I've been using a different tracking website/app for a couple years now. I'm considering a change and I'm thinking about MFP since it seems to get the best reviews and seems to be one of the more popular ones. I know that some people just don't like to track. I'm a numbers person so I actually kind of enjoy it.

If you've used the site/app for a bit though, could you tell me any strong positives you like or things that really annoy you?

One of my major wants is a place to keep a "cookbook". Right now, I'm a hot mess! I've got stuff bookmarked, marked on pinterest and printed. My current site isn't that easy to enter recipes.

I registered at MFP a while ago but just didn't use it. I was just looking at the "import recipe" feature but it isn't working. Is this a temporary thing or has it not worked for a while? Can you print your entered recipes as pdf or word docs?

Thanks in advance for letting me know what you think.

Thanks Sundove! Actually, this ended up being pretty timely. The site I normally used crashed for a few hours this afternoon so I started entering my food on MFP just to keep track. Like you, I do try to pre-plan on the site - then I tweak what I actually did as the day goes on.

I can see it will take a bit of adjustment to what I'm used to but I think I'll ultimately end up switching.

BTW it turns out the import recipe thing does work on the freebie accounts. I tried again later in the day and it seemed to take. That was definitely happy news.

I didn't look much at the social network but my other tracking site was a part of what brought me to 3FC. It began to be very heavily populated by Keto "Evangelists". I have nothing against that way of eating - it just isn't what I want and it became difficult to find threads that seemed inspirational or interesting to me. I agree that 3FC is by far the best.

Thanks much for your input!

Freebie MFP user

Likes:
--can copy/paste meals from previous days
--foods are associated with multiple nutrition data points: cal, fat, salt, vitamins, etc
--can input recipes

Dislikes:
--lots of the nutrition data is hand-entered by other folks; can be a pain to discern whether it's correct
--how DO you delete foods from your food list?
--the foods you find by searching can be listed in alphabetical order, but they often start with brand names (Kroger...Fresh...Generic....), making it difficult to find your food. It would be nice to change the name of the food while leaving the nutrition data the same.
--along the same lines, there is no continuous scroll for your food list; you have to click through pages
--It's cumbersome to change a recipe. I don't make a dish the same way every time, and I haven't checked to see what happens if I change a recipe--I assume the already-entered data does not change. Still, lots of clicking required to change a recipe, and I have to look it up each time before I post.
--some of the measurements associated with the food are not appropriate. (ml or fl oz for solid foods?)

I used to enter data in a spreadsheet, but I was interested in tracking salt and protein, so I switched to this. (I still copy/paste from MFP to spreadsheet because it's easier to search than MFP.)

I don't really use MFP for anything else.

I love MFP because it makes it foolproof to count calories. The scanning feature makes it very simple. Simply scan your foods barcode and enter it in your journal. It makes it easy to track your weight and see your progress.

Yeah, but it's a pain. It would be nice if you could just click on the name of your recipe and pull up an editable list that would be saved that way for just that day. Some times you have the raisins, some times you don't.

On the mobile version, there is a pencil icon at the top right corner of the diary page. If you click it, you can check items and delete them.

I LOVE MFP. I use it everyday, the free version, and I have zero complaints.

I love MFP. Particularly because for roughly 20 years I've kept either a paper or word journal. Every time I made the exact same recipe, I had to recalculate it by hand because sometimes I would have 100g of mushrooms and the next time I would have 102g, etc. Now I can just adjust and keep it moving. I also have probably 150 recipes saved there. As a batch cooker, I can input the info there instead of writing the calorie count on the label of my meal, and when I grab another portion of the same dish another day, just log it right from the same recipe. It's awesome.

SeeMyFeet, if you copy a meal to another day, you can change your the weights of foods or add in items. I do that - particularly for my breakfast lately - hard boiled eggs with olive oil mayo and picamas. Depending on how I squirt the bottle, I could have 13-15g mayo and 5-7g picamas. Adjustment is super easy that way. If you wanted to add an item that is sometimes in your breakfast, it would be under your recent foods for breakfast (or whatever meal).

I think once you have the right entries, it makes it much easier to log. Especially with the app on a smartphone. You start typing and it will automatically search and filter to bring up your past entries. The computer interface doesn't do that, but does have the recent list to browse through.

Lastly, I used to have to either carry a journal or write myself stickies to put into my journal for the following day (it was saved on my home computer, then my work computer, etc). Now I carry my meal plans and journal with me right on my phone, and it always syncs.

Thanks again to everyone for your thoughts.

As see my feet mentioned, some of the items seem to have measurements associated with the food are not appropriate. (ml or fl oz for solid foods?) I'm guessing those are member added entries. From what I see, once I find the particular food I want to use it will continue to show up in the recents tab.

I think I'll just need to spend a little time there and get used to the difference in interface. First thing though is that I need to start getting my recipes added!

I seriously overthink processes like this sometimes.

Don't overthink it! The easiest way to get the right entry is to be specific with your item (ie, don't write apple, write granny smith), and to type in USDA before it. Sometimes you can even write gram.

"USDA, granny smith, gram" will pretty much give you exactly what you need. The more you do that, the more the accurate choices will be there in your diary!

You know I realized I have this. In the "my foods" list, you can log it and delete/tweak what you need. I do that with taco salad. It always has varying amounts of the same exact things, so I log it and then when I'm plating, I can adjust the grams or delete items that I'm not eating.