Logging Potato Calories accurately?

danaglbrt27

When I scan my organic russet potatoes, it comes up as 110 calories for 5.3 oz, but not all of the potatoes in the bag are 5.3oz, some weigh more. How do I accurately input this in MFP?

amyr271

Divide the actual weight in oz by 5.3 oz and then put that number into servings

amusedmonkey

Weigh the portion you want to eat, then click the drop down menu that says (5.3 oz) and pick the unit you want to use (1 oz or 1 gram) then just enter the actual weight of the potato and the app will recalculate the calories automatically.

T0M_K

you get a scale that weighs in grams and ounces. selected an entry that is from USDA for a potato. Log it in grams. Weigh it before cooking.

lemurcat12

Tomk652015 wrote: »

you get a scale that weighs in grams and ounces. selected an entry that is from USDA for a potato. Log it in grams. Weigh it before cooking.

Yup.

Tacklewasher

I toss the potato on the scale, look at how many calories are in 300 g of potato, cut it in half and half some of it the next day.

Sigh.

I like potatoes.

lemurcat12

I tend to eat the littler potatoes, red and purple and tan on the outside.

Sweet potatoes, now those I have to cut in half.

cwolfman13

Weigh them on a scale and log the actual weight.

amc2509

I so hear you on this... I cook daily for a family of 5 and quite often we have mashed potato... For the first few weeks I weighed the amount of raw potato I was cooking, it generally came in at c. 900g... Once mashed I use a scoop to portion out the potato mash and counted the yield from the original raw weight... This allowed me to fairly accurately establish the amount of raw potato used to get a scoop of mash... I log butter separately... While this is not scientific it has worked over time and I've been loosing weight at the expected rate since February.
I actually eyeball a lot of my food, but would always have started out with weighing over a period of time to get my brain used to a portion size. I try to leave 100-200 exercise calories over each day to allow for under-estimates... HTH

lemurcat12

For mashed (which I don't have much), I weigh the potatoes raw, have an amount (say 220 g) and then weigh the final (after adding milk and butter and garlic) and take some percentage of whatever the total is -- say it's 300 g and I take 100 g. Then I log 1/3 of the 220 plus 1/3 of the amount of butter and milk added. That sounds way more complicated than it is, it takes no time in practice.

Tacklewasher

I am sort of fortunate in that my wife can't eat potatoes, so what I cook is what I eat and I don't have to guesstimate the percentage I eat.

cangler

i prefer to change the serving size to 1 gram and then just way out the amount i want to eat, chop up the potatos if necessary. i'll cook a big batch for the week.