How to measure the unmeasurable

FrumMama

For those of you who really measure every bite that you eat, what do you do about things that are unmeasurable? For example, if I make chicken broth by boiling chicken in water, but then I eat the broth and not the chicken (leaving the chicken for my husband and kids), how do I figure out the calories in the soup? It's not the total calories from the chicken, but it's also not just the calories in the water (i.e., none).

I have the same question with sauces. For example, I made a sauce for my chicken this past week, and the sauce had sugar in it. But most of the sauce is left in the pan afterwards. So if I ate a quarter of the chicken, there's no way that I had a full quarter of a cup of sugar (assuming there was a cup of sugar in the sauce). But it's definitely true that the chicken gained calories because of the sugar. How do I know how much?

This has been coming up more and more often. I don't own a scale, have thought about buying one, but then realized that my foods are so complicated that I would really hardly ever be able to use it accurately. So I may as well just estimate everything...wondering if there's a method I don't know of to deal with these issues.

DisneyDude85

Buy a scale, and use the recipe builder. I can't imagine that your foods are more complicated than anyone elses.

Bxqtie116

I think you would definitely need a scale to figure things out. Have you tried using the recipe add in the diary section?

For the chicken and sauce, build the recipe for the sauce, weigh the chicken before the sauce, then weigh it after to figure out how many oz of sauce you have. It takes a little work, but it's doable.

jemhh

FrumMama wrote: »

For example, if I make chicken broth by boiling chicken in water, but then I eat the broth and not the chicken (leaving the chicken for my husband and kids), how do I figure out the calories in the soup?

I would log Swanson's chicken broth for that.

I have the same question with sauces. For example, I made a sauce for my chicken this past week, and the sauce had sugar in it. But most of the sauce is left in the pan afterwards. So if I ate a quarter of the chicken, there's no way that I had a full quarter of a cup of sugar (assuming there was a cup of sugar in the sauce). But it's definitely true that the chicken gained calories because of the sugar. How do I know how much?

Use the recipe builder to build the sauce separately from the chicken. Determine overall cooked weight of sauce in grams and enter that number as the number of servings in the sauce. Weigh out, in grams, how much sauce you use and log that number of servings.

not_my_first_rodeo

And I would avoid the recipe importer thing. Add the ingredients manually.

cwolfman13

I basically try not to be quite that anal about things...for broth I'd just use some commercial broth from the data base...and I never logged marinades and whatnot.

Trying to be exact in something that is inexact is an exercise in futility...you don't have to be exact, you have to be good enough.

jemhh

I don't log marinades but I do log sauces.

mph323

What I do is look for a generic "chicken broth, homemade " in the database and use those calories. It probably ly won't be perfectly accurate but if you use the same source each time you'll be able to judge over time if you are over or under estimating your calories in.

Edited for typo

tlflag1620

Personally I don't weight or measure. But.... For stock or broth, I'd just use a generic chicken stock or broth entry - what you make at home shouldn't be too far off from commercially prepared, and stocks/broths are pretty low calorie to begin with, so even if you are a bit off it shouldn't be the end of the world. With pan sauces where not all of the sauce is consumed - weigh the sauce as you prepare it, then weigh what is left in the pan and subtract - that will tell you how much, appx, was consumed.

Honestly it just sounds like you don't want to weigh your food. That's okay. It really is (I lost 50 lbs and have kept it off for a few years without ever weighing or measuring a thing). It only becomes problematic if you aren't reaching your goals. Are you losing weight with just estimating? If yes, keep on keepin on. Just know that eventually you may need to be more accurate (or not, maybe you are a good estimator like I am). If no, then buy a scale and start weighing food. Whatever you do, don't refuse to accurately weigh and measure food and then complain that you aren't losing weight, because you already know the advice you are going to get!

Jruzer

Make your best estimate, realize that accuracy better than +/-100 kcal per day is probably unreasonable, and move on. Adjust as needed.

wishfuljune

Buy a food scale, and weigh things. For broth, you can build a recipe and figure out how many ounces you made, but I agree with many: pick a homemade generic broth (or store bought) and go from there. Definitely build out the sauce recipe and see how many fluid ounces it makes in the recipe builder, and weigh the chicken.