Posted by Christiana Carmichael on January 18, 2021

Food Tracking: time-saving tips

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Written By Christiana Carmichael

Find Your Ambition Founder, NSCA Certified Personal Trainer, NASM Certified Nutrition Coach, Certified Yin Yoga Instructor

Food Tracking: Time-Saving Tips

Welcome back! Last week, we discussed how to track your food using MyFitnessPal. We covered all the basics, but this week we’ll go over some time-saving tips that will make your food-logging a bit easier.  

For a quicker read, select a topic from the list below to get started!

Repeat Meals

Whether you’re a bonafide meal-prepper, or you tend to stick with the same thing for breakfast everyday, there are ways to ‘copy and paste’ your meals from one day to the next. 

Method #1: On the home screen of your ‘Diary’ click the three dots next to whichever meal you are adding. 

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You will be faced with three options. Choose the last one, ‘Copy From Date,’ then select which meal and from which date you would like to copy. Click the checkmark, and your meal will automatically show up in your diary.

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Method #2: Create your own meal. First, start by clicking the ‘MORE’ button at the bottom right hand corner of your screen. 

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Select ‘My Meals, Recipes & Foods.’ The top three buttons read ‘Recipes,’ ‘Meals,’ and ‘Foods.’ Click the ‘Meals’ button, then click ‘Create a Meal’ in the blue box at the bottom of your screen. 

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Under the header ‘Meal Items,’ click ‘Add items to this meal.’ And just as you would log food to your diary, begin searching for ingredients and adding them to your meal. Once all of your food has been added, click the back arrow in the upper left hand corner of the screen. 

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Name your meal. Click the ‘Name Your Meal’ box, and type in a name that you will remember and one that makes sense. For example, I am logging my morning omelette, so I chose to name my meal ‘Breakfast Omelette.’ You have the option of adding a picture of your meal, as well as directions on how to make it. These are totally optional, so we can skip them for now. 

Under the name of your new meal, you will see a ‘Share with’ option. Click on the blue text to change your share settings. I have chosen to share with ‘Only Me’ so that it is hidden from others. 

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Whatever you’ve chosen for your title, ingredients, or share settings, don’t forget to save your meal! Click ‘Save’ in the upper right hand corner of the screen, and you’re all set! 

Next time you want to log the meal you just made, head on over to your Diary. Select which meal you are adding to, then click the ‘MEALS’ button. Go ahead and click on the meal you just added to log it into your diary. 

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Inputting Recipes

Whether you create and bake your own recipe, or you’re borrowing one from the internet, stress no more! 

Remember the ‘My Meals, Recipes & Foods’ button on the ‘MORE’ page? Go ahead and click on that again. This time, let’s try creating a recipe instead of a meal. Click ‘Create a Recipe,’ then select whether you want to ‘Add [a recipe] from the Web’ or ‘Enter Ingredients Manually.’

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Adding a Recipe from a Website: After selecting ‘Add from the Web,’ copy and paste the URL of your recipe in the upper search bar. Once pasted, select ‘go.’ 

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A preview of your recipe will load on the page. Select ‘Import Recipe’ in the blue box at the bottom of your screen. You will be brought to a list of your recipe’s ingredients. If anything was mistakenly pasted from the website i.e. cooking directions, the recipe title, or extra ingredients, go ahead and delete those. If not, click the arrow in the upper right hand corner. Even if ingredient amounts are wrong or you need to add something, still click the arrow. 

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Review all ingredients. Click ‘Add Ingredient’ if something is missing or ‘Edit Ingredients’ to delete an ingredient. If you need to change the amount of an ingredient, click the small arrow next to the ingredient that needs modifying, and make the necessary changes. 

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Once all of the information shown is correct, move forward by clicking the arrow in the upper right. Your final recipe with all its nutrition facts will appear. Click the ‘Title’ and ‘Servings’ buttons to make any necessary changes. At the bottom of the page, click ‘Save’ to add it to your recipe index, or ‘Save & Log it’ if you want to add it to today’s diary. 

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Adding a recipe of your own

We’ve all got our traditional recipes that just can’t be replaced. Unfortunately, more often than not, we only have hard copies in our possession. Don’t worry. We can work with this. 

We are now going to practice logging our own recipes. If you need some help remembering how to log a recipe, scroll back up to the Inputting Recipes section. This time, instead of clicking ‘Add from the Web,’ you will choose ‘Enter Ingredients Manually.’

Create a title, enter the number of servings, and click the upper right hand arrow when everything looks good. 

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Now, add your ingredients one at a time, by clicking ‘Add Ingredient.’ If your ingredients have barcodes, you may use the ‘Scan’ button in the lower right. If not, type the ingredient in the search bar up top. Follow the steps you normally would to log any food. 

Once all ingredients have been added, click the arrow in the upper right. Review your recipe one last time before choosing to ‘Save’ or ‘Save & Log it.’ 

Logging food ahead of time

You’ve been logging for a while now. It seems like you’ve got things pretty well under control. Or, maybe, you have at least noticed some habits you would like to break. Logging your food ahead of time can be a great tool to keep you on track. All you have to do is hit that arrow to the right of ‘Today’ at the top of your Diary homepage. 

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Copy and paste from days previous, add recipes ahead of time, or individually log foods to keep yourself on track for the next day. Whatever your style may be, the most important thing to keep in mind is consistency. If you have days here and there that aren’t spectacular, don’t beat yourself up for it. Get back on track the next day and tell yourself why you started. 

Find Your Ambition LLC is not in any way affiliated with MyFitnessPal. All anecdotal evidence is purely opinion-based.

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Christiana Carmichael

Find Your Ambition Founder, NSCA Certified Personal Trainer

Christiana is the founder of Find Your Ambition and has a passion for helping others through personal training. She is a highly sought out fitness coach and takes pride in her ability to inspire others to reach their fitness goals.

Christiana offers new clients a free online personal training or nutrition consultation through Find Your Ambition and would love to help you take the next step on your fitness journey!

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