? for people who use calorie trackers like MFP, Lose It, etc.

What have you found to be the best way to track?

I tend to have a good idea of what I plan to eat and I will enter it into the tracker either right before/after I actually eat it. Then I will adjust portion sizes as needed based on what my # is showing. I have heard other people who put everything they plan to eat into the tracker in the morning and then will go back and correct it to see how they did?

Which have you found to be most effective, or is there some way that you combine both. If you plan your menu do you do it somewhere other than your tracker?

MFP has always been my favorite. It is just user friendly. Right after my surgery I would plan out meals and such as i was still learning about tracking so i got a pretty idea at the beginning of the day where I would need to " fill in" . But, now with it saving all my info as I eat pretty much the same things for breakfast during my work week I can do it as I go. But, I have learned that tracking is SO important. Now that i am venturing out and cooking different things and finding that I like things I never used to, I really enjoy punching it in to MFP to get an idea of where I am at during the day.

I have always loved to cook and try new things and this has always led to problems for me with tracking. I can enter a recipe no problem, but always end up confused with how many servings to list it as. I tend to guestimate and I know that will be a big no-no once surgery comes. Of course I might be eating less dishes with multiple ingredients as well so that might help.

I'm starting to measure out and package up my recipes as soon as they're done, since most of it is going straight to the freezer. When I measure according to my servings, I have to leave out 2-3 servings for hubby's dinner plus my 1, and the rest gets packaged up. That way, I know how many servings to divvy it up into when calculating the macros. I have my choice of programs to do it... my various recipe programs will do it, MFP will do it, it's just a matter of where I want to take the time to key/paste the ingredients in.

I cook and try new recipes often as well. To get around the "servings" thing, I break things down after the fact. I.e. If it's a stew or curry, I pick out and weigh/measure the protein, then the veg and then the sauce.

so instead of 1 serving of stew, my mfp entry would be something like 2.5oz of beef, 1/4C carrots and 1/4C gravy. Still not perfect, but close enough.

the main reason I don't often use the servings option in mfp, is my serving will always have more protein and less everything else.

Not sure if that makes sense, but basically I make a recipe, deconstruct it to log it, reconstruct to it eat. It sounds like work, but it's pretty instant.

ME TOO!!!!

When I was losing, I was RELIGIOUS about MyFitnessPal. Right after surgery, it's simple. I mean, how hard is it to plug in half of a chicken sausage or 2 oz of ground turkey with taco seasoning? It's not like you need super complex recipes at that time. I always found that logging the night prior was key. It helped me plan my day, and I could make adjustments depending on my macros. So if on a Sunday night I logged my breakfast, lunch, dinner and snack...and saw that carbs were 50 (and during losing I kept them under 30) then I could immediately adjust what I planned to have for one of those meals, to make sure I stayed on plan. I went from 351 to 160 doing that :)

Good luck - it seems like you are really getting your head in the game which is going to help you immensely!!!

Thank you.

I think I am going to give it a try this way. It seems like it does help people stay on plan.

I track right after I'm done eating, that way I can see where I need to cut back and how much protein I still need to get. I'm pretty good about measuring everything out and weighing all meats so I can get as close as possible to being accurate. That's just my personal preference.

Thanks!