A few questions about calorie counting (MFP)

[SunnyUpNorth]

Sorry if this has been asked before, but there is alot if info in this topic which I am still trawling through.

I started the 5:2 today, but I have never calorie counted before and am not sure how to do it accurately.

I downloaded the MFP app but am finding it a but confusing. For example I just looked up how many cals are in a cup of tea with semi skimmed milk and a boiled egg. Loads and loads of different options came up for each with quite varying calories. How would I know which to select?

I am planning to have a small bowl of chopped salad for lunch and make a veggie curry for dinner. Would I need to work out precisely how much lettuce, cucumber, carrots etc are in each? If I just looked up salad for example, surely my salad content and size could be totally different to someone else's and therefore it might not be accurate if i just selected some random listing on the app.

Thanks

Personally I put everything in individually. Though MFP allows you to save meals so if you're doing roughly the same thing every time you can save it as a meal to save you the effort of putting it all in individually everytime

I do simlar to Eagle - I have lots of recipes saved. For milk in tea, I estimated how much milk I had in each cup x the no. of cups a day and saved that as a "meal" along with anything else I have each day (eg square of dark chocolate). That way you just need to add that meal each day instead of fiddling around with individual items. It gets easier the longer you do it.