Question about Myfitnesspal

tdmaus

Hello ladies,
since so many ladies on this board uses myfitnesspal to log their food to help them lose weight, i figured, i'll give it a try. However, how do know to log the right entry for home cooked meals? E.g. if i make a salad with different vegetables, how do i know, how to log it? Which serving size to select, etc? E.g. i made fried rice last night and had the left over in a small container for lunch today. How do i log that? Or when i go to restaurants and order an entree, how would i log that, since usually restaurants give bigger servings.

Sorry about all these food logging question, i just want to make sure, i have it correctly. According to myfitnesspal, i can only consume 1200 calories a day, so that adds up soooooo quickly! Hahaa.

Thank you!

maribeth721

What I have found most helpful is the recipe feature. I add recipes constantly because it's so much easier to track how much you're eating. If you add the recipe you can add in every ingredient in the amount that you are using total and it divides up the servings (you have to enter a number of servings with each recipe). Then when you add to your food diary you can just add 1 (or more) servings of whatever recipe. One thing to make sure of though is that serving sizes are accurate. I was surprised at how much I was overeating.

heyjude23

Ditto maribeth on the recipe feature.  That's the best way to get an accurate calorie count for home cooked meals.  And if you're like me and cook pretty much the same things every week, once you have the recipe in the system, it takes 2 seconds to add it to your diary.

Also, for going out to eat, if it's a chain restaurant, the database actually has a lot of their stuff in it so try out the search bar first.  If you can't find it, or aren't eating at a chain, I try my best to estimate calories and then use the Quick Add Calories tool to tack them on to my calorie count. 

Hope that helps!

entropicbeauty

If you don't input your own recipes for homemade stuff I've found that the search feature usually finds me something that is pretty similar to what I've made. Just make sure you actually know how much of whatever you're eating! Don't just estimate, actually know how many ounces or cups it is.