new here . any tips for great things on this app

Hi! I’m 52 and have a good amount of weight to lose. I’m not menopausal, but probably only because I had a hysterectomy. I’ve been on MFP for about 2 months now and know the app pretty well. Plus I have a great bunch of friends here, all of which have taken me under their wings. So, if I don’t know how to do something, I know where to go to get the answer. I’m offering that to you. I’m always up for new friends who I can support and who will support me. Right now one thing that jumps out at me to give you a tip on. Change your profile picture to something like your pet, a flower, or anything that is “gender neutral”. I found out the hard way if you actually have a picture of yourself, you will be the prey of the people on here who are out to pick up on the vulnerable, or basically ANY female. Before I changed my pic to my dog, I received 5 or 6 people who sent me a friend request. When I accepted, they immediately sent me a message “chatting” me up. And all my friends know about the latest pick up scam: a military guy, who is stationed overseas, who is s widower, and who has 2 younger children at home in the states. He starts off innocently enough then wants to know what kind of car you drive and it keeps getting more and more personal. Now that I’ve changed my profile pic, I have not received ONE of those creepy requests. I’m also now very picky on who I accept as a friend. If their profile is locked – nope. If I have not seen them posting on the boards - nope. If they have MANY friends, all of who are female – nope. Anyway this turned into a long post. But I did want to give you what I consider to be a useful tip, if you are serious about your health and weight loss journey and don’t view MFP as a nightclub or other pick-up joint. I’ve sent you a friend request and welcome you to MFP. The very best thing about this app is the support of everyone on the boards. It’s mind blowing!

My pleasure! If I can save one person from having to deal with that, then I’m happy!

JDavidPugh wrote: »

I just harass everyone equally!

Quit that!! You’re going to scare them off!! LOL
😜

NinzyStarDust wrote: »

Thank you for the profile tip Jacki916w, I’m new. I was going to put my photo up and then changed mine to my dog. 😁👍 What on earth is a BBCode?

Bulletin Board Code. It's a simple set of markup codes for things like bold, italics, underline, different sizes and colors of texts, and inserting images and hypertext links. Most of those have buttons just above the box where you write your posts, so you can just use the buttons instead of typing the code yourself.

To see them in action, click on the quote button below someone's post, like mine, for instance. Now look at the quoted text in the box where you're supposed to type. It will begin with an opening square bracket, the word quote, an equal sign and, in quote marks, the name of the person you're quoting, followed by a closing square bracket. At the end of the quoted text, you'll see an opening square bracket, followed by a slash, the word quote, and a closing square bracket. That's an example of BBCode. It can also be used for things like bolding and italicizing.

You don't need to use it. It can be helpful to understand it if you're quoting a post where the nesting (of quotes) is fouled up, or if you see after you post that the nesting is fouled up on your post. They generally (I think always, but I'm fudging in case I'm wrong) come in pairs, with the command in brackets to say you want to start something (like quoting or bolding text) and then a set of brackets with a slash (/) followed by the command to say you want to stop doing something (like quoting or bolding text.


Edited to add a couple examples of the code in my post.

My tip - just start. Commit to logging all your food/drinks. Don't even worry about the calorie target for the first week. Just log your current eating habits to see where you are. Then look back of the week and see where you can make small, sustainable changes that move you toward your goal.

This is my favorite get-started thread...

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