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?

[scudmore1214]

How do I get the meal from MFP to fitbit?  Or do I just track food with MFP?

[skyspirit464]

I have found that SparkPeople syncs really well with FitBit. I add my food to my SparkPeople and it automaticly adds it to my Fitbit account. Love that!

[Leelyn]

Do you have any idea whether there is a similar site for Australia I am very keen to loose 15kgs

[msmaggi]

I really appreciate the info here. Before getting my Fitbit, I was using S Health app to log food  and exercise . I liked that interface better, and the food database was much more comprehensive. I was able to choose foods by ounces, grams, servings, etc. I found the food data that I was inputting to be quite accurate. And I could look at my week's intake at a glance with very nice graphs, right in the app.

Fitbit's databse is mainly all pre-pacakaged or restaurant food. Also, when I entered "steak"   it showed this as having 2 carbs. Other foods seemed to be off the mark as well. What's up with that? This needs improvement, in additionn  to be able to looking at more in depth nutrtitonal info on your dashboard's "read more". In order to eat more healthfully, of course it is always better to prepare meals at home whenever possible. I have been doing just that.

It would be nice to see net carbs in whatever app I end up using to track my food. It seems a lot of this community likes Spark People. What about MyNetDiary? Too bad Fitbit can't be more comprehensive with its food database. It woukd be better to have one app that does it all!

I hope Fitbit will integrate with S Health sometime in the not-so-distant future.

[HelenaFitbit]

Hey there! Happy new year 

@scudmore1214 You can use MFP's Recipe builder (link here for members), it will give you an estimate per serving of calories and nutritional content. 

@Leelyn @msmaggi I recommend MFP since it has a worldwide food base and they have users all over the world. You can also add your own food, scan items and check other user's food database. 

[gebobs]

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@Gsnthensome wrote:
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!

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OK...so this is what I don't get. Can I continue to log the simple things in Fitbit directly while making recipes and logging those in via MFP.

Say for example, for breakfast I have granola, skim milk, and a banana. Easy peasy even on Fitbit.

But for lunch, I had a bowl of homemade turkey tofu soup. I made a kettle of soup last weekend. Of course, if I log it into fitbit as a meal, Fitbit wants me to eat the whole kettle! 

So is it a problem to log the breakfast on FB and the lunch via MFP or do I have to do one or the other for everything.

[Gsnthensome]

You can use both, but I would stick with MFP. 😊
If you're adding a recipe such as your soup, put it in MFP hat way you can select how many servings you've eaten.
Whatever you log in on FB, it will automatically log it into MFP as well. So I would track exercise here and food there. As if you log your food here it will show up in both places and mess with your count. .... Unless they've fixed that.
But to be safe keep your food there and your fitness here.

[mdjkieffer]

But why should we have to? That's the bigger issue. in the 'google' search, the FIRST items should be WHAT YOU COOKED. It's just that simple. This is a definate negative. I guess the only thing this fit bit is good for then is a fancy pedometer.

[msmaggi]

The Fitbit full site is much more comprehensive, but the app will do .. for now. It is still frustrating trying to find simple foods to log. I rarely eat out, and have just started vacuum-sealing and freezing my pre-portioned healthy low carb meals to save time. When I do this , I "create a meal" in Fitbit by adding all the ingredients for the entire recipe (say 8 servings). I then divide all this by 8 to come up with the nutrtional info for one serving.

[msmaggi]

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@mdjkieffer wrote:

But why should we have to? That's the bigger issue. in the 'google' search, the FIRST items should be WHAT YOU COOKED. It's just that simple. This is a definate negative. I guess the only thing this fit bit is good for then is a fancy pedometer.

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I thoroughly agree! There should be different search categories: store- bought items and then separate restaurant meals. That would be awesome!!! Sub-catgories would be great too: dairy, poultry, meat, veggies, fruits, nuts, grains, etc.

Since I began my diet on December 9th , I have eaten out maybe 3 times and NOT at a chain restaurant. Twice I had a big salad, and the other an omellette and bacon.

[mdjkieffer]

Thanks!! That's a great idea! I am border line diabetic (was gestational)
and I MUST keep my carbs down and my blood sugar (bs) low. This will help
me keep on track! Good luck to you!

[HaphazardHen]

With MFP you can upload the recipe from a website or a word document. I have all of my recipes saved as a pdf from a website or as a document so the recipe building is easy. I don't eat out much (twice this year) and I build a monthly recipe menu with large meals for leftovers. I try a new recipe once or twice a month to help mix up the rotation. Tonight was gnocchi with pesto cream sauce all homemade, not super healthy but a splurge on a cold snowy spring evening is ok in my book.

[Taym]

Can I ask your recipe for homemade granola

[HaphazardHen]

4 cups rolled oats
1/3 cup (80g) raw honey
1 tbsp coconut oil
Pinch of salt
1 tsp vanilla or favorite flavor
1 egg white, beaten until just frothy (this helps with the crunch) omit if needed.

Preheat your oven to 150C/300F.
Perpare 1-3 cookie sheets (spilpat, grease, parchment, etc)
Heat your honey, oil, salt and vanilla(or other flavor) in a medium saucepan until combined and smooth.
Fold oats into honey mixture and add in your lightly beaten egg white.
Stir until all of your oats are coated and pour onto your prepared baking sheets - spreading out slightly but still leaving clumps for crunchy granola clusters.
Place your granola trays into the oven and bake for ~20-45 minutes until your granola is golden and crunchy and not too sticky to touch. Rotate the pans during baking to ensure they are evenly cooked.
Allow to cool completely before storing in an airtight jar or zip lock bags.

I sometimes add nuts, shredded coconut, chocolate chips or dried fruit. Depends on what I feel like or the adventure being planned.

[JenManz]

A lot of the time, I end up picking something that I would consider "close" to what I prepared.  Though generally higher in sodium, it does save me from having to put everything in individually.  I did discover My Fitness Pal though and that does seem to help with recipes. Because not everyone makes things the same way. 

[RM2014]

I know that you are able to scan label barcodes with the MyFitnessPal app and I think I read someonwhere that you can also do this with the FitBit app if you log your food there instead. 

With MFP, if there are foods that you frequently eat, you can copy these from meals eaten on previous days, etc, making things easier.

[RM2014]

I guess if all of the ingradients that you were using in the recipe were unique and had never been entered before by anyone, then I suppose that there would be a lot of data to enter. However, it is unlikely that this is the case.  When entering recipes using the myfitnesspal, I use the website for this instead of the app since the screen is larger and I have an easier time looking at all my options.

Also, I have learned that, if I am making a recipe from scratch, ther maybe some common items, such as pizza dough. So I load the pizza dough as one recipe (so I can reference it again and again), and then I just add the "fixin's" to to my meal, in addition to the dough. Same thing with pasta or with sauce...

[GinniGee]

I have microwave Veges (Zuchinni, broccoli & cauliflower) almost every night with a dash of cayenne pepper a few splashes of low sodium soy sauce and water - I know it's low in kjs and fat (having going thru Jenny Craig for 2 years, my consultant loved it and recommended it to others), however I'm at a loss as to how to calculate this.

Like others here, I cook from scratch every night and find calculating all the ingredients cumbersome.

[Maggiedoll]

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@dznechick wrote:

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

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

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That's the one I use, too.  I used to use MFP, but I'm not fond of the way they changed the recipe builder.  And while they let you input a recipe initially with the old one, it forces you into the new one to make changes. 

I prefer the one on caloriecount.  (They dropped the ".about" in it a few months or so ago.  My browser complains if I try to use the old address because they just use the new one in the security certificate.)

[RM2014]

Hello,

The way that I calculate home made recipes is by
logging each food component separately and then adding them up.
On Myfitnesspal.com, you can create "recipes" and by figuring out
how many "servings" the recipe makes you can figure out how much you ate.
Ex: home made pizza:

pizza crust
sauce
added on veggies
added on protein
etc.

Hope this helps.