Keeping track of your meals can be a game changer when it comes to reaching your health and fitness goals. But let’s be real – it can be a pain to log every single ingredient every time you eat. That’s where MyFitnessPal’s meal and recipe features come in!
The app makes it easy to create and save your go-to recipes. This means that when it’s time to log what you’ve eaten, it only takes a few seconds.
Let’s make meal tracking a breeze. Our guide will take you through each step, from setting up custom meals to adjusting ingredients, so you can personalize your tracking experience and log meals quickly.
Why create meals and recipes in MyFitnessPal?
Creating custom meals and recipes in MyFitnessPal saves you time and helps you log more accurately.
Whether you’re meal prepping or cooking from scratch, creating custom entries is an effective way to make your nutrition record effortless and more tailored to your needs. It can help you:
- Save time by quickly adding preset meals or recipes to your diary.
- Track more accurately with nutrient information based on your exact ingredients and servings.
- Create custom recipes which you can return to again and again.
Step-by-step guide to making customized meals
The fastest way to create a custom meal in MyFitnessPal is to go to a meal you’ve logged before and save it as a custom meal. Then you can go back and log the entire meal with a single tap later. How to do it:
- Open the diary: To create a custom meal, navigate to Diary the tab where you log meals daily. See the instructions below for these steps.
- Add ingredients: Enter all the foods you want to include in your meal by pressing “Add food” for the relevant meal section (eg breakfast, lunch).
- Select and Save as meal: When all ingredients are logged, press the three “dots” in the lower right corner of the entry, then select “Save as a meal”.
- Name the meal: Give your meal a name (eg “Morning Yoghurt Bowl”) and add a photo if you want.
- Save: Press “Save” to add the meal to your saved meals for easy future logging.
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How to add ingredients and portions to recipes
You can also import or create your own recipes in the app and then easily log the portion of the recipe you eat.
- Go to “Recipes” Section: Press More > My Meals, Recipes and food > Create a recipe.
- From here you can add the recipe ingredients from the URL you use or Enter ingredients manually to make your own recipes.
- Select Enter ingredients manually and thereafter in Recipe name and Servings: name your recipe and specify the number of servings it makes.
- Add Ingredients: Enter each ingredient manually by searching the database. Select the item, adjust the serving size to reflect the total amount in your recipe, and add it to the recipe.
- Examine: Once you’ve added all the ingredients, review the recipe’s nutritional breakdown. Adjust ingredients or portion sizes as needed.
- Save the recipe to make it available for future logging.
- You can also log a serving at this step.
Remember, when you log a recipe, it appears in your food diary as a single line entry – with the correct calorie and nutrient information calculated automatically to reflect your portion size.
Logging your favorite meals and recipes
Once you’ve created your meals and recipes, logging them is a quick process. Here’s how to save and quickly add them to your diary so you can focus on your health goals without the added hassle.
- Navigate to the search screen as if you were logging a food – either by pressing the Add (+) button at the bottom of the screen or by pressing “Add Food” in the diary.
- Press either My meals or My recipes the tab.
- Select your meal or your recipe: Scroll through your saved entries, select the one you want and log it with a single tap.
Frequently asked questions about making meals and recipes in MyFitnessPal
To save meals or recipes, create them under Meals or Recipes in the app and save after entering all ingredients. These will then be available in your Diary under saved entries.
Yes! Open your recipe below My meals, recipes and food in the More menu, edit the ingredient amounts as needed and save the updated version.
To add ingredients, open the recipe, press Editand add ingredients from the database before saving.
Yes. For iOS, swipe left on your recipe and then tap Delete. To edit, tap the recipe, then tap Edit Recipe. For Android, open the recipe, tap the 3-dot menu, select edit or delete recipe
When you log a meal or recipe in your diary, MyFitnessPal automatically calculates the nutrition based on the ingredients you’ve used.
Yes, you can copy meals to another date by tapping the 3 dots and selecting the day you want to log it.
Other useful resources
- Read: Can I change my meal names or add more meals?
- Read: How can I change the nutrients recorded in my diary?
- Read: How can I use a recipe as an ingredient in a new recipe?
- Read: How do I log a food that is not in the database?
The post How to Make Meals and Recipes in MyFitnessPal appeared first on the MyFitnessPal Blog.