Horrible at logging food
JKolb17
Posts: 11 Member
I've tried multiple times to log all my food in here but I'm just horrible at keeping up. I will log it good for a day or two then plain forget and get back in a couple days/weeks later and give up all together. I find it frustrating to search for, add, etc. I make about 95% of my own food and trying to find the caloric equivalent to everything is honestly a pain in the butt. I know everyone says "weigh your food" "add it in to the log" etc. But when does everyone have time and/or patience for this? Am I missing something? Fed up with keeping my food diary up.
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Replies
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i eat a lot of the same foods so after a few days/weeks the majority of things are in my recent and quick to populate. weighing is pretty fast once you get the hang of it, and you can avoid dirtying multiple spoons/cups.
it`s even easier when making your own really. put raw ingredient on scale, log it (either as an item or in a recipe) and tare the scale and add the next.
i take time in the morning to log.
Again it IS more tedious the first few days and weeks but it really becomes quick and easy for 95% of foods once you have some practice and a good list of "good" entries to pick from in your recents.
One option is to log one meal a dya for a few weeks. then once that becomes easy, add another.3 -
I just finished weighing out 15g of chips. It took 1 minute. Literally, 60 seconds. If you're serious about the weight loss, you'll take the few minutes (not exaggerating) to weigh and log your food. If you've figured something out that works for you that doesn't involve precise accurate tracking, definitely do what works! If not, it's a "bite the bullet" situation - you'll just have to make the small amount of time to keep up with the process.13
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smoofinator wrote: »I just finished weighing out 15g of chips. It took 1 minute. Literally, 60 seconds. If you're serious about the weight loss, you'll take the few minutes (not exaggerating) to weigh and log your food. If you've figured something out that works for you that doesn't involve precise accurate tracking, definitely do what works! If not, it's a "bite the bullet" situation - you'll just have to make the small amount of time to keep up with the process.
weighing chips shouldn't even take 60 seconds honestly!
bowl on scale, tare, pour chips (maybe remove a chip or add a chip) then put chips away. the extra time to weigh should be 20 seconds at most. maybe 30 if you were planning to eat out of the bag so the extra step is get a bowl and put on scale, pour.
keeping scale on counter ready to go is key.5 -
Hi there!
So in my experience, measuring and logging food is super helpful. Critical. Most people are bad at estimating how much they are eating, and being off really adds up. It's super easy to underestimate.
Other people have had a similar experience, me included. Be patient with yourself. If this was easy, we'd all be skinny already!
This gets easier once it's a habit. If you are willing to invest in building the right habits, this does eventually get easier!
When I took this on, after failing at logging, I tried again, but just logging my breakfast. Win for the day if I logged breakfast! Once I was reliable at that, I started adding other meals. Breakfast was the easy place to start for me. Your mileage may vary.
James Clear talks a lot about building habits. Here's a link to a great article of his. Scroll past the mention of his excellent book and dig in (but if you want more, it really is a good book!):
https://jamesclear.com/habits
His article on motivation is also excellent:
https://jamesclear.com/motivation
Good luck! Don't quit!7 -
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Here's the thing: At first, it's more work. You look things up, double check correctness, etc. But as you do that,
1. Your "recent foods" list gets populated, and you don't have to check the things you eat regularly. \
2. You put your routine, invariant recipes in the recipe builder, then you can use them from there with minimal clicks.
3. You recognize that you eat certain general patterns over and over, and you save those as a meal. That lets you add those to your diary as a list of foods all at once, then you can make minor tweaks to quantities or add/subtract a subset of ingredients. (For example, if you make veggie omelets regularly with different veggies, you can make a meal with a couple of eggs, a measure of oil, and a list of your most frequent veggies. When you cook that, copy in the meal, then one-click delete the veggies you're not using this time.)
4. You learn how to use your food scale in an efficient way. (Tips are in this thread: https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10498882/weighing-food-takes-too-long-and-is-obsessive (don't worry, the thread title is a joke)).
So, it's a fuss and bother to get everything all set up, but that's an investment. Once you get that set-up and learning done, and settle into a routine, it's not time-consuming at all. I'd be surprised if weighing/logging adds more than 10 minutes to my typical day . . . which, to me, is a small price to pay for staying at a healthy weight for going on 4 years now, after several decades of obesity. YMMV.10 -
Thank you, I am trying to build up my list of go to foods and meals. I've been adjusting my diet since the beginning of the year and just started crossfit so I really want to track my calories. I guess I need to up my level of patience and keep logging so I can get to a place where I can just pick from my list or re-use meals. :-) I just have to get in the "habit" and not put it off until I forget what I ate. Thanks!6
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I feel exactly the same way. BUT I seem to hold myself more accountable when I log (I eat better when i have to write it down), so that kind of keeps me going. I tend to food prep a lot on the weekends - not necessarily whole meals, but ingredients - so right now I have cooked chicken breast, stir fry veggies, rice, cauli rice, strawberries, etc. already prepped and in the fridge. In addition to making my life easier during the week, that also makes it easier to log my meals (at least for me) - 5 oz chicken bread, 1/4 C cauli rice, etc. (one of these days, I'll start weighing it all - but this works for me).
Also - I don't stress too much about being exact. I didn't think to weigh/measure all my veggies before i stir fried them, so I just found a generic "stir fry veggies" entry to use. If I can manage to log all (or at least most) of my food and make progress - then I think that's good enough. I know from past experience that logging my food really does work - but, at times, I really hate it. I just try to do the best I can and not worry about it too much.3 -
Logging food, especially home made food is a major pain in the butt. I agree with you. But it comes with your commitment to shape yourself in to a better form.
There are no or little shortcuts, you just have to be committed. It comes with a territory.
Stay strong2 -
One thing that seems help me is that I keep some paper nearby in the kitchen for writing my notes of the various weights of ingredients I use whenever some recipe is taking several ingredients. I do the cooking, then some time later I take the paper to the computer and do the logging.5
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Weighing and logging really only takes a couple of minutes a day. 5-10 at most. We waste time on some many other things that are more time consuming and take more effort than weighing and logging food. It doesn't really take patience or time, but it does take some discipline. You have to commit to doing it and building it into your routine. Once you do, it will get easier.4
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JeromeBarry1 wrote: »One thing that seems help me is that I keep some paper nearby in the kitchen for writing my notes of the various weights of ingredients I use whenever some recipe is taking several ingredients. I do the cooking, then some time later I take the paper to the computer and do the logging.
good point. i take photos with my phone sometimes to do the entry in recipe later.2 -
In real life I have coworkers who have seen the amount of weight I've lost (and kept off) - and they see that I pretty much eat what I want. They ask how I do it. When I say I log my meals and watch the calories their eyes glaze over and it never fails that they tell me, "I don't have time for that."
Here's the thing - they apparently have time to remain fat. I'm not being mean... It's just they won't take advantage of a tool that might help them lose weight.
We all take time to balance our finances (I hope). Why? Because it's important to know what our bank balance is. Does it really take long? Does it matter - or is it necessary and we make time?
Logging meals is similar. Does it take that long? Not really. Does it matter? Not to me - it is a tool that has made me successful. As others have said it gets easier and faster. We are mostly creatures of habit and eat many of the same foods so they pop up in recently added items. I also cook and do most of the cooking - I can't see that it makes it any more difficult.
Stick with it and logging accurately will become easy. Family will get used to it. Good luck.8 -
I'm gonna kind of buck the trend here.... I am very sloppy with my logging, I log everyday (mostly, I missed a very busy weekend) but I have a tendency to just pick the entry that most closely matches because I cook most of my meals at home and ....heaven forbid! I don't have a scale! I know, I know, I could probably be getting better results if I was more diligent but the fact is I am losing inches and I am slowly losing weight doing what I'm doing, so, for me, I am not going to get hung up on precision. Now when I get closer to my goal weight, I very well might invest in a scale but for now I am going to continue going to the gym, weigh myself daily, and do guesstimate logging.
BUT I am also not on here asking for a bunch of advice and whining about not losing either because I ultimately know what I need to do.9 -
InspectorRed wrote: »I'm gonna kind of buck the trend here.... I am very sloppy with my logging, I log everyday (mostly, I missed a very busy weekend) but I have a tendency to just pick the entry that most closely matches because I cook most of my meals at home and ....heaven forbid! I don't have a scale! I know, I know, I could probably be getting better results if I was more diligent but the fact is I am losing inches and I am slowly losing weight doing what I'm doing, so, for me, I am not going to get hung up on precision. Now when I get closer to my goal weight, I very well might invest in a scale but for now I am going to continue going to the gym, weigh myself daily, and do guesstimate logging.
BUT I am also not on here asking for a bunch of advice and whining about not losing either because I ultimately know what I need to do.
This. I think if the truth were told many of us get sloppy at times - I do. I also think like you though we know that if we start to stall or have issues we know that one of the first steps is to tighten our logging and be more mindful about what we're doing.3 -
Thank you all for the great input. I will definitely take all of your advice and run with it. I usually create my weekly menu and cook up a bunch of food on Sundays and put it in my fridge. I will start weighing it out before I put it away and that in turn should help my logging. I also won't be so hard on myself for being sloppy at times. Reading through some of the posts on here can be a bit intimidating but I need to keep in mind doing a little is better than doing nothing and I'm not going to perfect.6
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There are many good tips on here! Don't give up!
I work 50+ hours/week as a teacher and add 20+ hours/week as a dog trainer on top of that and I find the time to weigh and log everything! I cook from scratch every night of the week except for Saturday. In order to stay within my caloric allotment, I eat very easy and quick breakfasts and lunches--usually prepackaged shakes, bars, and the like. This saves a lot of logging time as I just copy the previous day's entry until I change foods.
I'm very motivated to succeed and that is part of what drives me to remember to weigh and log everything.
Find your motivation and do it!!!1 -
If you always stick to your weekly menu, you can pre-log your week in advance. This way a good chunk of your day will be logged and you will only need to tweak it if something changes.3
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I'm sort of halfway between perfect and sloppy logging. I'll always log my breakfast and lunch, which is pretty easy since I mostly tend to eat the same things for those meals. But once I know how many calories I have left over for dinner, if I make something that I know from past experience fits within that budget, I'll often not bother to actually log it.2
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I wasn't very good in the beginning. It was clunky and unnatural. I would forget to get the raw weight before cooking and more than a few times I started eating before I weighed anything. Even when it wasn't 100 percent accurate I kept logging because something is always better than nothing.
In a few short weeks it was routine. I still committed many newbie errors but I was getting there.
Fast forward 400+ days and now I am actually uncomfortable if more than an hour goes by without logging my food. We attended a party on Saturday that lasted for close to 4 hours and even though I knew my log would have a lot of guesswork in it I was still relieved when I was finally able to log it.4 -
Thank you all for the great input. I will definitely take all of your advice and run with it. I usually create my weekly menu and cook up a bunch of food on Sundays and put it in my fridge. I will start weighing it out before I put it away and that in turn should help my logging. I also won't be so hard on myself for being sloppy at times. Reading through some of the posts on here can be a bit intimidating but I need to keep in mind doing a little is better than doing nothing and I'm not going to perfect.
Fabulous! Feeling like I need to be perfect is always a block to any progress at all. None of us can manage it.2 -
I'm HORRIBLE at this, but have gotten much better as of late. I now do it as a way to keep myself honest and make sure I'm hitting all my macros properly. I know I'm doing the work in the gym, so if I log my food and am honest with myself, I know what follows will be progress or I can adjust as necessary. Still not easy, but the tips & tricks here are all helpful. I've also gotten SUPER regular about meals to keep it simple.
Good luck!1 -
The effort it takes to start logging is a little bit front loaded. As in at first it's a little bit time consuming but after a short while it's super quick.
Yes there are millions of entries in the database and yes many of them are terrible and yes finding the right entry is a pain. The first time you put together a meal with, say 5 ingredients you'll spend 1 minute weighing in total and a good 5 minutes for each food item searching in the database and finding an entry. That's almost half an hour just to log one meal. But, chances are for the most part you only really eat a few dozen different things and very quickly, after the first week or so, all those foods you've located will be in your recent list. That same meal that took 30 mins to log last time now takes maybe 2 minutes or less and if you make it into a recipe or saved meal then logging will take all of 15 seconds.
As for the forgetting to log you can set reminders in the app until logging becomes habit. I have one that reminds me to record my weight each Sunday but you can set them to send you a reminder if you haven't logged a particular meal by a certain time. So if you haven't logged breakfast by 10am then you get a reminder. Or you can set one to send if you've not logged anything for 1 day, or 3 or 7.3 -
JeromeBarry1 wrote: »One thing that seems help me is that I keep some paper nearby in the kitchen for writing my notes of the various weights of ingredients I use whenever some recipe is taking several ingredients. I do the cooking, then some time later I take the paper to the computer and do the logging.
The same here. Very helpful when logging a new recipe.2 -
There are lots of good ideas here so I'll just add my support for logging food. It's a nuisance but, when I stopped doing it, my weight started to go up again. When I started logging again, my weight started to go down again. Simple! Good luck, don't give up! :-)1
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i have a little basket with pens, post-its and a calculator on the sideboard by my scale. i tend to log what i'm having beforehand if its on my list and tweak the amounts after. it seems to work well for me.1
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I seem to have a problem logging Jaffa Cakes...2
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First time it takes a bit longer. But now if I cook from scratch weighing and logging takes about 1 minute because I like certain foods and reuse them frequently. Cherry tomatoes, chicken breast, garlic, onion, etc.. I always get the things I used before at the top of my list and don't need to check anymore whether they are good or not. And believe me, I do use quite a few ingredients when I cook.
When I cook for two or three days I log all ingredients, save as a meal and log 1/3 of that. Or I find I don't like it to recook, leave the 2-3 portions in my diary and then divide by however many portions I have and just copy from date for the coming days. So logging for one day might take a short moment longer but will take no time at all on the next.3 -
I pre-log soooo much. I also cook or prep a lot of stuff on the weekend to eat for the week so I log a lot of that ahead on the weekend when I make it (e.g. all my lunches for the week). When I get to the day of I may have to slightly tweak an amount or something, but that doesn't take long. If you eat the same thing multiple times in a week, you can use "copy meal" to copy to another meal that week really quickly, and then just adjust the weight of some items etc. If it's something you cook a lot, use the recipe feature. You can also save "meals" that you frequently have.
Also, if you have an Android phone, you can add the Myfitnesspal Widget. You can click the barcode scanner icon and jump straight to scanning mode to barcode scan a food really quickly. Click on the + and it will take you to search for foods, or click on the calories remaining and it will take you to your diary for the day. It is pretty much the only way I use the app now because it saves some clicks. https://myfitnesspal.desk.com/customer/en/portal/articles/1404270-how-do-i-install-android-myfitnesspal-widget-1
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