Pre-op food tracking

[1slyoldfox 0]

I've just had my 1st meeting with my nutritionist, and she said to track mt food intake. Does anyone out there have a good way to do this online, or is a spiral notebook the way to do it?

[NP_WIP 274]

I prefer an app, prior to surgery I was using My Fitness Pal for years, but after surgery switched to Baritastic. But I think online may help you more if they are trying to see how many calories you are consuming etc

[ClevelandBiker 20]

I've tried apps in the past, but figuring out the calories, carbs & Protein and all for things I made at home I found very frustrating.

During my pre-op clearance process (surgery is scheduled for 3 weeks away) I was placed in a weekly group session with psych. One of the things we discussed was keeping a food diary.

We were told in the class that food diaries are the #1 best predictor of weight loss. What helped me was when I was advised not to focus on the macros, or calorie counts but to focus on what I ate, when I ate it and how I felt.

I whipped up a spreadsheet on Google Sheets and just go to it on my phone and list it down, it was frustrating at first but I found it has really helped me these last two months that I have been doing it. I'm hopeful that it has helped me be on the right footing in my post-op "new life."

I hope that helps.

[Deblynn74 2]

I've just had my 1st meeting with my nutritionist, and she said to track mt food intake. Does anyone out there have a good way to do this online, or is a spiral notebook the way to do it?

You can try myfitnesspal app

Sent from my LM-G710 using BariatricPal mobile app

[catwoman7 10,923]

a lot of us seem to use either MyFitnessPal (the free version) or Baritastic

[hills&valleys 130]

I really like the Fitbit food tracker. I can enter the nutritional info manually for recipes that include multiple ingredients or I can scan the barcode for packaged items and it automatically enters the nutritional information per serving. The serving sizes of both the manual (custom) entries and the barcode scan can be easily adjusted. Any item which is not in the Fitbit data base can be easily submitted through the mobile app.

The only downside I have found is that the information is only stored for 28 days. I am hoping to find a way to store the information in another file on my computer.

[MountainClover 81]

I like MyFitnessPal. Its free.

[pintsizedmallrat 470]

I use Lose It...it is a paid app but considerably cheaper than the Premium version of My Fitness Pal, and has just as many features.

If you're using pen and paper you're probably going to need to use an app or website to look up calories/macros so it seems redundant not to use an app where you can look things up and log in the same step.

Edited March 21, 2023 by pintsizedmallrat

[SemperVeritas 33]

I previously used MFP, but switched to Lose It, and I really like it. I use the the paid version.

[pintsizedmallrat 470]

1 minute ago, SemperVeritas said:

I previously used MFP, but switched to Lose It, and I really like it. I use the the paid version.

I ditched MFP when they started dropping features (things like being able to scan barcodes) from the free version to try to entice people to pay $20/mo

[SemperVeritas 33]

33 minutes ago, pintsizedmallrat said:

I ditched MFP when they started dropping features (things like being able to scan barcodes) from the free version to try to entice people to pay $20/mo

Right?! Plus I like the features in Lose It to keep notes, take progress pictures, easily track my Protein. I guess maybe the paid version of MFP might include those things, but I didn't want to pay to find out!

[pintsizedmallrat 470]

5 minutes ago, SemperVeritas said:

Right?! Plus I like the features in Lose It to keep notes, take progress pictures, easily track my Protein. I guess maybe the paid version of MFP might include those things, but I didn't want to pay to find out!

It has all that but it is more expensive than Lose It by a country mile

[Theia103121 21]

On 3/20/2023 at 4:08 PM, catwoman7 said:

a lot of us seem to use either MyFitnessPal (the free version) or Baritastic

I was wondering (not to hijack the original thread) what is the difference between MFP and Baritastic. Is one more appropriate for bariatric surgery patients? I'm using the free version of MFP right now and it seems to be doing what I need it to, but is there important features I'm missing?

[Nepenthe44 188]

On 9/13/2023 at 7:26 PM, Theia103121 said:

what is the difference between MFP and Baritastic

It used to be that MFP had a lot of features that didn't work for bariatric patients, which is still true to some extent, but they've made updates. Like, it used to scold you if you ate fewer than 1200 calories in a day. You couldn't set goals of fewer than 1200 calories, so some of the tracking counts wouldn't really work, especially if you're focused on macros.

Now I can easily set my daily goal to 800 and go from there. They've added more macro focused features and the ability to turn off "eating back" exercise calories.

MFP still isn't great. You can't have more than 4 meal categories, for example. No tracking for mood or bowel movements (I def. track the latter on a separate form because of some experiences early on that I am not repeating). If I were starting food tracking anew, I'd probably use Baritastic, but after a decade I'm not switching from MFP.