might find myself gone an entire day. And because I didn't pack my foods (thinking I wouldn't be so long) I grab something I had not planned on ... almost always healthy, but definitely not pre-planned and accounted for. I try not to do this very often, but it does happen on occasion.

Too, I once created a recipe and ate it prior to logging it into the program only to discover AFTERWARDS it contained far more calories, carbs, fat, sugar, sodium, etc., than I originally thought. Unfortunately it took repeating this mistake twice before I learned ... thankfully, however, I learned!!

Finally, there are days when I complete my food diary earlier in the day but find much later in the day I'm still hungry, and because I have ample calories left I eat more and have to 'add' to my diary and recalculate.

I log as I go, mostly because I never know if I'm really going to eat the whole meal. There as some days I just can't. I do check nutrition info before I plan out a meal, though, so I know what I'm getting into and can figure out the best portion size. I pretty much eat a variation of the same thing every day, now, so I generally know how much I'm eating without pre-logging.

I have started checking before I go out to eat, though, so I don't blow my whole day.

I plan out each day in the morning, before breakfast, so I know where I stand. Sometimes it changes, but I always have an 'idea' of where I am calorie-wise all through the day (update on my Android phone if necessary).

Hi. I just joined today. I can't even figure out where to write my food. Do you calculate it on your own and then just write the total or what? It's probably easy but I DON'T GET IT.

At the tabs at the top of your page next to where it says "My Fitness Pal," go to the tab that says "Food." That brings you right to your food diary.

If it's a new recipe or I'm at a restaurant I log things in before I eat so I have no surprises. The rest of the time I have a pretty good idea what each meal will be because I've eaten them enough times before.