27 Months out and 13 lbs up from my lowest weight! Not a happy camper. At my last NUT appointment she said isn't it crazy that you can eat a very healthy diet, and still gain? Yep, it sure is. Over the past 27 months I have pretty much refused to track my foods. Tried it before and it made me crazy. However, weight gain makes me even more crazy, so.... going to give it another try. I think I'm going to try to log the night before and maybe even do the same menu a few days per week for simplicity. I am using the free version of My Fitness Pal at the moment. Any tips/tricks advice from the expert trackers out there. Also doing a little intermittent fasting but need to increase that I suppose. Thank you for chiming in

I hate tracking too - so no advice from me.

Catching yourself at 13 pounds is a victory.

Thank you. Surely we can do this. Lots of people do it without loosing their marbles....right? I saw someone post that they had everything logged first thing in the morning for the entire day. That sounds good. Sure I can scan an item and log it. Guess my biggest problem is when I cook. So many ingredients and portioning it properly is a pain. And converting from grams to oz or cups...the conversions are a pain sometimes. I mean how much is a cup of raw spinach? Do I squish it down? Maybe if we keep it super simple. Like 2 ingredient dishes that we use repeatedly. Gotta figure this out.

Eating the same foods help, not super fun, but super effective to know your intake .

Always salmon, chicken breast, ground turkey, steak , etc then you only need to adjust amounts consumed.

I use the same version of MFP and instead of entering breakfast lunch dinner, I enter everything in breakfast under a multiple add, sooo much quicker (plus I already know what I'm going to eat)

6 hours ago, IveGotThePower said:

Thank you. Surely we can do this. Lots of people do it without loosing their marbles....right? I saw someone post that they had everything logged first thing in the morning for the entire day. That sounds good. Sure I can scan an item and log it. Guess my biggest problem is when I cook. So many ingredients and portioning it properly is a pain. And converting from grams to oz or cups...the conversions are a pain sometimes. I mean how much is a cup of raw spinach? Do I squish it down? Maybe if we keep it super simple. Like 2 ingredient dishes that we use repeatedly. Gotta figure this out.

One cup of uncompressed raw spinach will be different in weight and volume than one cup of cooked spinach so weighing is a better bet, but I haven't been neurotic enough to weigh spinach.

For dishes you can either build it in recipes or enter separate ingredients and log each one. Totally up to you and how complex the meals are, I personally use the latter method.

Edited August 15, 20188 yr by GreenTealael

Sadly, I'm not very good at food tracking either. I'm 8 days posts and not even doing a good job of tracking my ounces or protien.

Yeah, I struggle to keep mine accurate. There’s a lot of guesses, particularly around portions. I’m looking at what is left on my plate and have no idea what I’ve consumed. Plus, unless you eat at huge fast food places, it’s pretty impossible to guess the calories in something unless the place has the info somewhere.

Its still better than nothing though!

I don't see how logging food before you've eaten it works for anyone. Even this far out, I cannot say what I am going to eat for the entire day.

When it comes to the godawful imperial measuring system (cups of spinach, or 1/4 of pork rinds) I always switch my scale to grams. The problem with the imperial system is many people/labels say 2 ounces (weight) instead of quarter cup when they are referencing fluid ounces (volume) . The metric system avoids that confusion with grams for weight and milliliters for volume.

I am meticulous with my tracking and have been for quite a while. I find it a valuable tool to prevent me from overeating. It also helps me determine if the hunger is real or just in my head. If I am already at 2,000 calories for the day, it is most likely head hunger. However, if I have been exceedingly active that day, it would make sense that I am truly hungry and need the sustenance.

The free version of MyFitnessPal is still pretty darn powerful if you are handy with spreadsheets. I just use their report and scrape the data from the HTML and enter it into my spreadsheet:

Those pictures are from last year, but the file is the same today but with more data.

15 hours ago, IveGotThePower said:

Thank you. Surely we can do this. Lots of people do it without loosing their marbles....right? I saw someone post that they had everything logged first thing in the morning for the entire day. That sounds good. Sure I can scan an item and log it. Guess my biggest problem is when I cook. So many ingredients and portioning it properly is a pain. And converting from grams to oz or cups...the conversions are a pain sometimes. I mean how much is a cup of raw spinach? Do I squish it down? Maybe if we keep it super simple. Like 2 ingredient dishes that we use repeatedly. Gotta figure this out.

Google gastric sleeve bariatric recipes. There are lots of blogs and sites that have excellent recipes and all the nutritional info too. I hate tracking food but it definitely keeps me accountable. And good on you for catching yourself before you slipped into bad habits! Good luck!

32 minutes ago, BigViffer said:

I don't see how logging food before you've eaten it works for anyone. Even this far out, I cannot say what I am going to eat for the entire day.

When it comes to the godawful imperial measuring system (cups of spinach, or 1/4 of pork rinds) I always switch my scale to grams. The problem with the imperial system is many people/labels say 2 ounces (weight) instead of quarter cup when they are referencing Fluid ounces (volume) . The metric system avoids that confusion with grams for weight and milliliters for volume.

I am meticulous with my tracking and have been for quite a while. I find it a valuable tool to prevent me from overeating. It also helps me determine if the hunger is real or just in my head. If I am already at 2,000 calories for the day, it is most likely head hunger. However, if I have been exceedingly active that day, it would make sense that I am truly hungry and need the sustenance.

The free version of MyFitnessPal is still pretty darn powerful if you are handy with spreadsheets. I just use their report and scrape the data from the HTML and enter it into my spreadsheet:

So no one else is meal prepping?

Pretty much the only good thing I will ever say about Weight Watchers is that their app for food tracking was fantastic. I'm not sure I'm willing to pay $15/month (or whatever) to a corporation that makes money off of the suffering of fat people--especially now that we have more data on the futility of "diet and exercise" as a weight loss approach, without surgical or other major intervention--but, man, that app. Everything had both grams and ounces, plus volume measurements. It was so good.

MyFitnessPal is ... not as good, but it's not horrible. Sometimes they have gram/ounce conversions and multiple measurements. Sometimes not.

In general, food tracking makes me a Crazy and Very Cranky Magpie. As an approach, it really bothers me, because it disincentivizes cooking with multiple ingredients and choosing small, local eateries over big chains when we go out -- because tracking those things is so much harder and more full of guesswork. But I try to work past those incentives and do what's healthy and just give things my best guess. (At non-chain restaurants, I always put in the highest-calorie version of the dish I'm trying to add. You wouldn't believe how much butter and cream and salt goes in restaurant dishes.)

For recipes that I make a whole lot (and with fairly consistent amounts of ingredients :)), I'll actually go to the effort of putting them in SparkPeople's Recipe Nutrition Calculator, so that I can add them in to MFP as complete servings. (Of course, you still have to know how many servings the recipe gives you. So, even with a recipe calculator, there's a little bit of estimation, for most of us.)

3 minutes ago, GreenTealael said:

So no one else is meal prepping?

Sure we meal prep, but the food I pack for work doesn't always get eaten. Or I just can't finish everything I packed. To me it works best if I measure/weigh before eating and the weigh after and log the difference if I don't finish.

Inversely, I have spare snacks in case I eat everything and yet am still hungry. If I only logged once a day, I would most likely forget those things completely.

1 minute ago, BigViffer said:

Sure we meal prep, but the food I pack for work doesn't always get eaten. Or I just can't finish everything I packed. To me it works best if I measure/weigh before eating and the weigh after and log the difference if I don't finish.

Inversely, I have spare Snacks in case I eat everything and yet am still hungry. If I only logged once a day, I would most likely forget those things completely.

Whew! Got it! Was worried I was doing all of this extra work in vain...

I am currently only logging full amounts whether I finished things or not as a safe guard against exceeding calorie amounts, I may rethink this strategy but I'm lazy

For me, once I got into the habit of it, it's not a big hassle to do so. I think MFP is amazing, especailly considering it's free.

I'm not neurotic about it, I don't weight or measure things like spinach. I do weight most things though, cheese, jerky, salad dressing, meat, beans, etc.

I don't cook a lot. It's pretty pointless when I can only eat 2 oz. But when I do I use MFP recipe builder. It works really well, IMO. For a big recipe I just guesstimate on the number of servings.

I eat out a lot, and mostly at non chains. I also generally use the highest calorie option for a dish. I don't stress out too much over it, I figure logging, even if it is 100% accurate gives me a better record than not logging. MFP is fantastic about having ethnic dishes in their data base.

27 Months out and 13 lbs up from my lowest weight! Not a happy camper. At my last NUT appointment she said isn't it crazy that you can eat a very healthy diet, and still gain? Yep, it sure is. Over the past 27 months I have pretty much refused to track my foods. Tried it before and it made me crazy. However, weight gain makes me even more crazy, so.... going to give it another try. I think I'm going to try to log the night before and maybe even do the same menu a few days per week for simplicity. I am using the free version of My Fitness Pal at the moment. Any tips/tricks advice from the expert trackers out there. Also doing a little intermittent fasting but need to increase that I suppose. Thank you for chiming in [emoji4]

I use MFP off / on (more on) religiously as I pay for the premium services. My suggestion is to log and measure your food. Many items have hidden calories. Log your drinks too.

I HAVE to measure to keep myself accountable and on track and when I do, I am successful, when I stop, I ultimately fail.

Yeah, I struggle to keep mine accurate. There’s a lot of guesses, particularly around portions. I’m looking at what is left on my plate and have no idea what I’ve consumed. Plus, unless you eat at huge fast food places, it’s pretty impossible to guess the calories in something unless the place has the info somewhere.
Its still better than nothing though!

Most fast food places post their nutritional information online. I'm neurotic enough that I scan the information before I order so I know what to expect when logging

MFP also has them listed. Keep in mind fast food buns are loaded with carbs, sugar and kcals