How do you know how many calories are in your food?

kacotugno86

Hey there! Been at this a week now and I'm not sure I'm doing this right. I just bought myself a food scale to accurately measure my food. I also scan as much things in as I can. But say for instance tomorrow I am making my homemade meatballs and sauce. Do I scan in ever single ingredient? Or what how do I measure how much ends up in the sauce? Please help. Ty.

Derf_Smeggle

For homemade meals you can enter in a Recipe, which I would recommend. You weigh the ingredients and log them into the recipe.

You also have to determine the number of servings in your recipe. I will often times weigh the ending result for a total weight, then dish up what I consider a serving and weight that. Divide the total weight by the serving weight, and boom. Number of servings.

I have something like 30 recipes entered into my records at this point.

Capt_Apollo

if it's something you make often and want to be accurate, you should use the recipe builder... click the food tab, the click recipe.

or you can use estimations from the database on MFP. yes, you might have to weigh the meatball, and then individually measure out sauce and pasta, but thats what it takes sometimes to achieve your goals- attention to details.

nutmegoreo

Derf_Smeggle wrote: »

For homemade meals you can enter in a Recipe, which I would recommend. You weigh the ingredients and log them into the recipe.

You also have to determine the number of servings in your recipe. I will often times weigh the ending result for a total weight, then dish up what I consider a serving and weight that. Divide the total weight by the serving weight, and boom. Number of servings.

I have something like 30 recipes entered into my records at this point.

I do this but determine my serving sizes differently. I weigh the final product and the weight becomes my number of servings. Then when I have a serving, I weigh that and use that number as my number of servings. That sounds really confusing, so an example might help.

My steel cut oats recipe (oats, milk, cinnamon, and vanilla). If the final product weighs 1240g, I enter number of servings as 1240. When I dish up my serving the next day, I weigh it as say 124g, then I enter that I had 124 servings. It works really well when your serving sizes are inconsistent, such as sauces.

cwolfman13

kacotugno86 wrote: »

Hey there! Been at this a week now and I'm not sure I'm doing this right. I just bought myself a food scale to accurately measure my food. I also scan as much things in as I can. But say for instance tomorrow I am making my homemade meatballs and sauce. Do I scan in ever single ingredient? Or what how do I measure how much ends up in the sauce? Please help. Ty.

for homemade recipes you use the recipe builder or enter each item in separately.

rankinsect

As a note, for something like pasta and sauce, I'd use the recipe builder for the sauce, and then save a meal that was the noodles, sauce, etc all together. Recipes let you make one entry that is composed of many things, meals let you quickly add a group of entries at once.

kacotugno86

Oh thanks guys great advice

Derf_Smeggle

nutmegoreo wrote: »

Derf_Smeggle wrote: »

For homemade meals you can enter in a Recipe, which I would recommend. You weigh the ingredients and log them into the recipe.

You also have to determine the number of servings in your recipe. I will often times weigh the ending result for a total weight, then dish up what I consider a serving and weight that. Divide the total weight by the serving weight, and boom. Number of servings.

I have something like 30 recipes entered into my records at this point.

I do this but determine my serving sizes differently. I weigh the final product and the weight becomes my number of servings. Then when I have a serving, I weigh that and use that number as my number of servings. That sounds really confusing, so an example might help.

My steel cut oats recipe (oats, milk, cinnamon, and vanilla). If the final product weighs 1240g, I enter number of servings as 1240. When I dish up my serving the next day, I weigh it as say 124g, then I enter that I had 124 servings. It works really well when your serving sizes are inconsistent, such as sauces.

I like that!