How do you minimize time logging meals?

After logging a few days, foods that regularly repeat should show up in your 'Add Food; list. Unless your food choices are constantly changing, eventually there should be a core collection of often logged foods. I have four pages of repeat entries and most days I can page through and simply click the box next to most of what I eat.

It’s certainly easier if you’ve a set of frequently eaten foods and meals. When I’m logging tightly in a weight loss phase then I do tend to have less variety in my diet and stick to items where I know their calorie content and it’s easy to repeat them as entries.

It honestly will be quick and easy once you get into the swing of it. Copying entire meals from previous days is also helpful. I do this a lot for breakfast and snacks etc during the working week.

Welcome to MFP.
It takes a little while to start with but it will get easier and you will eventually enter things without much hassle.

I use the My meals so I know on work days I have wheatbixs and milk with 2 coffees. Enter it save it and use over and over on any day without having to re enter each item.

For lunches and evening meal I use the my recipe.

Each meal may need adjusting due to weights of ,say vegetables I use

Good luck

This is probably what bums me out the most about being a diligent logger. I love to cook, and I cook freestyle, and I can’t just add a-bit-of-this-a-bit-of-that to the pot. Sadly, I find myself sticking to the same recipes and meals so I don’t have to re-enter everything. It’s a time saver, but it cramps my style. ☹️

IMO, it's finding the methods that are right for your preferences and style, and learning how to use MFP's tools (database, recent/current food lists, saved meals, saved recipes), plus kitchen tools (like a food scale) to support that style in the most efficient way practical . . . and I do mean "practical", not theoretically perfect". Accurate enough to succeed is literally accurate enough.

There's a learning a learning curve: It legit takes more time at first, because we're not very skilled at it. On top of that, it requires a lot of mindshare or brain bandwidth at the start, which makes the time seem even longer and the task feel even more burdensome. Stuff like "the package has serving in cups and grams, and I weighed in grams but it wasn't an even number of servings, and the food database only has serving size in cups" . . . there's conscious, plodding thought - maybe - to math that out.

After a while, most of that becomes habitual, automatic, pretty easy - a practiced skill. You become a virtuoso at logging.

All skills work this way, pretty much: When you were a little kid - if you remember - and learned to tie your shoes, at first when someone showed you, it seemed impossibly complex (for most of us anyway). After you'd been patiently led through it X number of times, you could do it on your own, but you probably were thinking hard on every step of it (maybe "bunny ears" method or some such). It was possible, but laborious. By adulthood, you probably just do it without even thinking about it, in mere seconds: Your fingers make the moves without you even giving it conscious attention. Logging is not that different.

For me, in year 7+ of maintaining a healthy weight by calorie counting (after around 30 previous years of overeweight/obesity), it's a rare day that takes even as much as 10 minutes - spread across the day - to log my eating. I do it pretty much without thinking about it, it's just how I cook and eat - and I'm one of those "make it up on the spur of the moment" cooks, mostly cooking from scratch. It's pretty common for a day to have 25-30 or more lines of food that I've logged, and I've weighed most of it.

To me, something less than 10 minutes a day is a ridiculously small price to pay to stay thin: My quality of life is So. Much. Better. Less pain, more mobility, capable of doing more things, even better mood and sense of well being. There aren't many things I do that have such a big payoff for such a small time investment!

On the practical side, different methods work for different people.

Me, I keep my food scale out on my counter.

Most things are weighed by the subtract method. (Put jar of peanut butter on scale, tare/zero scale, scoop out peanut butter, note negative number on scale - it's how much I took out - log that.)

Some things are weighed by the add method, say sandwich: Put plate on scale, tare/zero. Put bread on plate, note weight, zero. Add mayo, note weight, zero. Add cheese slices, note weight, zero. Repeat for all ingredients. Works for salads, sandwiches, ingredients going into a pot for soup/stew, whatever.

For me, it works best to note items/weights on paper as I cook, then log on my device later (when fingers aren't wet or food-y). I note on bits of paper on their way to recycling, like the back of junk mail envelopes. (Early in weight loss, I had to be a little more cautious, as I was developing an intuition about where I was in my calorie budget. Now I have a pretty good sense at dinner about whether I should check before adding a handful of sunflower seeds to my salad, or something.) Sometimes I wait to log in MFP until the end of the day, then maybe see that I have room for an extra evening treat.

Give yourself time to learn and get comfortable. Other people here can help you learn, either by you reading their posts, or by you posting questions of your own (like this one). It's kind of like the people who helped you learn to tie your shoes! If you're patient with yourself and the process, and give yourself some time to learn - recognizing that it's an investment in long-term improved health - you'll be surprised how soon you get comfortable with the details, and can do them in a shorter time, with less thought-effort.

Best wishes!

You can just jot down your 'this and that' additions on some paper or a small whiteboard and then enter it on MFP when done, that's a lot easier.

Rockmama1111 wrote: »

This is probably what bums me out the most about being a diligent logger. I love to cook, and I cook freestyle, and I can’t just add a-bit-of-this-a-bit-of-that to the pot. Sadly, I find myself sticking to the same recipes and meals so I don’t have to re-enter everything. It’s a time saver, but it cramps my style. ☹️

I would create base meals with the main ingredients, then just quick add any little modifications as you finish cooking.

MsCzar wrote: »

Lietchi wrote: »

You can just jot down your 'this and that' additions on some paper or a small whiteboard and then enter it on MFP when done, that's a lot easier.

I use a magnetic dry/erase board and to make things even easier, I divide the board into category columns so that I don't have to write down the food. I can just quickly write 150 in the CARBS column and 170 under the PROTEIN. That way I don't need to stop and write 'chicken breasts' or 'potato' while cooking.

When I cook, it’s the measuring that slows me down and stifles me, so jotting down for later really doesn’t help much. I keep track of everything that’s more than a few calories.

It’s just something I have to deal with.