Tips for keeping track of calories when you haven't time

Do you mean the meal scan feature or the barcode scanner? The meal scan feature has been hit-or-miss for me. It seems to work best for common, distinct foods that are well-separated on the plate. I LOVE the barcode scanner, but occasionally it matches to a listing with incorrect or out of date stats, so you should still check the product label.


My best tips are:

Log what you THINK you're going to eat the night before, then update your diary as you go or at the end of the day. (That doesn't magically create the time to do it, but it's a lower-chaos time.)

If many of your meals are variations on a pattern, you can set up a single meal entry for that pattern with several options in each category. For example, for "meat/starch/veg", you could create one saved meal with roasted chicken breast, grilled steak, baked salmon, mashed potatoes, baked potato, rice, roasted broccoli, glazed carrots, side salad, etc. Then if you eat chicken, baked potato, and a side salad, you add the whole meal and delete the items you didn't eat. That can be faster than adding each item for every meal, or setting up a meal for each combo.

Using fewer ingredients and repeating meals more often makes logging a lot faster, but that's NOT a good choice if you easily get bored with your food.

You MAY be fine not tracking your lowest-calorie foods, like non-starchy vegetables, lemon juice, mustard, etc. I recommend tracking everything carefully for a week or two, and deleting those items to see how much that causes you to underestimate. If it's enough to matter (and pretty stable on average), you can adjust your calorie target to compensate. This is not for everyone and can become a slippery slope, so it's a good idea to verify it every few months.

If you know some foods have nearly identical stats, it doesn't matter which one you log. 2oz of pasta has the same stats, whether it's spaghetti or bucatini. Olive oil and corn oil have different types of fat, but very similar calories and fat grams.

BTW, you only mentioned tracking calories, so that's what I assumed in these tips. If you're also tracking macros, vitamins, etc., that may not all apply.

I hear your struggle and I’m right there with you with 2 littles (6 and 1). I do have the pro version of MFP and I think it’s well worth it. I don’t always log everything I eat. But I think about it like this: “Today is a new day to make different choices. What can I do differently today that will help me reach my goals?” And don’t give up because of a bad day, week, month, few months, etc. Give yourself some grace and don’t obsess over the process. Your kids will learn from what you do and how you react. If you’re too obsessed with the app and eating perfectly every day, what will that teach them? If you’re constantly looking at the scale and getting frustrated, how will they handle that number when they’re older? Set good examples now and do the best you can. Good luck momma. You’ve got this!!!

Logging only takes a few minutes out of your day, and for me it’s so worth it. Most of the time I pre log the night before so I have an eating plan for the next day, or sometimes the next few days. Any adjustments/amendments in my pre logged diary takes very little time. Even on my busiest days, I always find time to log. Logging is one of the main things that’s helped me maintain a 90lb weight loss for over 6 years so I’d definitely recommend trying to fit it in to your busy schedule.