New to my fitness pal. Need help

[Zane's Mom 184]

Ok. So I'm 5 weeks out and now ready to use my fitness pal. I see the easy part to scan my items like Protein Drink, yogurt etc.

But what about the tiny amount of food I am eating. I'm allowed anything as tolerated but stick to soft basics mostly.

So for example. If I fix spaghetti for my family I will get 3 to 4 oz of meat and strain the sauce so it's minimal. How do I record that.

Or l make one egg with cheese and a few mushrooms. I get the one egg but what do I do about the sprinkle if cheese and couple of mushrooms.

I want to be accurate but with my meals being so small with various ingredients I'm confused.

What has worked best to figure this out???

[Tammylb 174]

For Condiments such as cheese sour cream mayo etc I document under snack , just type the word in and change the serving size to the correct Amount . Try using spaghetti squash instead of the real noodles or cauliflower to eliminate the carbs. I cut the ends off of spaghetti squash and microwaved it for 10 minutes and had perfect noodles .

[Forsythia 882]

For stuff like shredded cheese and meat, I will measure that on my food scale - so if its a 1 oz or 2 oz, I mark it accordingly on MFP. For veggies, they are so low cal, I don't sweat it if the amount listed is 1/4 a cup even though I ate roughly 75% of that amount. For Condiments I will measure out a tablespoon or whatever the serving size is if need be and document accordingly with the meal

[Bufflehead 6,358]

I weigh almost everything, including Condiments. For prepared dishes like spaghetti, find what looks like a close recipe in the food database and change the serving size to how much spaghetti you had. You should be able to find recipes that include noodles, sauce, etc. If it is something you made that you eat frequently, you can use the recipe calculator to input all the ingredients and figure out exactly how many calories are in a serving of your dish.

If you are just eating the meat from the spaghetti, weigh the portion of meat and then search the food database -- find an entry for "beef meatballs" or "cooked ground pork" or whatever kind of meat you are using, and enter in the amount you ate.

[knitlil09 91]

I also have a food scale I use at home. It is definitely handy for those small items that you can't accurately guesstimate.

For something like sauce that you're are straining mostly, you will probably have to guesstimate that, but something that minimal shouldn't throw you off too much. Remember, the goal isn't to get exact calorie counts for everything, it's just to keep good track so you are staying in a healthy range and help you keep track if patterns in your food choices to see what's working and what's not for you.