Leftovers
Oliveciabatta
Posts: 294 Member
What do you do about leftovers do you go back and edit your diary with an estimate of how much went in the bin/dog/boyfriend? Do you just count the calories anyway and hope it gives you an extra deficit? Or are you one of these people who always clears their plate or wants seconds?
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Replies
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The only time I have leftovers is if I'm making a soup or stew or something of that nature...I serve myself a proper serving for that meal...I never have leftovers on my plate and almost never go back for seconds. Actual leftovers get packaged up and eaten for lunch or whatever over the next day or two.4
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I'm always hungry and eat all my food.5
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I never cook for myself alone, so I always log all the ingredients for the entire dish in a recipe, weigh the finished dish and then weigh my own portion to add it to my diary. That way, I have an accurate calorie count even though I share the meal with my BF, and I can use the same method for leftovers.2
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Chef_Barbell wrote: »I'm always hungry and eat all my food.
Hahaha, same here. I think maybe 3-4 times a year I don't want to finish my food. It's so rare, I don't even worry about how to log it.2 -
What is this strange thing 'leftovers' of which you speak?!
But seriously, like cwolfman13, my meal portions are always measured and are in exact amount I will eat. When I make large batch items like chili/stews/soups/tomato sauces, I'll portion the overage and freeze for future meals and/or sometimes eat the same meal for more than one day.
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For a restaurant food that I don't finish, I'll estimate and change the serving to the appropriate decimal (.9, .75, .5, etc). I almost never leave any of my homemade meals because I plan servings around my appetite and dish them up accordingly.3
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I honestly don't understand hiw people can know how much they want to eat. I've always had eyes bigger than my mouth, so the saying goes. Dont think I've ever finished food in my life. Maybe its upbringing as lots of people are taught to clear their plates as children. In our house we were fed tapas style, food in the middle of the table and you picked at what you wanted until you'd had enough.2
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I honestly don't understand hiw people can know how much they want to eat. I've always had eyes bigger than my mouth, so the saying goes. Dont think I've ever finished food in my life. Maybe its upbringing as lots of people are taught to clear their plates as children. In our house we were fed tapas style, food in the middle of the table and you picked at what you wanted until you'd had enough.
No I weigh out my portion on a food scale and eat what I portioned out. I was always taught as a child that I can stop eating when I'm full. I am just hungry 🤷♀️4 -
I honestly don't understand hiw people can know how much they want to eat. I've always had eyes bigger than my mouth, so the saying goes. Dont think I've ever finished food in my life. Maybe its upbringing as lots of people are taught to clear their plates as children. In our house we were fed tapas style, food in the middle of the table and you picked at what you wanted until you'd had enough.
I weigh the ingredients. My dinners are usually around 500-600 calories (plus up to 250 for deserts), thus it's easy to not overcook. Plus I don't want to throw away good produce.3 -
I honestly don't understand hiw people can know how much they want to eat. I've always had eyes bigger than my mouth, so the saying goes. Dont think I've ever finished food in my life. Maybe its upbringing as lots of people are taught to clear their plates as children. In our house we were fed tapas style, food in the middle of the table and you picked at what you wanted until you'd had enough.
I weigh the ingredients. My dinners are usually around 500-600 calories (plus up to 250 for deserts), thus it's easy to not overcook. Plus I don't want to throw away good produce.
Yeah, I started out MFP cooking based on the cals I wanted and found I was satisfied eating that much. I now have a good sense how much I will find satisfying, and so I finish my meals unless I'm feeling sick or something is not as tasty as expected (if I try some new cooking idea that doesn't work out). If it is a (rare) day in which I don't finish something, I might save it for later and so keep it logged or else I might modify what I logged.
Before MFP I would often make more than I actually wanted, but MFP cured me of that.
In restaurants I estimate what I eat, as I rarely go to places with set cals (well, back in the day).3 -
I honestly don't understand hiw people can know how much they want to eat. I've always had eyes bigger than my mouth, so the saying goes. Dont think I've ever finished food in my life. Maybe its upbringing as lots of people are taught to clear their plates as children. In our house we were fed tapas style, food in the middle of the table and you picked at what you wanted until you'd had enough.
I weigh the ingredients. My dinners are usually around 500-600 calories (plus up to 250 for deserts), thus it's easy to not overcook. Plus I don't want to throw away good produce.
Yeah, I started out MFP cooking based on the cals I wanted and found I was satisfied eating that much. I now have a good sense how much I will find satisfying, and so I finish my meals unless I'm feeling sick or something is not as tasty as expected (if I try some new cooking idea that doesn't work out). If it is a (rare) day in which I don't finish something, I might save it for later and so keep it logged or else I might modify what I logged.
Before MFP I would often make more than I actually wanted, but MFP cured me of that.
In restaurants I estimate what I eat, as I rarely go to places with set cals (well, back in the day).
Yes, this. I might get things wrong occasionally. I made some kind of left-over veggie tom yum soup the other day and used 100gr noodles to get my calories. That's a lot more pasta than I usually eat. But hey, calories. This, together with the veggies and fluid proved to be too much with regards to volume. But otherwise there are very few things that do go wrong. Did the same again today, learned my lesson, used only 70gr noodle - and will have a bigger, low volume dessert 5 -
Yeah, tapas style would be hard to measure.
I'd say if you can make that work, keep doing that.
I plan my meals and they are in the 400-500 calorie range. That seems to be the amount that keeps me satisfied till the next meal without over or under-eating.
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What are "leftovers"????
I only cook what I am going to eat - problem solved.2 -
What are "leftovers"????
I only cook what I am going to eat - problem solved.
This! Or when cooking for several days, like a stew for example then I put all amounts of ingredients into the app, and then I know into how many portions I can divide the whole yummy pot of food, and how much bread, pasta, rice, other stuff I can add when I eat the single portions.1 -
I cook a separate meal for just me (vegetarian) and there are times when I don’t finish all the food on my plate.
I don’t bother to adjust my food diary to account for what goes in the bin though. To some degree I don’t see the point. It’s the last thing I’m going to eat for the day and the reason I’ve not eaten it all is because I’m full.
If I were to ‘reclaim’ the calories what am I going to do with them? I’m full. 🤷♀️2 -
BarbaraHelen2013 wrote: »I cook a separate meal for just me (vegetarian) and there are times when I don’t finish all the food on my plate.
I don’t bother to adjust my food diary to account for what goes in the bin though. To some degree I don’t see the point. It’s the last thing I’m going to eat for the day and the reason I’ve not eaten it all is because I’m full.
If I were to ‘reclaim’ the calories what am I going to do with them? I’m full. 🤷♀️
For people (like me) who want to determine if the calorie burns given by MFP/their fitness tracker/etc. are correct, having correct numbers for calories in (or as correct as possible) is important to compare with our weight trend.2 -
BarbaraHelen2013 wrote: »I cook a separate meal for just me (vegetarian) and there are times when I don’t finish all the food on my plate.
I don’t bother to adjust my food diary to account for what goes in the bin though. To some degree I don’t see the point. It’s the last thing I’m going to eat for the day and the reason I’ve not eaten it all is because I’m full.
If I were to ‘reclaim’ the calories what am I going to do with them? I’m full. 🤷♀️
For people (like me) who want to determine if the calorie burns given by MFP/their fitness tracker/etc. are correct, having correct numbers for calories in (or as correct as possible) is important to compare with our weight trend.
Absolutely understand that, which is why I said ‘to some degree I don’t see the point’.
I, too, like to balance the in & out with my Fitbit and if it happened more frequently I’d cut down the amount of food I cooked rather than try and guesstimate what I’d left uneaten. At the end of the day though, what’s usually left is vegetables anyway, so in the general scheme of things the difference in calories will be absorbed in the vagaries of tracking both sides of the in-out equation. 🤷♀️1 -
The quantity and type of leftovers make a big difference of course
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I measure out how much I want to eat, than track it in my diary. If I don't finish it, I eat it the next day and don't track it, as it's already been counted/tracked for the previous day.3
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What leftovers?😳2
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I honestly don't understand hiw people can know how much they want to eat. I've always had eyes bigger than my mouth, so the saying goes. Dont think I've ever finished food in my life. Maybe its upbringing as lots of people are taught to clear their plates as children. In our house we were fed tapas style, food in the middle of the table and you picked at what you wanted until you'd had enough.
Well, I've been logging for a while so I know what's going to fill me up. So for example for dinner I know to take 100 g chicken, 100 g broccoli, and 142 g potato. Or if it's a recipe I know about 500 calories will fill me up.
With a bone-in, skin-on chicken thigh I get the total weight first and afterwards subtract the skin and bones that I don't eat. Sometimes it will turn out to be really big and I don't want the whole thing, so I weigh whatever I put back and subtract.0 -
So I cooked bami goreng today. I had 300gr chicken breast, had a bag of 200gr wok veggies, cut about the same amount of broccoli and carrot, used my own spice mix and know the calories per 100gr. I know cooking oil will be about 7-10gr. Now I have those calories. Standard amount for peanut sauce and sambal per meal is x calories. Look up the bami calories, and think of how many portions I can make with this, and decide on 3, weigh up bami to fit my dinner calorie allowance for three meals. Done. Total dinner calorie planning was about 5 minutes, mostly while cooking. No leftovers, and I know I'll be full and happy.1
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