Fitbit Product Experts Alumni are retired members of the Fitbit Product Expert Program. Learn more
Best Answer@rachiti I thought like that in the beginning but then I just got used to tracking. Homemade food is actually easiest to track and least tedious if you use the right tools. First of all, I don't use Fitbit food logging. It's just too simple, lacks features and using it would be indeed a chore. I use MyFitnessPal to do so as it comes with lot more advanced food tracking features - after all, it's made for this particular purpose. For homemade food, I use "recipes" and "meals" options. I don't write down anything, I log as I cook. All you need is the Internet. One problem I found, however, is dirty hands while cooking. It makes harder to use mobile phone screen, but not impossible. To speed up logging I make sure food I buy has barcodes. Scanning is fast, putting a weight of ingredient too. New food is always added as a recipe so I can very easy repeat that. One of the most often cooked meals is pesto with almonds linguine. Every time I recook it I just go through the list of ingredients from the recipe. My wife yesterday asked me to cook more, so all I needed to do was to go to the edit mode and put different numbers for each ingredient. Additionally, I added broccoli to the recipe. Such updated recipe is resaved under the new name. When it's cooked I place it in the container and take a total weight which is also placed on the label sticker and done. Writing label takes a while ( I'm thinking to actually start printing them 😄 ) as I provide information like calories per 100g, total weight and info about carbs, fats and proteins per 100g. In MFP recipes are limited to "servings" which is a bit of bummer. My trick here is to make 1 serving to be 1 gram of food. Then, when putting it on my plate, I weight it and use weight as a number of servings. Cannot be done quicker. Sometimes, when I want to defer logging or modifying recipe/meal then I put meal or ingredient on the scale and take a picture. It's quicker than writing it down. Most of logging and adjustments in the app can be done when you're waiting. Cooking in major part is about waiting till something is actually cooked. It may sound like tedious but same as everything, once mastered, it's quick and intuitive. Meals which are 'one-time' shots I add directly by each ingredient - scan, put weight and done.
Maybe it's going to be useful for others, so I have attached pictures showing how it works for me.
Homemade foods are easiest to log once you make it your habit, improve the skill of doing so and go with the right tools for the job 😉 Trust me on that 🙂 I wished MFP had an option to make labels because writing labels is the biggest chore for me in the whole process.
Here are few examples from my own logging "system". Food that I'm going to cook more often is added as a recipe. MFP allows altering existing recipes ( change name, amounts, replace ingredients etc. 😞
The name contains codename ( easy to search later ), the date when it's cooked and total weight. Weight is same as servings ( MFP lacking the feature to use a different measurement than serving on recipes requires such workaround ).
Even simple things like cooked pasta become a recipe. Then it's very easy to log each serving and I can decide how much I'm going to eat on the go without sticking to fixed size portions.
Notice that number of calories is actually very low. This is because MFP shows calories per servings and each serving is 1gram. That's why when labelling I set a number of servings to 100g to place more meaningful number on the sticker.
My list of recipes looks as shown below. I follow a certain pattern which speeds up logging. Also remaking the same recipe always makes me update the old one ( changing name, amounts if necessary etc. ). That's why updating the date is important - I know that this is most recent one, although I try not to keep old ones in the database as it may become confusing in later time.
When it comes to logging then I just weight it and enter measured weight as a number of servings and done. Any extra stuff I add on the go ( on the picture below you can easily say which entries are the recipes due to the naming convention 😞
I also use "meals" from time to time ( mostly for logging breakfast ). Unfortunately, meals lack "servings" feature and each meal added to the database automatically becomes 1 serving. It makes much harder to log. However, I like a picture feature ( which is not working for recipes ) as after time you may still recall what the food was like:
If I'm not too lazy I turn the recipe into a meal by creating a new meal and adding food from the recipe as an ingredient. Then make a picture. It's a workaround and I do that very rare ( unless food looks delicious 😄 I think everyone from time feels proud of what one cooked ).
Weighing the meal is the last thing to do. Sometimes it's deferred so as I mentioned above - I take a picture, so won't forget what the weight was. The weight becomes a number of servings. Also, it's important for me to add the weight next to the name ( there's a valid reason for that, also speeding up logging later ).
That's pretty much it. It may look like lot's of work but believe me - it's not. Also using "recipes" and "meals" may help to decide what's for a dinner 🙂 Just go through your recipes and pick something you already made. Here's where pictures come handy as sometimes just by looking at the picture you know that this is what you want to make for a dinner tonight 🙂
I'm hoping this semi-tutorial shows that logging isn't really so tedious, especially if you log homemade meals 🙂 I realize I took it to extreme ( like labeling etc. ) but if I have time to do more than just logging then imagine, that actual logging is just a fraction of time I spend on cooking and eating 🙂
Best AnswerJust to show how what I wrote works in practice I'm on my lunch. Since I moved houses I can have my lunch at home as it takes me few minutes to get home from my office. I have some remaining fusilli pasta cooked and mentioned pesto with almonds linguine ( just sauce, pasta is separated so I can eat it with anything, I chose fusilli as it's been a while since I cooked it ). So here's literally 3 minutes of preparation ( pictures were taken during preparation, weighing and logging ). I added extra wholemeal toasted flatbread.
Staying organized makes it a lot easier and as I said - pretty much automatic. It took me longer to clean up than to log my lunch 😉 Hopefully, this will be encouraging for those who have a problem with logging what they eat.
I forgot to add one more tip. One problem I had was storing food like meat when freezing. Freezing means that everything will stick together and may be hard to separate later. So how do I know what is what when I pull it out of the freezer? Here's an example:
When portioning I weigh a portion and make a label. An important part of the label is a number below which is an actual barcode. This way I can throw away original packaging and quickly use MFP when logging the food days or weeks later. MFP will bring back what product originally I have bought just by typing the number instead of scanning the barcode ( which will be long gone with original packaging ). It also speeds up logging the homemade food 🙂
Best Answer
Fitbit Product Experts Alumni are retired members of the Fitbit Product Expert Program. Learn more
Best Answer