When You Are Not the Chef

demoiselle2014

I'm not dieting, but I am interested in learning some strategies to better track my eating should I need to in the future, either to build muscle or lose weight.

I am not the main cook in the family. My husband love to cook, and does it regularly. I also cook, but fewer meals each week. When I cook, I can follow a recipe. In fact, I prefer to. So, were I to start logging food carefully, it would be possible for me to weigh most things that go into a dish and then calculate the calories per gram.

My husband, however, does not follow recipes, and he adjusts the dishes on the fly by the taste, smell, etc. And since he loves to cook, he is likely to remain the person making the slight majority of meals.

In a situation like this, what is the best strategy for tracking meals? Please keep in mind that I am not on a diet, and I am not interested in losing weight. I just would like to know what my best approach would be if I wanted to track what I'm eating to some degree. Should I try to eat a very consistent, easily measured breakfast and lunch each day, with snacks planned out and accounted for, that leaves a fairly large number of calories free for dinners my husband cooks? Other than that, I'm not sure how else I could track within reason what I am eating.

msf74

demoiselle2014 wrote: »

Should I try to eat a very consistent, easily measured breakfast and lunch each day, with snacks planned out and accounted for, that leaves a fairly large number of calories free for dinners my husband cooks?

That sounds like a good strategy as it allows you a comfortable buffer at dinner time to play around with.

Alternatively you could work with your husband to agree meal plans which would give you a better idea of the calories you expect to consume in the evening.

seska422

One thing you could do is to weigh the ingredient containers before and after he cooks so that you can subtract and get the amount that he used.

hlnebel

Maybe ask your husband to be precise in measuring things like proteins, sauces, grains, or other higher-calorie ingredients, so that you can get an accurate measure of the calorie heavy-hitters. Then he can play around with things like spices, or veggies, and it won't make a huge impact on the overall calorie count.

demoiselle2014

Thank you! Good thoughts!

slaite1

seska422 wrote: »

One thing you could do is to weigh the ingredient containers before and after he cooks so that you can subtract and get the amount that he used.

Genius

demoiselle2014

slaite1 wrote: »

seska422 wrote: »

One thing you could do is to weigh the ingredient containers before and after he cooks so that you can subtract and get the amount that he used.

Genius

I could try it with some, at least! We do store our staples like flour and sugar in huge plastic buckets, so I could also get a strength workout carrying the bucket to the bathroom scale (a better workout than I'd get carrying the scale to the bucket, anyway!).