Fastest way to track/log calories consumed?

I'm looking for a more efficent method.  I generally just keep a calculator pen, and notepad in the kitchen by my food scale...and generally have to look up foods without labels (fruits, meats, veggies) here during the day.  Is it faster to just use the food log on this site for everything I eat all day?  I don't want to be online all day, LOL.  I'll end up buying 100 pairs of shoes (kidding......sort of).

Any experience on making this easier?

You can "tag" foods in the database that you use regularly, and it makes them easy to log quickly.  You can also group them.  For example, I eat fairly much the same breakfast every day, and so I have created a "breakfast" tag to log all that food easily, together.  Logging gets much faster once most of your regular foods are tagged.

So, if I prepare a meal for my family (lets say a pasta, meat and veggie dish)....generally I would figure out the caloreis for the whole dish and then divide up the portions to know how many cals I eat.   Would you tag each item in the dish?

I was thinking that it might be eaiser to just have a list of common foods/ and meals that I eat with the calories per serving....Although it would be a pain to make the list.

For "fun" ;) I logged my entire day last night here on this site based on what I had written down...it made the math eaiser, but I did have to sub "similar" foods for things that I actually ate b/c they were not in the database.   (In retrospect, I should have tagged most of the items b/c they were things that I eat often...but it is gone now, LOL). Does anyone just keep track and log everything all at once? 

I'm open to ALL ideas :)

If you are preparing a meal from scratch, you can use the recipe analyser, it's really clever, and will analyse the calories per portion, along with all your other nutrients.  Find the instructions and tips for use in the "Recipe" forum.  I found it a great tool once I got the hang of it, because I cook a lot at home.

Personally I log mostly at the end of the day, before my dinner.  I do log all my food and exercise daily, and that's what keeps me on track.  However it might not suit you, so find what does and do that!  Good luck, Ax

Oh, and you can also look at what you logged yesterday, by scrolling down to the end of the food log, and chosing yesterday's date.  You can tag everything in there if you like!

LOL, I feel you on the shoes! 

Ditto to what others have said on the tag function.  Oh, how much easier it makes life, especially if you eat the same kinds of snacks, fruits, etc. frequently.

I don't have a family to cook for (yikes, that would get tricky), but I'll tell you what works best for me...
1)  Log all pre-packaged foods IMMEDIATELY when I get home from the grocery store and tag them.
2)  Plan and enter my daily menu the night before with 200-300 calorie "wiggle room".
3)  Make low cal lunches/dinners ahead of time, calculate calories per serving, and freeze servings.
4)  Start memorizing calories for frequently eaten items and keep a little notepad with me at all times.

Of course, I've only been at this a little over a month, so I'm looking forward to hearing other people's suggestions!

Original Post by aoifek:

If you are preparing a meal from scratch, you can use the recipe analyser, it's really clever, and will analyse the calories per portion, along with all your other nutrients.  Find the instructions and tips for use in the "Recipe" forum.  I found it a great tool once I got the hang of it, because I cook a lot at home.

I admit...I have "recipe analyzer" fear.  I will overcome :).  Cool that it calculates so many things, I'll have to figure it out ;). And thank you so much for the tip about how to find yesterday's info, you seriously rock!

Becky....pm me and I'll give you my favorite online shoe websites (that have free shipping...*sigh* ;).  You are a smarty pants to log when you get home from the grocery store!  I did make kind of a menu plan for dinners for the week....I can see how that would be helpful.

I think my hardest part is recipes and cooking for DH as well as me at the same time (my 2 year old is easy ;).  I don't use recipes much but I guess I'll have to start writing down the measurments of things so I can plug them in to the analyzer.

Ha!....I'm Still looking for someone to tell me that it is easier to log on paper so I don't have to figure out the recipe analyzer :-P  ;) ;) ;)

Oh god, I am glad someone here is as wary as I am about the "recipe analyzer"!  Hahaha!  I am an administrative asst for a living, and I will actually start an excel spreadsheet on a weekend to calculate my own recipes.  >_>

Yes though!  Don't let anything come into your house without logging it.  It helps mucho, especially with the little things (1/2 cup plain yogurt, 1 Wasa cracker, apricot, 2 cups raw baby spinach)... if you know ahead of time, you save yourself a lot of trouble.

e.g.... My mom called me today and said, "How many calories is a peach?"  And I was like, "40 medium, 60 if it's 3+ inches diameter."  I may be hopeless, but I've gone from 5'1" 195 to 187 in a little over a month!

As far as cooking for the hubby, think of what you can cook separately to add... cheese or white sauce, extra bread, maybe throw in some meat when you're just eating beans... but in the end, I think it really IS all about portion control.  I find if I familiarize myself with what goes into something, I start just knowing what's in a 1/4 cup, ya know?

Best of luck, and I'll be touching base soon! 

Oh... and one more thing... by all means, don't get too worried.  You ate a third of that stir-fried dish, whatever it was?  If you used 1 tbsp olive oil, just log 30-40 cal, 5 fat, 3 sat fat for olive oil.  You added onions?  Just add 15 calories and forget it.

Good stuff, calorie counting.

I logged on paper only, when I was doing Weight Watchers.  I like the computer so much better!  At a glance I can see what I've eaten or am going to eat.  I do write down what I've eaten (not calories, just the names of what I've eaten) and the time of day.  I have it with me all the time.  I also write down in the same tablet food ideas I get so when I'm at the grocery store I don't draw a blank.  I also keep track of my calorie intake/burn every day in the tablet along with my weight and exercising.  I look at it OFTEN, plus when I'm not near a computer, which is not often, but nevertheless, I'm in the habit of writing everything down so when I do log I don't forget anything.

Also, I log sometimes in the morning so I know what combination of snacks to take along for the day.

So, I guess I'm sort of double logging - but I don't keep track of calories for each food in the tablet.  Only end of the day total intake and burn.

I generally write my food names & weights/amounts on a whiteboard in my kitchen. It's right by my scale, so it's convenient. I keep the packages of pre-packaged foods, until I have logged them(then I can throw them out). But I generally log at the end of the day.

I have gotten all A with one A- on the food analyzer. I guess I am getting a good feel for when I am or am not eating crap. Eventually I will let go of needing that reinforcement. When I do break free, it'll be easier to take whole meals that I eat a lot and just lump them together (e.g. 300 for the salad with tuna I had for lunch today) and just do an add item and tag it.

If it's something I've eaten in the last couple of weeks, I just display food logs, and use the "edit, find" from the browser. Probably not as quick as tagging.

I just set up a spreadsheet with two tabs. The first tab is the actual food log while the second tab is a food list. Whenever I eat a food for the first time I add it to the list in whatever my preferred amount is (i.e. I eat 2 cups of Cheerios for breakfast typically so my Cheerios listing contains all the information for 2 cups). I set up formulas on the food listing tab so that if I want to adjust portions I just plug in the current measurements and grams and it'll normalize to whatever portion I put in.

On the food log page I have it set up to sum up various columns and boxes so that I can see how much I eat for each meal, and then it has the totals at the bottom for the day. Each night I cut and paste my last day over to a new set of blank columns and then put in new foods. Everything gets summed.

It takes more overhead to get started on than caloriecount, and you need to know the basics to using an excel or openoffice.org spreadsheet, but in the end it's a lot more flexible. It's also a lot faster now since I only have to add a new food in about once a week.