Food tracking problems
Replies
-
deannalfisher wrote: »probably wouldn't even build a recipe for a one serving thing - i would just log the ingredients in my dinner section (this is what i do when i'm just making a one serving meal)
She wants the function of typing a list of foods instead of searching for them manually. The recipe function can be used for that as a workaround.1 -
amusedmonkey wrote: »deannalfisher wrote: »probably wouldn't even build a recipe for a one serving thing - i would just log the ingredients in my dinner section (this is what i do when i'm just making a one serving meal)
She wants the function of typing a list of foods instead of searching for them manually. The recipe function can be used for that as a workaround.
got it - but the recipe function uses the same database and then you still often have to search through the results to find the correct (or a correct entry)...whereas if they are frequently used foods, they would be populated in her diary - which would speed up the time it takes2 -
I use the "Meals" section also for dishes I prepare the way you describe - in which I vary the amounts of things I add in. Ro do this you:
- log the ingredients in the main dairy,
- "save as a meal" (you can even upload a pic via the phone app).
5 -
Eating whole, fresh, unprocessed foods and avoiding factory made or grown food has become a main goal in my life, but to each his/her own.3
-
deannalfisher wrote: »probably wouldn't even build a recipe for a one serving thing - i would just log the ingredients in my dinner section (this is what i do when i'm just making a one serving meal)
I have been doing that...just hoped there was a quicker way!0 -
-
I also often cook for more than one day. I log everything that goes into this big pot of food. Then I divide the pot up into x meals, say 3, and then I quickly divide all weight measurements by three in the diary. One meal might be a bit heavier, another one a bit lighter, but overall it has the right amount of calories. So I can just copy this entry to when I eat the other two meals.2
-
When I throw together a "whaever is gonna go bad first" stir-fry with small bits of 8-12 ingredients, it takes longer to log it than it does to cook it.livingleanlivingclean wrote: »I also often cook for more than one day. I log everything that goes into this big pot of food. Then I divide the pot up into x meals, say 3, and then I quickly divide all weight measurements by three in the diary. One meal might be a bit heavier, another one a bit lighter, but overall it has the right amount of calories. So I can just copy this entry to when I eat the other two meals.
When I get a break from school I will do this and freeze a lot of stuff.-0 -
Eating whole, fresh, unprocessed foods and avoiding factory made or grown food has become a main goal in my life, but to each his/her own.
Since you mostly use whole foods, you may find this helpful (or maybe not, because I realize it seems like an extra step): If you find the food you want in the USDA Food Composition Database, and use the exact same text string to search MFP's database (e.g., "Chicken, broilers or fryers, dark meat, thigh, meat only, raw"), your top result will almost always be an entry that matches the USDA entry -- i.e., it will be a "good," usable entry, with a serving size option for grams (you may have to click on the serving size units to get a drop down list of options). For fruits and veggies, you'll soon learn that the USDA string is generally in the form of "onions, raw" or "bananas, raw."
I'm not sure that your hope of just being able to type ingredients and not have to look at the returns is realizable from a user-sourced database. Even for whole foods, there are a lot of database entries that are based on different forms (peeled, unpeeled, weighed raw, weighed cooked, etc.) and there are lot of entries that are just wrong. At this point in technology development, human judgment is still needed to choose among those entries.
In my experience, and the experiences of many other users I've seen reported on these boards, logging can get easier with time.
If you're making meals that you eat at one sitting, I would not bother with the recipe builder that amusedmonkey suggested, because if you enter the food directly into your diary, rather than create a recipe and log that, it will become part of your recent foods. You probably use a lot of the same foods over time, and it will be a lot quicker to select the food from your recent list (on the web), or start typing the food and have it located on your recent list (on the app) than to have to verify database entries.4 -
When I throw together a "whaever is gonna go bad first" stir-fry with small bits of 8-12 ingredients, it takes longer to log it than it does to cook it.livingleanlivingclean wrote: »
If those 8-12 foods are in your list of recents it takes no time at all. My lunch for next week has a lot of ingredients (11), all but one in my recents list. It took me about 30 seconds to check the box for each one and put in how much I wanted to incorporate. The more you do it, the quicker and easier it gets.
The one that wasn't took slightly longer...perhaps a minute or two. I had to find the nutritional info online, find a database entry, check they matched (they didn't), then edit it. It's now in my diary, and in my recent food lists (as well as "my foods" as I edited it).4 -
I use the "Meals" section also for dishes I prepare the way you describe - in which I vary the amounts of things I add in. Ro do this you:
- log the ingredients in the main dairy,
- "save as a meal" (you can even upload a pic via the phone app).
I do this too. An added tip (for meals and recipes)— next time you go to log it, if there’s an ingredient you typically use but didn’t this time, just set the serving numbers to zero. That way the ingredient will be there next time and you don’t have to search again.
The meal function is great if you only ate part and are keeping the rest as leftovers— when you add a meal to your log, it offers a serving size for the whole meal, so if you only ate 3/4, it will automatically adjust the entire list of ingredients to 3/4 serving.
4 -
Thanks folks, I am getting it now-I am just starting out...and was having a rather cranky-pants moment b/c this semester is winding down and I have a crazy amount of work due and maybe adding food tracking to my to-do list wasn't the smartest move on my part! Thanks to all you folks, I am not giving up and I do agree I will get quicker with it as I go!3
-
I use the "Meals" section also for dishes I prepare the way you describe - in which I vary the amounts of things I add in. Ro do this you:
- log the ingredients in the main dairy,
- "save as a meal" (you can even upload a pic via the phone app).
I do this too. An added tip (for meals and recipes)— next time you go to log it, if there’s an ingredient you typically use but didn’t this time, just set the serving numbers to zero. That way the ingredient will be there next time and you don’t have to search again.
The meal function is great if you only ate part and are keeping the rest as leftovers— when you add a meal to your log, it offers a serving size for the whole meal, so if you only ate 3/4, it will automatically adjust the entire list of ingredients to 3/4 serving.
FYI -- if you delete an ingredient from a saved meal that you've logged in your diary -- that is, from the logged version -- it doesn't affect the saved version, unless you intentionally replace the old saved meal with the new version. So you can delete instead of change it to zero servings of you want.1 -
livingleanlivingclean wrote: »
When I throw together a "whaever is gonna go bad first" stir-fry with small bits of 8-12 ingredients, it takes longer to log it than it does to cook it.livingleanlivingclean wrote: »
If those 8-12 foods are in your list of recents it takes no time at all. My lunch for next week has a lot of ingredients (11), all but one in my recents list. It took me about 30 seconds to check the box for each one and put in how much I wanted to incorporate. The more you do it, the quicker and easier it gets.
The one that wasn't took slightly longer...perhaps a minute or two. I had to find the nutritional info online, find a database entry, check they matched (they didn't), then edit it. It's now in my diary, and in my recent food lists (as well as "my foods" as I edited it).
Not really. It's likely I used all those ingredients before. Thus in the app if I type spring onion into the diary search without using recipe building or anything the right entry will come up.
I clean the spring onion, dry it, put on scale and quickly log it, then cut it into pieces. Takes about 5 seconds more than without weighing and logging. So ok, for 10 ingredients cooking might take 50 seconds longer. Or does it? After all, different ingredients have different cooking times, so usually the ingredients are long cleaned, weighted, logged and cut before they go into the wok to the rest of the ingredients.0 -
livingleanlivingclean wrote: »
When I throw together a "whaever is gonna go bad first" stir-fry with small bits of 8-12 ingredients, it takes longer to log it than it does to cook it.livingleanlivingclean wrote: »
If those 8-12 foods are in your list of recents it takes no time at all. My lunch for next week has a lot of ingredients (11), all but one in my recents list. It took me about 30 seconds to check the box for each one and put in how much I wanted to incorporate. The more you do it, the quicker and easier it gets.
The one that wasn't took slightly longer...perhaps a minute or two. I had to find the nutritional info online, find a database entry, check they matched (they didn't), then edit it. It's now in my diary, and in my recent food lists (as well as "my foods" as I edited it).
Not really. It's likely I used all those ingredients before. Thus in the app if I type spring onion into the diary search without using recipe building or anything the right entry will come up.
I clean the spring onion, dry it, put on scale and quickly log it, then cut it into pieces. Takes about 5 seconds more than without weighing and logging. So ok, for 10 ingredients cooking might take 50 seconds longer. Or does it? After all, different ingredients have different cooking times, so usually the ingredients are long cleaned, weighted, logged and cut before they go into the wok to the rest of the ingredients.
Did you mean to quote me? Not sure how it relates?0 -
I am ever so grateful to have MFP on hand; I record all food eaten - mainly calculated with spoon / cup sizes and it works for me. So far there is only a set of scales at the gym which can take my weight. I haven't been able to get there for the last 3 weeks or so, but according to MFP I should have lost a certain amount of weight during that time. Yesterday I was at the gym and the figures tally within about 500 g, (1 pound) over those 3 weeks - proof, that MFP works!1
-
livingleanlivingclean wrote: »livingleanlivingclean wrote: »
When I throw together a "whaever is gonna go bad first" stir-fry with small bits of 8-12 ingredients, it takes longer to log it than it does to cook it.livingleanlivingclean wrote: »
If those 8-12 foods are in your list of recents it takes no time at all. My lunch for next week has a lot of ingredients (11), all but one in my recents list. It took me about 30 seconds to check the box for each one and put in how much I wanted to incorporate. The more you do it, the quicker and easier it gets.
The one that wasn't took slightly longer...perhaps a minute or two. I had to find the nutritional info online, find a database entry, check they matched (they didn't), then edit it. It's now in my diary, and in my recent food lists (as well as "my foods" as I edited it).
Not really. It's likely I used all those ingredients before. Thus in the app if I type spring onion into the diary search without using recipe building or anything the right entry will come up.
I clean the spring onion, dry it, put on scale and quickly log it, then cut it into pieces. Takes about 5 seconds more than without weighing and logging. So ok, for 10 ingredients cooking might take 50 seconds longer. Or does it? After all, different ingredients have different cooking times, so usually the ingredients are long cleaned, weighted, logged and cut before they go into the wok to the rest of the ingredients.
Did you mean to quote me? Not sure how it relates?
Yep, meant to quote the TO0 -
It is time consuming when you first start but the more you utilise the menu and recipe functions, the easier and quicker it becomes. Good luck.1
-
I usually cook two meals a day pretty much from scratch but like most people, those meals are from a fairly set repertoire during weekdays.I either use the recipe builder or, if it is a common meal I save it in my meals. Much quicker to add next time I eat that. That way I only have to type the detail in once. If saving the meal, next time you add it to your diary it will list all the ingredients for you, then quick and easy to make any quantity adjustments.
Logging seems a faff at the start I know, but now I can log my meals in about 5 mins every morning and I feel that's a fair price for the benefits it gives me.0
Categories
- All Categories
- 1.4M Health, Wellness and Goals
- 391.3K Introduce Yourself
- 43.4K Getting Started
- 259.7K Health and Weight Loss
- 175.6K Food and Nutrition
- 47.3K Recipes
- 232.3K Fitness and Exercise
- 387 Sleep, Mindfulness and Overall Wellness
- 6.4K Goal: Maintaining Weight
- 8.5K Goal: Gaining Weight and Body Building
- 152.7K Motivation and Support
- 7.8K Challenges
- 1.3K Debate Club
- 96.4K Chit-Chat
- 2.5K Fun and Games
- 3.2K MyFitnessPal Information
- 22 News and Announcements
- 900 Feature Suggestions and Ideas
- 2.2K MyFitnessPal Tech Support Questions