How to log foods cooked by someone else

dashagrr

So, my family from Eastern Europe is in town helping us out with our baby twins. I have recently got serious about losing that baby weight, went back to Myfitnesspal and Fitbit. I have lost and even maintained the weight this way before, so I have experience tracking my food intake by using food scale. But, a lot of dishes my mom cooks are fairly complex (have multiple ingredients) and not super common in the database. I am doing my best, still weighing my portions and looking for database items with weight, but don't know how accurate my logging is. How do you manage eating food prepared by others?

estherdragonbat

If you can get the recipe, you can enter it in the recipe builder, using generic entries where you have to (ie if you don't know the weight of the onions, go with X medium onions, etc.)

The restaurants I frequent aren't in the database. (I'm strictly kosher, so I don't eat at chain restaurants, which are the ones most likely to have nutritional info). Generally, I order something fairly common across the board, say a slice of pizza, look up "pizza large cheese slice/large vegetarian slice" note the range of calories and log something around the middle or slightly above it. Could I be off by 20-50 calories? Sure. But I could be off by 20-50 even if the slice HAD come from Pizza Pizza like I said it did, depending on how well-distributed the toppings were.

Floydy89

Looking forward to the answers to this. From a family full of people that love cooking I struggle with this aspect too.

So far I’ve just been finding entries made by others for the generic end products of the meal and picking the most prudent one.

ShayCarver89

Honestly I've always just given it an educated guess. That's what I do at holidays when I can't measure out everything on my plate. Look up 'mashed potatoes' and add an ex half serving. I'd rather over estimate than under estimate. Its probably not the smartest thing to do but 37 pounds gone..it can't be that bad.

NovusDies

If you can't get the exact recipe and you cannot find something similar in the db try and identify the main caloric ingredients like meat, cheese, cream, etc. and then do your best to guess. If this happens often try and fill up on things you can log more accurately like fruits and vegetables so you are eating less of the mystery food.

I have been logging long enough that I have gotten pretty good at getting into the ballpark of food I see. Recently I have been within 20 calories 2 times on guessing something my wife was eating. When I do not feel as comfortable trusting my instincts I always add a margin of error of 10 to 20 percent. This, of course, is no substitute for weighing but I think most of us are put in the position of guessing at least occasionally.