Sugar Free Popsicles and small amounts of food

jillcwatson1

How do you count the popsicles towards liquid (measurable liquid)? I am heading to surgery tomorrow and I began to wonder how you measure them towards the goal for 64 oz per day.

Also, when you go to eating only small bites of food, how is this counted, calori wise using MFP? I never had considered that. Since I may be eating only a SMALL portion of a serving, how do you determine what to record? Thanks everyone

joysie1970

Lots of the foods I ate post surgery I was able to enter by the tablespoon, I never did eat popsicles so sorry I can't help you with that one, but if there is a measure on the box I would go with that.

cabennett99

Regarding the popsicle's, there's not a lot of liquid there, and 64 oz. is a minimum goal, so I didn't bother tracking them - it was just extra water.
For small amounts of food, I'll just use a faction of the serving - to get a rough quantity entered.

grim_traveller

If you are really trying to be accurate for calorie counting, weighing your food on a food scale is the only way to go. Eyeballing,estimating, using tablespoons or measuring cups, all will lead to very large inaccuracies. Good kitchen scales are pretty cheap. I still weigh every bite of food and log it.

If a serving size in MFP is three ounces, and you eat 1.8 ounces, your serving for that meal is 0.6 servings (1.8 ÷ 3 = 0.6).

cmchandler74

I want to say that the ones I had actually measured them as 3 ozs. of liquid or something ridiculously small. I just figured them in as extra water intake.

jillcwatson1

Thanks everyone for responding. I have a food scale as well as the usual kitchen tools for measuring. My life on Weight Watchers taught me how to do that. I just realized that tracking my food on MFP and keeping track post surgery (after I get home this Saturday) will be so much different than what I have been doing. The intakes of 2-3 bites of a food will not be easily done as a serving of a food. I have used the fractional parts when taking a serving size from 3 oz to only one ox by claiming .33 of that serving size. I will need to learn new fractional/decimal settings for such small amount.

blairmundy

I find that most entries have an option for 1 oz. and I use that or a fraction (or multiple) of that because it's easier in my head. Until you move to soft foods, and even after that for a while) there is no way you are going to be able to eat anything near a significant amount of calories. I did track during that time to make it a habit, but I didn't worry too much about the exactness of the 3 bites of food. Once you get off shakes/protein supplements you'll be eating enough to track by the ounce and it will be more crucial not to overestimate so that you know you are getting enough protein and not to underestimate so you have good calorie data.

cheekitty

I would measure out something I thought I could eat - 4oz of soup, for example, eat what I wanted, then weigh what was left to get an accurate measure of what I actually ate.

dzoerner

Info from my NUT when I progressed to liquid/pureed meal was:
For fluids: 1/4 cup=2 oz=4 Tablespoons