Once you start doing it, you get pretty used to figuring out calories as you cook. Like pretty much any fat is 100 calories a T, eggs are about 80, spinach is almost zero, etc. fiber is much harder — I did that for a while for a kid with a medical issue and I really hard to look everything up, so an app would have been helpful.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I use LoseIt. I enter custom recipes and save them in case I ever repeat. Not hugely time consuming, but a bit. I don’t mind though, because it really does help me understand what I’m eating and how it impacts my body.

Same, I really like LoseIt.

Another fan of Loseit. Also, you can just input meal ingredients a lot of the time. If I have pasta with chicken, I just log the cooked chicken, the pasta, etc. Weigh everything and you are good to go.it gets easier with time.

I do the same thing as a PP. I just pick something off the app that seems like what I made/has similar calories. Keep portion sizes correct by filling your plate with half veggies/quarter protein portion/quarter carb. If you are eating spaghetti, aim for the amount in a Lean Cuisine, or meatloaf/mashed potatoes or whatever. Don’t let perfection get in the way of progress. I lost 40lbs over eight months without using a food scale, just common sense. Eat until you are 80% full at meals, limit snacking, drink a lot of water, and try to move more. It’s simple, just tough to stay consistent. The discipline is the hard part.

If you are feeling hungry sometimes you are probably doing it right. Hunger is your body burning the fat!

Also, My Fitness Pal has a new-ish recipe in-put option in which you list all your ingredients on one screen, then it searches for all of them at once, and then allows you to adjust quantities or swap out the entry it identified for another (for example, if it pulls an entry for olive oil that is only measured in fluid ounces, you can search for one that measures in tablespoons directly from that screen). It makes it easier than it was a few years ago (but I don't know if it is new since you last used it). And I don't bother with any ingredients that are negligible (spices, a garnish like sliced radishes or raw cabbage on a taco, etc.).

Anonymous wrote:I use LoseIt. I enter custom recipes and save them in case I ever repeat. Not hugely time consuming, but a bit. I don’t mind though, because it really does help me understand what I’m eating and how it impacts my body.

Same, I really like LoseIt.

I use My Fitness Pal. We make most of our food from scratch, but I only enter each ingredient in a recipe occasionally. Usually, I just search for the name of the item and "homemade," then I scan the results and pick one that seems to have an average number of calories (or I shade up or shade down if I know I used more or less of a very caloric ingredient, like butter or cheese).

Probably 90% of our meals are made from scratch or are from non-chain restaurants, but this method has helped me lose 25 pounds without stressing over how to enter every single item or spending a lot of time doing it. Also, I eat leftovers a lot, so once I identify an item, I keep using that one.

I use LoseIt. I enter custom recipes and save them in case I ever repeat. Not hugely time consuming, but a bit. I don’t mind though, because it really does help me understand what I’m eating and how it impacts my body.

You have to weigh your food and create your own recipe each time in MFP.

It's admittedly been a lot time since I used a food tracking app, but I remember getting frustrated because it was really hard to input all the homemade dinners. We eat dinners made from scratch and a WIDE variety of foods - almost never repeat a recipe during a month. Have apps gotten better/easier at tracking nutrition if you eat this way?

I'd like to track my eating for a month or two and see where I land in my protein to carb ratio, how much fiber I'm getting, etc. Hoping to make some adjustments that lead to healthier eating and possibly a little weight loss. Are there any apps out there that make this easy?