Easily tracking home made food items?

mirnmax

So as I mentioned in other threads, I get easily distracted when things get difficult or tedious. I make a lot of my own foods including yogurt and no I don't always follow a recipe.... I guess I need to. BUT - that being said, how do you account for homemade foods? I've been choosing a full fat greek plain yogurt to account for my lil 4 0z jars of homemade I make, but it's just a guess. For lunch I have cabbage, carrots, onions, potatoes, celery, maybe some spinach left in there too from a corned beef brisket I cooked over the weekend - - no meat left just the veggies - so - would I just add like 1/4 cabbage cooked? xxx carrots, potatoes etc.... ??? Please make it easy!

annacole94

Yogurt is about the same as commercial yogurt, assuming you just use milk and culture. If I use skim milk, I log fat free yogurt. If I use 1% or 2% or whole, I find a yogurt that has some fat. It's close enough.

Yes, if you eat a mix of a bunch of foods, you have to log each one. It's not that bad - as you do things, your common foods end up in your "recent" suggestions and get faster to log.

If you cook a bunch of something - recipe or not - put it in the recipe builder and then you can log it as one item. If you eat the same thing a lot, save it as a meal. I have a couple breakfasts saved as meals, so they log easily despite being a bunch of items.

perkymommy

I agree with using the recipe builder if you are mixing a lot of items together. Try not to guesstimate because you will most likely eat more than you think. It sounds tedious but I would weigh each item and write it down on paper and then come and enter it in the recipe builder. Once you start weighing your food you should get used to it with time. When you make your own yogurt do the same thing with writing down ingredients and weighing them and putting it in to the recipe builder.

annacole94

Yogurt is trickier, because you put ingredients in (milk and yogurt starter), then you take ingredients out to make it greek (liquid whey). And then after all that effort and math, it comes out essentially the same as Fage Whole Milk Greek Yogurt (or whatever brand). This is discussed daily on the Weight Watchers Instant Pot Facebook group.

happysherri

I take the time to scan everything, weigh everything and add it into the recipe tool in MFP. It is tedious and I aslo hate putting every item in, but I wouldn't have a clue on some of my recipes the macros or calories. Last night I made homemade healthy chili - I wouldn't have guessed the calories that came out of adding it in the recipes. If you want to be accurate - this is the way. If you're just guesstimating and not so concerned with every calorie than just guess through the MFP food database. Good luck

AigreDoux

Recipe builder, especially if you make a lot of the same recipes.

Example - my family eats a lot of rice. So one day I weighed the rice raw and cooked and made an entry. The ingredients are the weight of rice I used. The # of servings is the # of grams of cooked rice I made. This way I can measure out 150g of cooked rice and not have to calculate every time, since I make rice the same way every day.

If I made something in the slow cooker or pressure cooker or a stir fry, I weigh the raw chicken and add the rest of the ingredients to a recipe. I have a file with all the weights of my pans. So when dinner is done, I weigh the whole pot, subtract the weight of the empty pot, and divide into servings. If I make the same recipe again, I just weigh the chicken and adjust the recipe for slightly different package sizes. I don't add spices, and I don't weigh low calorie vegetables (onions, peppers), but that's a personal choice.

stelly76

I agree with the above...I put each meal in as separate foods (a blt would be put in as bacon, lettuce, tomato, mayo, bread). MFP makes it very easy to put former foods in, so even if at first it's a pain, it gets much easier. I feel the calorie information is more accurate that way.

mirnmax

annacole94 wrote: »

Yogurt is trickier, because you put ingredients in (milk and yogurt starter), then you take ingredients out to make it greek (liquid whey). And then after all that effort and math, it comes out essentially the same as Fage Whole Milk Greek Yogurt (or whatever brand). This is discussed daily on the Weight Watchers Instant Pot Facebook group.

OOH I Love my instant pot!!!

Okay - I will try the recipe builder - I did it for a while on Spark. So it's probably similar. Thanks!