Community

Welcome!

MFP used to support a personal "wall" or bulletin board only viewable by you and your friends, so there was a reason to have friends. But that function was removed a few months ago, and largely the only benefit of having friends now is the ability to send a PM, or private message. Some people still hang onto friends out of nostalgia, others are trying to liken MFP to other social media sites and feel more empowered by boasting large friend lists. But you can still get everything you need…information, questions answered, social interaction…right here on the forums without a single friend. I have a number of MFP members I consider friends who are not on my "friends" list but we still interact daily here in the forums.

I cannot testify to the benefits of Premium and Premium+, I have only ever used the free version since joining over 15 years ago. Tracks calories the same, allows access to the forums, that's all I need.

Somebody else will have to talk about the recipe database, never tried using it.

Again, welcome!

there’s no real benefit to having “friends” anymore. Unfortunately, it’s now a hole in the baseboard for the rats like the romance and bitcoin scammers crawl through.

I used the free version for years. My husband still does. I have the premium version now simply because I eat high protein and it’s easier to track protein meal by meal by snack with the paid version. It’s worth it to me to be able to instantly glance and know what part of my day needs to be bumped up.

I’ve never used the recipes so can’t help you there. I’m more invested in taking foods we already love and making healthier choice and substitutions.

I just a minute ago mixed up some banana/mango/homemade greek yogurt ice cream base for the next couple days. I let them sit til they were extra extra ripe so I didn’t have to add sugar, other than a tiny little incidental bit in my Trader Joe’s Bourbon Vanilla Bean Paste.

Even if I do find an intriguing new recipe, the first thing I do is mentally calculate calories I’ve learned that the “nutrition facts” on most online recipes are wildly incorrect, or don’t include all the condiments, creams, etc that are added for photography purposes. So I do an initial calculation, followed by the “how can I make this lower calorie and how much lower can I get it” analysis. For example, I’ve found I can cut olive or sesame oils by 1/2 to 3/4 on most recipes without affecting taste. I also cut butters by 25% right off the bat when baking.

Anyway I diverge from your question. No idea how to search, and have only learnt in the past couple days that there’s now a “+” version of MfP. 🤦🏻‍♀️

Hello and welcome!

Dittos to comments from others above, about friending and such. The challenge and motivation threads in the relevant sections of the Community are a good way to get support and virtual social connection, if you feel that would help you. There are all "flavors" of those: You can read posts about them, and see if any feel like they'd suit you.

As far as searching recipes, if we're talking MFP's recipes, I feel like searching the MFP blog is more productive than using the Recipe Discovery function. You can go to the recipe/meal section of that here:

https://blog.myfitnesspal.com/category/meal-planning-recipes/

and use the magnifying glass icon to text-search for keywords of interest, like an ingredient ("cabbage"), a type of recipe ("burrito"), an eating style ("Mediterranean"), etc.

I'm not a huge recipe-er, more old school "just cook" style-wise, but I've found some ideas there for foods I've enjoyed. Others who are more recipe-oriented may have more nuanced ideas. If no on responds here, you could try asking in the Food and Nutrition part of the Community, using a post subject line about finding recipes.

Best wishes!