Tracking calories from home made dinners?

Kwee91

I'm on a budget and trying to cook as healthy as possible for my family of 4. But for the life of me I cannot figure out how to track my calories from the big meals I make. And how to figure out portions. Is there a trick or tool for this?

Cahgetsfit

You need to make recipes. There is a create recipe option in the app/website. So, for example, I made chicken and vegetable curry the other day. So i created the recipe by weighing out all the ingredients separately, eg 1 kg chicken, 500g pumpkin, etc etc etc. Then, when everything is all cooked together in the pot, you just weigh the whole entire thing (minus the weight of the pot). That would be the most accurate way. I sometimes cheat because my scale can't handle anything over 2kg so I add all the different weights together (so eg 1 kg + 500 g + ... = 2.5 kg)

Also, I then make the recipe "per 100 grams" so if I have something that weighs 2kg, I call it 20 serves being 100g each serve. Then when I go to log it and I ate 350 grams of curry I log as 3.5 serves.

Cahgetsfit

Or else, if I make things separately I just weight stuff separately on my plate. So quite often i'll make some sort of meat, then some veg or rice. I'll log my 120 g of potato, 100 g spinach, 150 g beef etc etc.

Kwee91

Thank you so much! That makes complete sense. I was having such a hard time figuring it out haha

bllaura10

I have a hard time with this as well. I don’t weigh everything but I like to give it a fair estimate and so far that’s been working for my weight loss. We eat a lot of home cooked meals and it’s hard to estimate the calories in certain things.

peartree99

Use the recipe feature of this website/app and log each ingredient you add. Weigh/measure and log each item (ground beef, green pepper, rice, etc.) accurately before you add it. Don't forget to account for any oils you use to brown or saute with. When done, weigh the entire completed dish so you can accurately determine how many servings you made. It's helpful to weigh the empty pan before starting. I actually keep a list of the weights of all my empty pots and pans. Many people (myself included), set the # of servings in the recipe to the total weight in grams, making each "serving" only 1 gram. This seems odd, but then if your portion is 175 grams, you log it as 175 servings. This keeps things simple.

The most difficult part is making sure you use an accurate database entry for each item. Most of them are pretty good, but some of them are not accurate at all. I often do my own research to ensure an entry is accurate and then I stick with that one or enter my own. Meats can be especially tricky.