Whether you use the Bodybugg Weight Managemtent System or fitday or the daily plate, or sparkpeople, to log your food, One of the complaints is that it takes a long time to find the food that you want to log. When I first started using fitday, I remember I typed in "milk" and got 350 items!
As with any new activity, it takes a while to get familiar with the new way of doing things; and that's uncomfortable. The key in being successful in the new behavior is getting through the discomfort. One thing that's a HUGE pain in the rear whenever you use a logging tool is not only finding the foods that you eat (and remembering how they're listed) but then entering the foods that aren't in the system that you consume.
Typically, we each eat about 100 foods over & over & over again. So, once you have those foods in the system, it's easy & that just takes time. If there's a specific brand or type of food that you eat that isn't in the system, I highly recommend that you create a custom food for it. In most systems, a user's custom foods are predominantly placed in the return items so that its easy to get to your custom foods.
Occasionally there will be a food that you won't want enter as a custom food; perhaps it's a energy bar or drink that you have no intention of eating again, or its a food item that you don't eat that often. In this case, I have a food-logging easability tip. (okay – I know that easability isn't a word, but it wasn't too long ago that sinage or gianormous weren't words either – and don't get me started on Rachel Ray's vocabulary!)
Create a custom food item titled "calorie". Then when you add your food that you know how many calories it is, but you don't want to add the custom food, just add your "calorie" food to your meal, and change the number of units to the number of calories in the food – 150, or whatever it might be. Easy!
You can get complicated with this tip or it can be easy. It's up to you. When I initially came up with this idea, I created a few foods titled "protein" "carbohydrate", "fat" and "fiber" and added each one as the nutrition label suggested. Each of the "protein" and "carbohydrate" items had 4 calories per gram, and the "fat" had 9 calories per gram. Fiber is non-digestible, so that calorie total was 0. The reason I did this was because I wanted to know how much protein, fat, and carbohydrates I was consuming. Most people don't care about that, so the "calorie" solution works just fine.
Happy Logging!
Copyright Elizabeth Sherman. Purchase a Bodybugg through Elizabeth Sherman.