Food logging / calorie count

[steelbikes]

Hi, new to fitbit and calorie counting in general, but have not really found a way to effectively use the food logging feature.  I most eat home made whole foods (made from scratch), and generally find the food database including mostly chain restaurant foods and packaged foods. 

I don't need to be exact, but I'd love to log and at least estimate.  Does anyone have any good tools for doing more quick estimations?  

Thanks!

[whome]

It is an app called MyFitnessPal, often referred to around here as MFP - it can be set to transfer information to the Fitbit site, it has a much better food library, you can enter a recipe you use by ingredients and the app will figure out nutritional breakdown per serving. I use it for food logging and fitbit for activity (calorie) logging and am very happy with the way it works for me.

Good Luck

[steelbikes]

Thanks, appreciate the response, will check it out. 

[DeborahAnne]

This is the question I'm looking for the answer to, as well.  Most of my groceries are the base ingredients, which I then cook into my meals.  Yikes!

[Ukase]

Here's the thing. The Fitbit site, while it's true that the database isn't ...exhaustive, there is a nifty feature: If you go to the Fitbit Dashboard, and then click on log, to the right, there is under favorites, the option to "Create a Meal". Click on Create a meal. Then, simply enter the ingredients of your meal.

Say I make an egg sandwich. I call it "Egg Sammich". Three eggs, slice of cheese and 2 sandwich rounds. I enter in each ingredient of my sandwich and save it by clicking done. Then, I go to the log page and I'll see the food item on the right under favorites, click on it, and every time I have that sandwich, it's there.

For something more elaborate, like a stew or a soup, say it's chili.  

I use 10 ounces of celery in my 1 gallon batch. (approximately)

So, I'll look up the calories for a given ounce of celery on the internet. 4 calories per ounce. Fitbit tells me it's 37 calories for 10 ounces - I won't quibble over 3 calories.

My next ingredient is 17 ounces of onion.

I keep on adding the ingredients. Red pepper, green pepper, tomatoes, chicken, etc. I don't bother adding spices because calorically, they're nil. I look up the calorie information for each ingredient, per ounce. Then, I note how many ounces of each my recipe calls for.

Then I do the math, get my total. When the chili is done, I'll portion it out in 12-16 ounce servings. Whatever I do, I make them all the same size. I know there will be some variation, but at the end of the week, it's all good. Then I divide that total calories by the portions and use that value as the number of calories. I can do the same thing with carbs, fat grams, protein, etc. I can even do the same with micronutrients if I want. It's cumbersome, but I only have to do it once. 

I see no reason to be tabbing out to MFP when I can create my own database with the foods that I make from scratch. I honestly wouldn't expect any website to know what's in my chili recipe, so how would they know how many calories it has? This is where I get my calorie information:

http://nutritiondata.self.com/ They seem to have everything. That is, there's never been anything I've eaten that they didn't have.

[DeborahAnne]

Thanks. And I agree that I don't expect any site to guess what recipe
I've used. But I even find it difficult to find the base ingredients, to
make this less time consuming. I don't want to spend too much time
focusing on food, in any manner other than preparing it. I'll try your
method tomorrow.

[slysam]

Use a nutrition tracking app that has a good recipe calculator and can sync to fitbit. Two possibilities are Spark people and My Fitness Pal. For the recipe calculator, my favorite is Spark. For one, Spark logs the specific food to fitbit (while MFP logs a meal summary). Spark includes vitamins and minerals as well as calories, protein, fat, etc. and will generate a detailed nutrition label for your recipe (MFP includes some vitamins and minerals but not nearly as extensively as Spark). The recipes are easy to save and edit if you tweak something on Spark, and other users can share the recipes they entered. I think the food database on MFP is generally easier to use though some of the user entered foods have inaccurate information (true of all apps where users contribute nutrition data), but you have to look as I've seen some user entries that made no sense on MFP.

[Lightsinger]

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@steelbikes wrote:

Hi, new to fitbit and calorie counting in general, but have not really found a way to effectively use the food logging feature.  I most eat home made whole foods (made from scratch), and generally find the food database including mostly chain restaurant foods and packaged foods. 

I don't need to be exact, but I'd love to log and at least estimate.  Does anyone have any good tools for doing more quick estimations?  

Thanks!

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I use Calorie Count as my second logging tool.  Their database is extensive, and they also have a nutritional graphting tool that I like.  I can see at a glance where I am with regard to several important nutrients.  They only have five categories of meal times -- just one for snacks -- which I don't like, but they also have an "Other" where I usually log my supplements/vitamins, which I do like.