Editing food entries?

Hi everyone, just joined yesterday and plan to start P90X in earnest on the new moon. I’ve been fooling around with it for almost a month now and push play daily, yet don’t really stay with it yet. Just learning the moves, etc for now. I’ve decided to take the nutrition thing seriously, thus I joined dailyburn. Here’s my question -
I’m trying diligently to enter each food item I consume into my log. Everything works fine for items that are already in the dailyburn database, but what if I eat a modified version of, say, the P90X Protein shake? Can I edit the existing item or do I need to create a new recipe? If I creat a new recipe, it seems that I don’t get the breakdown of what food groups I get credited for on the summary page. This is a big gap in the overall quality of my logs. I really hope someone has the answer here.

gvlive – Welcome to DB! If you are modifiying your shakes by adding or subtracting something that isn’t included on the nutrition panel of the item (like tossing in a banana, etc.) please don’t modify the existing item because that change will affect everyone who enters it on their log. Don’t stress over the food-group numbers; “composite” foods usually aren’t broken down. A cheeseburger has meat, dairy, probably a little veggie, and grain, but I doubt you’d find all that indicated if you entered one on your log. The important thing is the nutrient breakdown, and if you use P90X as an ingredient in your recipe, all of those should be there. You don’t even have to make it a recipe – if you enter it once as a meal you can go to your meal planner and copy it to the next day, making whatever adjustments you might need (like adding berries instead of the banana). Hope all of that made sense… I’ll be cheering for you come Monday!

I feel dumb because I have been entering my meals piece by pierce each day even though there isn’t much variation. How do you copy meals from one day to the next?

The meal planner is where you can copy from one day to the next. However, it’s one of the options on the paid plans, and whether it’s worth paying for is an individual judgment thing… I actually joined the higher level because of it; I don’t always use it, but it sure can come in handy.

@sumnerfan, If you frequently eat a particular meal, you can make a recipe out of it.

@gvlive, you can edit the food groups of a recipe item.

Thanks IrishEyes and dianebl.

@gvlive….when i cannot find my foods on a food search, I create the food using the nutritional values on the box of food itself.

If the nutritional values are not shown, I sometimes use “about aloriecount.com”. In their “new recipe” tag, you can enter ingredients, let’s say for a smoothie, and press “analyse”, you will get all your values for your particular portions or recipe. Hope this helps…

i’m so pumped to have such excellent replies to this. sumnerfan, i have also been entering every teaspoon of my meals. they aren’t classified as meals from what i can see. i need to make that p90x shake a meal. for a newbie like me the pro plan seems to really be helping me out. i paid for one month of it just to get a grip on everything. irisheys – so i’m not supposed to be concerned with the food groups? i though that was a major deal?

as much as i’d like to use only the p90x nutrition guide, i think i can compose my own meals as long as i stick to the protein/carb/fat ratios recommended in their program. is this correct, or should i just keep my nose in the p90x guide?

this is actually quite fun! thanks again to all of you!

@gvlive, the food groups thing is there to help people who have problems keeping a balanced diet unless they see a summary of their choices right in front of them. If you know you are eating several servings of veggies, are avoiding processed and you are getting enough protein and you aren’t overdoing the carbs, then you don’t need it. But if you need to be reminded to eat your veggies, it can be a help.

As for you other question, that depends on how strictly you want to follow that program. On one had, if you follow it exactly you know you’ll be in the proper ranges every day. But on the other, it is important that you learn to make your own smart food choices. Lots of people can lose weight when the food plan is strictly regimented, but usually gain it all back once they go back to their old habits. The point is to learn about smart choices so you can make permanent changes.

well put, diane. seeing as i’m really new at meal planning, i like the food groups breakdown/reminders. it’s really amazing to me how quickly you can blow your whole day with a minor serving of the wrong thing! i ate a handful of cashews earlier and blew my fat chart up to where i can’t eat anymore fat today! hah. still having a blast with this…

good reference site, tipoule!