Lesson learned : always count BEFORE you eat

jelleigh
jelleigh Posts: 743 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
Join me for a small cautionary tail of why pretracking is a good idea:

I've bee off grains for over a month now (dr prrscribed ) and last night got a hankering for some good old crackers. Something crunchy and salty you know? Remembered I saw some grain free cracker recipes on Pinterest and whipped up a batch. They were mostly succesful. Yay me! Went great with guac.
Dawned on me this am that a cup of almond flour is not a small amount. Fed it all into MFP and those dang crackers cost me 750 cals!! Before the guac!!!

And that my friends, is why you ALWAYS figure out your totals BEFORE eating . :#:o

(Ok well maybe just for new recipes where you have no clue what it's worth)
Anyone else have this happened? Any seemingly obvious lessons you've learned the hard way?

Replies

  • MaltedTea
    MaltedTea Posts: 6,286 Member
    Much like restaurants, I find a lot of recipes online to be very high calorie per quoted serving.

    Beyond my inevitable substitutions along the way, I generally assume at least 33-50% more servings from a batch of a recipe than stated. For example if the site/book/source indicates the yeild will be 8 servings, I'll portion out 12 servings once the cooking/baking is complete.

    And then I enter the ingredients into MFP lol

    But, yes, best to know the "hit" and whether it's all worth it ahead of time.

  • springlering62
    springlering62 Posts: 8,415 Member
    I learned a long time ago not to believe calories listed in recipes. Besides, there’s always a tweak I can make to reduce what’s shown.

    But lately I’m running into a schlew of tempting lo cal recipes. When I look further, a “serving size” is shown as 1 gram.

    It’s not just one website either. It’s multiple. I think some are using a highly flawed plug-in on their websites. Thats the only explanation I can come up with.
  • Dani9585
    Dani9585 Posts: 215 Member
    Oh gosh, I’ve done that a few times!
  • cupcakesandproteinshakes
    cupcakesandproteinshakes Posts: 1,130 Member
    This is me to a tee I always log after the event. I’m trying at least to pre log brekkie and lunch then I know whether I’m facing a feast or a famine in the evening. Getting a bit better at doing this.
  • bmeadows380
    bmeadows380 Posts: 2,981 Member
    KrissFlavored wrote: »
    I always work out my calories before I make or during making the recipe, even when those recipe sites offer nutritional info at the bottom, I often find it vastly different from my own.

    me too - I actually never bother to look at the nutritional information provided for a recipe. I also like to make substitutes for ingredients, and the calorie counts can differ even on the same thing made by two different brands!

    I don't even use my own built in recipes without double checking them as I know I don't always use exactly the same amount of a particular ingredient every time.
  • Lietchi
    Lietchi Posts: 6,814 Member
    I prepared a pasta bake today for lunch with my parents. I usually do a seafood type pasta bake, with a béchamel sauce with fish stock. But I decided to switch things up and go for a cheesy béchamel sauce. I weighed everything, but couldn't calculate my calories till after my parents left.

    1000 calories for one and a half portion! Way more than my usual pasta bake. No more cheesy béchamel for me :smile: or not at that serving size anyway, lol.
  • papayahed
    papayahed Posts: 407 Member
    It seems like every time I pre log my meals something always happens and I end up eating something different. Every. damn. time.
  • lemurcat2
    lemurcat2 Posts: 7,885 Member
    When cooking I tend to log the whole recipe (as determined by me) in my log and then divide by whatever portion I choose to eat (based on cals). If I didn't log when cooking I wouldn't recall. Mostly I get no surprises since I've done this for a while so can estimate well. I also always read labels before I use anything packaged.
  • KrissFlavored
    KrissFlavored Posts: 327 Member
    I dont even think my brain would even allow me to do that.. I can with baby carrots lol.. and low calorie stuff like sugar free jello, but I'm pretty sure my brain would implode

    Which you know what? That's so weird to say cause it's not like It did that while I was gaining weight and binge eating lol.. sitting there eating a large double salami pizza, medium garlic fingers and two donairs in one sitting LOL...

    Who wants to work out those calories? Lol.. pretty sure that was like.. 5 or 6+ thousand calories and that was just one meal of the day..
  • cupcakesandproteinshakes
    cupcakesandproteinshakes Posts: 1,130 Member
    jelleigh wrote: »
    Great insight everyone. The crazy thing is that I can't even blame poor nutrition info on the recipe. I literally just didn't look? And then ate THE WHOLE BATCH. Then didn't log. Then woke up the next day and thought huh,I bet a whole cup of almond flour is high cal! :# Ugh. So silly

    It’s ok though. Ur human, not silly. Imperfections are ok.
  • ChrysalisCove
    ChrysalisCove Posts: 975 Member
    KrissFlavored wrote: »
    Also I made some spicy thai chicken tenders today. The recipe called for two cups of oil, I'm assuming for them to be deep fried in a dutch oven or whatever, but I figured I could probably get a decent result with using much less.

    Which they did, came out quite nice using 1/4 cup of oil, for 2lbs of chicken tenders

    End result. Perfect chicken fingers with way less calories.

    I almost always find that recipes call for far more oil than is necessary. Salt, butter, cream, cheese, & smothering sauces are also frequently able to be cut back a bit without impacting the end result noticeably.
  • yirara
    yirara Posts: 9,937 Member
    I know by the time that I start cooking what I want to cook. I then log while cooking. Most ingredients are quickly done. Based on that I adjust the amount of rice/pasta/couscous/etc and never really go over my calories.
  • Athijade
    Athijade Posts: 3,300 Member
    I prelog. Every Saturday I sit down and log for the week. Since I meal plan and prep ahead of time, this is easy for me. Especially right now because I don't have coworkers asking if I want to grab lunch! Now, I only prelog meals and don't do snacks because I don't know what I will be craving or if I will even be hungry. Even doing this, I allow myself to be flexible and change things up. Stuff happens. I just log into the site and put in the new information. Easy.
  • bmeadows380
    bmeadows380 Posts: 2,981 Member
    ChrysalisCove wrote: »
    KrissFlavored wrote: »
    Also I made some spicy thai chicken tenders today. The recipe called for two cups of oil, I'm assuming for them to be deep fried in a dutch oven or whatever, but I figured I could probably get a decent result with using much less.

    Which they did, came out quite nice using 1/4 cup of oil, for 2lbs of chicken tenders

    End result. Perfect chicken fingers with way less calories.

    I almost always find that recipes call for far more oil than is necessary. Salt, butter, cream, cheese, & smothering sauces are also frequently able to be cut back a bit without impacting the end result noticeably.

    I agree - many recipes I just leave the oil out all together or add just a little for flavoring. And I've found that in baked goods like cakes, fat free greek yogurt or sour cream makes a fantastic substitute for oil or butter.

    I've also found that a little bit of butter can go a LONG way and its not necessary to use the 3 or 4 times amount that many recipes call for.
  • hipari
    hipari Posts: 1,367 Member
    bmeadows380 wrote: »
    ChrysalisCove wrote: »
    KrissFlavored wrote: »
    Also I made some spicy thai chicken tenders today. The recipe called for two cups of oil, I'm assuming for them to be deep fried in a dutch oven or whatever, but I figured I could probably get a decent result with using much less.

    Which they did, came out quite nice using 1/4 cup of oil, for 2lbs of chicken tenders

    End result. Perfect chicken fingers with way less calories.

    I almost always find that recipes call for far more oil than is necessary. Salt, butter, cream, cheese, & smothering sauces are also frequently able to be cut back a bit without impacting the end result noticeably.

    I agree - many recipes I just leave the oil out all together or add just a little for flavoring. And I've found that in baked goods like cakes, fat free greek yogurt or sour cream makes a fantastic substitute for oil or butter.

    I've also found that a little bit of butter can go a LONG way and its not necessary to use the 3 or 4 times amount that many recipes call for.

    Yep. I'm trying a new chicken recipe today, and it calls for 1/3 cup of oil in the marinade. For marinades, I usually go with enough to make it liquid, so depending on amount of spices and other liquids something like 1 or 2 tablespoons.
  • springlering62
    springlering62 Posts: 8,415 Member
    bmeadows380 wrote: »

    I agree - many recipes I just leave the oil out all together or add just a little for flavoring. And I've found that in baked goods like cakes, fat free greek yogurt or sour cream makes a fantastic substitute for oil or butter.

    Kefir oh Kefir, how do I love thee......

    1 cake mix (any flavor)
    1 c kefir (or Greek yogurt and fat free works just fine but kefir is richer)
    .5 to 1 c water
    Mix and bake as directed on the box.

    Comes to 1740 calories, divided by 9 (because it’s just easier to slice into ninths than tenths!) for 194 calories per generous serving. No eggs, no oils, no butter.

    I sometimes add : 2 tbsp shredded sweetened coconut, 2 or 3 tbsp chocolate chips, shredded carrots, a few grams of any Jordan's sugar free syrup, or whatever else catches my fancy.

    Even works with sugar free jello for a “poke” cake.


  • BMcC9
    BMcC9 Posts: 4,451 Member
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  • PAPYRUS3
    PAPYRUS3 Posts: 13,259 Member
    Low carb recipes sure doesn't necessarily mean low calorie!
  • MelanieCN77
    MelanieCN77 Posts: 4,047 Member
    ChrysalisCove wrote: »
    KrissFlavored wrote: »
    Also I made some spicy thai chicken tenders today. The recipe called for two cups of oil, I'm assuming for them to be deep fried in a dutch oven or whatever, but I figured I could probably get a decent result with using much less.

    Which they did, came out quite nice using 1/4 cup of oil, for 2lbs of chicken tenders

    End result. Perfect chicken fingers with way less calories.

    I almost always find that recipes call for far more oil than is necessary. Salt, butter, cream, cheese, & smothering sauces are also frequently able to be cut back a bit without impacting the end result noticeably.

    I've made two recipes with canned beans lately that did not suffer from using one can instead of two, and one recipe even called for three cans of beans! A serves 6-8 affair!

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