Hello, I keep trying to find an online food diary that works for me. The problem is that I cook mostly from scratch, so I HATE wading through tons of options listed by brand name.
Can anyone suggest a good diet tracker appropriate and accurate and easy to use for scratch cooks?
I am having the same problem. I started using Loseit a couple months ago. There are some things I would change about it, but for the most part it is working for me. They do still have a lot of restaurants and name brands, but you can find info on normal food too. Supposedly it has the option to build a recipe, but I haven't figured out how to use it. That would be great for recipes I use all the time, or that have a lot of ingredients.
I use to do Weight Watchers online, and I loved their tracker for normal food. But I haven't found anything out there that tracks calories and nutrients out there I liked as much as that. I have heard a lot of people like myfitnesspal. Personally I don't trust it as much because I have found tons of contradicting numbers for the same type foods on there.
I use the LoseIt! app and I like it a lot. The best feature is being able to scan the barcode on my ingredients and it pulls up the specific nutritional information for that item. I've noticed that sometimes it gives generic info and doesn't match. But that hasn't happened often. You can also enter specific info. for an item. You can create your own recipes and save them. And you can select "previous meals" when you are entering your food for the day. That helps a lot.
I use My Net Diary on my mobile devices and PC. It is similar to LoseIt! and My Fitness Pal but has features I like a little better. I've used all three.
All of these can be used for scratch cooks.
But if you aren't going to use your tracker on a mobile device and just want online, sparkpeople.com has a good online tracker and lots of options regarding food.
Fitday.com has a free online tracker that should have basic food.
There are really a lot of others.
Most of them have mobile apps but some have problems if you do plan on using on your smart phone.
I liked livestrong.com too. From my experience, I thought it had a good tracker when it came to creating your own recipes. However, you have to know how many servings you are making, etc. It will take some time to enter your recipes, but after you do, it's in there for good.
I use my fitness pal There's a my recipe section where you plug in the ingredients and the servings, they do the caloric calculations for you and then you just click the my recipes tab and log the meal. They also have a my meals option where you can keep the things you eat together regularly, so for me that means I can just add 1 meal of 2 tostadas instead of logging shells, cabbage, salsa, cheese, chicken and beans individually. It saves a lot of time.
I just track by myself on a word document. I typically make the same 15 or so recipes really often, and I can always go back to reference another day that I ate that meal.
When I cook something for the first time at home, I usually write the calorie count on it so when I eat it, I add it to my day's tracking.
I use loseit as well. There's a place to enter custom recipes. It's under "MORE" then "EDIT FOODS & EXERCISES". Then enter it under "RECIPES" and you can enter it all in, ingredient by ingredient. I have only entered in minor things or custom foods, like the berry salad from Wendy's, that isn't in the loseit database yet. The bar code scanner is my favorite thing! Saves me hunting through the database.
Thank you for posting the question, and all the good answers. I'd never tried MyFitnessPal because of the name. I assumed it would be about weight training! I just checked it and it IS easy. When you put in "banana" the first thing that comes up is..."banana," instead of, oh, "banana nut muffin." I tried several unusual brand names, too, like Liberte yogurt, and I couldn't stump it. (And it's not just about exercise.) I'm trying calorie counting after months of Weight Watchers and was looking for a tracker/journal. So, again, thank you!
Thank you for posting the question, and all the good answers. I'd never tried MyFitnessPal because of the name. I assumed it would be about weight training! I just checked it and it IS easy. When you put in "banana" the first thing that comes up is..."banana," instead of, oh, "banana nut muffin." I tried several unusual brand names, too, like Liberte yogurt, and I couldn't stump it. (And it's not just about exercise.) I'm trying calorie counting after months of Weight Watchers and was looking for a tracker/journal. So, again, thank you!
Good luck! I find calorie counting to be pretty easy, especially with the app on my phone to help. There are a few MFP threads around too if you want friends on there!
I'm constantly surprised with the database there. I got this weird package of mushrooms from my little market and thought... hmmm... no chance. But I scanned it and there it is! You can even contribute to the full database if you like with both packaged foods and your own recipes.
Best online diet tracker for cooks
