It’s important to log everything you eat. At first, you might think it’s time consuming, but I promise it gets quicker.
The app remembers the things you eat regularly, and those items become accessible via the menu options. You can also group items into collections or saved meals, which makes it very quick to add multiple items at once.
If you’re eating or drinking items which came in packaging with a barcode, it’s super quick to log those items because, as the app has a very effective barcode scanner function. In just a couple of seconds you can scan the barcode and the product information will be retrieved from the MyFitnessPal online database, leaving you to adjust the quantities if required.
Ironically, the most tricky foods to log accurately are recipes where you’re using fresh ingredients. So for healthy meals including fresh vegetables etc, it’s useful to keep a digital scales in the kitchen as you may wish to weigh ingredients as you’re preparing the meal, or to weigh the final cooked portion.
Find some digital kitchen scales on Amazon
As time goes by, even this becomes easier as you become more adept at estimating weights by sight, and the process becomes quicker.
Be cruel to be kind (on yourself!)
When you search the MyFitnessPal database for a specific keyword, you will often find that it returns too many options. There could literally be dozens of entries against generic terms like “jacket potato” for example, or “fried egg”. It can be both surprising and frustrating to discover that calorie values can vary wildly amongst these apparently identical items.
Faced with this situation, you have two choices. You could opt for the lower value thus leaving yourself free to consume additional items throughout the day, But what if that value is actually lower it should be? You could very easily end up exceeding your daily allowance and not making any progress at all. The wise choice is to go with the higher value.
Yes, you will reach your daily limit sooner. At worst you’ll be on target with your daily allowance, and at best you will be significantly under, so either way you will have increased your chances of success.
When you’re faced with this dilemma (and if you use MyFitnessPal for more than a couple of days, you will be, trust me) try to keep in mind your reasons for wanting to lose weight in the first place. Think about those reasons and goals you wrote down at the beginning of the course, and make them vivid in your mind. Picture how great it will feel to succeed.
Remember that the decisions you make affect the outcomes you achieve.
There is no such thing as luck in this game. Ultimately, your results are down to you.
You might have often heard people complaining that “things never change”. That’s true. “Things” do not change. It is we ourselves that must change.