one of the things that i found by tracking was the the ingredients i typically use [mushrooms, zucchini, yellow squash, broccoli, cauliflower, carrots and peas] when i throw together a curry or a pasta dish, in the amounts i tend to use can be entered as one item. in other words, instead of entering in 1/2 cup peas, 5 baby carrots, 1 medium zucchini and a half cup of broccoli, if i enter in the volume as zucchini, in this instance, say about 2.5 cups, the calories are within about 5-10 of where they should be. yes, this means the vitamins and minerals and fiber are going to be off, and sometimes the protein. but it's close enough that for most days it works. and i know if i hit a wall, this is one of the first places to check. you'd have to do some accurate tracking to see if this kind of swap could work for you, but it's a possibility.
another thing is creating food groupings. enter in ingredients that you use together as a group and all you'll have to do is select that grouping and enter in the actual info. and if you want an easy way to do it, as you prep your ingredients, toss them in a bowl that's tared on a scale. toss in your garlic and note the weight on a pad by the scale, tare it out, add in the broccoli and note then weight then tare it out and so forth. it's accurate and just requires using your scale as part of the kitchen counter.
one other thing about the tracker is that it's really time intensive up front [entering in the brands of things that you actually use], but once you get your staples into the tracker it's much easier. most people do rotate out pretty similar things most of the time. so once you've spent a few weeks getting it in there, it gets easier. even if it's just swapping out asparagus for broccoli in your pasta dish. by tracking, you'll learn if it's a swap you can live with. because if it were me and i had a recipe for pasta cooked in olive oil with garlic and broccoli and i bought asparagus at the store because it was on sale today, i'd just use the info from the broccoli dish i'd already entered into the recipe calculator and call it good. yes, i'd be a little off in terms of what i ate, but it would be close enough i'd not sweat it, again, knowing if i hit a plateau that this is one of the first places i'm going to double check.
part of doing this is paying attention to what ratio of similar ingredients you use. in other words, if you pair a cup of pasta with a cup and a half of veg, swapping out one veg for another or one brand of pasta isn't going to change the nutrition information so drastically that you'll have to reenter it. so if you're keeping to roughly the same ratios of ingredients, you can mix and match and be close enough. to be sure, you need to make sure you're not trying to swap a serving of blueberries for a serving of avocado and trying to call it good, but some leeway is permissible for most people. again, tracking is how you find out that it's the olive oil you need to watch, not if you're getting 30 or 35 grams or a half cup or 2/3 cup of broccoli -it's how you find the foods that you can be lenient with and what you do need to watch.
-google first. ask questions later.
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