Logging food when you cook your own?

[NFNich]

I just got my Force today. I logged breakfast and lunch, pretty straightforward. But I cook most of our food, and some of what we cook with we grew and canned last year. The Database, like all the rest, are geared toward restaurant meals and packaged foods, which we seldom use. I don't want to enter 20 different ingredients for something like a curry or a stew. Any help?

[slysam]

I find it easiest to use a nutrition tracking site that includes a "recipe calculator". With a recipe calculator, you enter all your ingredients in totals for the recipe, then you enter how many "servings" (usually you can note what you define as a serving for reference) then it generates a nutrition label for your recipe. There are a few nutrition tracking apps or websites that include recipe calculators and log to fitbit. I prefer the recipe calculator at Spark People for a few reasons. The main reason is it actually logs the specific food to Fitbit (some only log meal summaries), it includes detailed information on vitamin and mineral content, you can save recipes for future logging and edit them, and you can share recipes or find recipes others shared. Some do something similar on Fitbit by saving "meals", but I find it a little too cumbersome to save a meal with 1/4 an egg, 1/8 teaspoon of baking powder, etc. Using a recipe calculator is a lot easier especially since there are a few that will log to fitbit for you. In addition to Spark people, My Fitness Pal and Loseit also have recipe calculators.

[NFNich]

Thanks! I've used WW Recipe Builder, but I was hoping to find something I didn't have to pay for each month. I'll check it out.

[smhermione]

Many people using fitbit also use My Fitness Pal which has a large selection of foods in their database and a recipe calculator where you can save your recipies.  The best part is that it is free and links directly to your fitbit account.

[slysam · Accepted solution]

I think most of the nutrition tracking websites that can link with Fitbit are free. Some of them do have premium options that cost, but I don't have the premium options, the basics and more are available free. the app I mentioned Spark People does charge a purchase price for the app now, I believe. But the website is free. It isn't a monthly fee though. I actually downloaded the app when it was free so I am not sure how much it costs. My Fitness Pal and I believe loseit are free. I used all three of these for a period of time (not all together), and my favorites for different reasons are a tossup between Spark and My Fitness Pal. I like Spark for the recipe calculator, it logs the individual foods by name to Fitbit, it tracks more detailed nutrition data (vitamins and minerals) and has some great resources like workout videos and recipes. I like My Fitness Pal because I think it is a little easier to use, it has a lot of foods in the database, I like the way it integrates with the Fitbit data. It logs meal summaries to Fitbit though not specific foods. I think either one is good and you can set up free account son both so you can test and see which you personally prefer.

[NFNich]

I went ahead and signed up with SparkPeople yesterday. The iPhone app is $3.99 which is a LOT less than the WW monthly. So far everything is working just as expected.

[Yelena36]

Thank you for the info about Spark People. I made a huge pot of vegtable soup yesterday and spent a long time adding each ingredients calorie count and then dividing the whole thing by 48.  This is a much easier solution

[Fodao]

I signed up for myfitnesspal in anticipation of getting my Fitbit, and I have to say that I'm really impressed with its food logging. They have about every food under the sun, from raw to cooked to different brands. I haven't stumped it yet (despite trying today with an anjou red pear. Nope - it had anjou in there!)

Like you, I like to prepare a lot of my own food, and MFP has a great "remember meal" function for the stuff you do a lot. For example, I LOVE me some steel cut oats for breakfast, and I refuse to skimp on the butter and brown sugar. So I created a meal that consists of 1/2 cup Bob's s.c. oats, a pat of butter, and 1tsp of brown sugar, and I saved it in my database. Now whenever I decide to make some oats for breakfast, I just click the meal and it adds the whole list (including nutritional information) to my food journal. If I decide to make more, or if I don't finish what I make, that's fine as well, cos you can adjust the portions of the meal as a whole, and the ingredients follow suit. (If, for example, I log .5 of my "Steel Cut Oats" meal, it does the math and adds .5 of all the ingredients to the journal.)

Best thing about myfitnesspal is the fact that it's free (including the iOS app!) And it syncs fairly seamlessly with Fitbit (your foods show up instantly in fitbit, and your Fitbit-logged exercise calories are reflected automatically in MFP.)

[NFNich]

SparkPeople has a similar feature. I can either save groups of foods (like the pan-roasted apples, greek yogurt, and sprinkle of homemade granola that is my current favorite breakfast), entire meals, or copyfoods from one day to the next.  

[Vicki-Z]

I use My Fitness Pal as well and do put recipes in there. However, I know what you mean, you want to track it now and it's a homemade soup or something with lots of stuff in it. I usually put in the main ingredients for the whole recipe individually and then estimate the serving. So if the dish calls for a whole potato I'll put that in but if the recipe makes 8 servings of soup, I'll tell it I ate 1/8. I'll do that for all the ingredients except for spices. I leave the spices off since they aren't going to count for calories and then if I think I'm going to make the dish again, I'll put the whole recipe in when I have time.

[jasminenh]

I love Spark People!!  I first used it in 2009 and again in 2012 and it seems when I stop logging my food, the bad habits come back, as does the weight gain, and so I am committed to logging my food for the rest of the year at least!  I love that I can group ingredients that I use - for instance, when I make a salad, I have a Salad group and I track it, then remove any ingredients I didn't use.  Good luck everyone!

[Gsnthensome]

My fitness pal is AWESOME and FREE!!!!! Make recipes and state how many servings and it does the rest! You can link your MFP account and fitbit together too! But if you do that just remember to log ALL food and extra exercise in MFP so fitbit doesn't log it twice!

[dznechick]

I found this website which seems to work really well, and very easy to use

http://caloriecount.about.com/cc/recipe_analysis.php

[runningonmtt]

Loving all the tips on this subject as I too cook from scratch for healthier options and find that I was spending alot of time putting in the ingredients and then dividing it into servings and actually asked how to do that on this site...LOL

In any event, I had MFP prior to getting fitbit - I should revisit it and link it in......because I already know how to use and if it syncs will make life alot easier!  THANKS!

[Yayita]

Is there any way to scan barcodes using the mobile app?

[DarleneM]

I also use Nutritional calculators I have found on line for items that I fix that are not in the Fitbit database. Also, I have found a few entries that were wrong, people who entered them didn't get the calorie count correct, so watch for those.  If you have to, keep a spreadsheet of your own favorite food items and how many calories things are per serving.  Home grown foods don't have labels but it's easy enough to Google nutrional information and keep track of your own stuff. You can add foods to the database yourself or keep track of them on your own.  What ever works best for you.

I live alone and often make recipes that serve 6-8 people. I'm certainly not going to eat the entire thing so I use the "Create a meal" feature and add all the ingredients to the "meal" and then designate that the meal is "6 or 8 servings". I normally eat at least one serving that day and freeze the others.  So when I enter my "Dinner", I select that meal and only ONE serving. The Fitbit tool should calculate 1/6th or 1/8th of the total calories for you. This is very helpful to me because it's much easier than trying to do the math.  Also, watch certain processed ingredients; often the container will say "200 calories per serving" but the container holds multiple servings.... such as Progresso Soups being more than one serving per can.

I hope this helps you as much as it did me. I kinda discovered it on my own.

Darlene

NC

[BvilleChick]

If you have my fitness pal, there is an option to scan a barcode and then add the item. It will then save it to the food database.

[steveo314]

hello so if i am making a recipe i enter all the stuff on the label that i use. so if i had 10 different items i would enter all 10 nutriction labels in to the recipe builder wow then i would save it? and i do this under my fitness pal recipe builder. save it and that would save that recipe to my food log in my das board/?

[ADM]

DarleneM, I recently tried to "create a meal" directly into my FitBit foods database, as you described, but did not see an option to designate how many servings the meal should serve.  In this case, it was servings for 6.   So I ended up using the MyFitnessPal calculator and then manually adding 1 serving into my FitBit list of foods, not the meals.   Did I overlook a button somewhere?   Thanks, ADM

[moijo6]

mfp phone app has a bar code reader which makes life alot easier. The one thing i would say about mfp database is there are so many people adding to it and not all add correct entries so you are better to check with the packaging and add your own or use the bar code.