Smoothie calories

Options
tidyme
tidyme Posts: 6 Member
in Food and Nutrition
Bought a niji professional mixer the other day wondering how to count calories, individual ingredients or another way?

Replies

  • springlering62
    springlering62 Posts: 7,466 Member
    Options
    If it’s the same smoothie, carefully measured each day, go to >Recipes>Create a Recipe. Once created, you can enter it in your diary by simply entering the name you chose fir the recipe.

    I drank variations of the same smoothie every day for 18 months. It was easier for me to enter individual ingredients once, select “copy from” and choose the prior days breakfast. Then I could go in and tweak the chocolate if I felt chocolatier that day, or adjust the almond butter, etc.

    But don’t just use some random “smoothie” entry, or you lose all accuracy in your logging. Accuracy is king.
  • lemurcat2
    lemurcat2 Posts: 7,885 Member
    Options
    I make smoothies that vary a lot depending on what I have on hand and what I'm in the mood for. Using the individual ingredients is easy and, yes, will give you the correct calorie count.
  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 32,170 Member
    edited December 2020
    Options
    springlering62 wrote: »
    If it’s the same smoothie, carefully measured each day, go to >Recipes>Create a Recipe. Once created, you can enter it in your diary by simply entering the name you chose fir the recipe.

    I drank variations of the same smoothie every day for 18 months. It was easier for me to enter individual ingredients once, select “copy from” and choose the prior days breakfast. Then I could go in and tweak the chocolate if I felt chocolatier that day, or adjust the almond butter, etc.

    But don’t just use some random “smoothie” entry, or you lose all accuracy in your logging. Accuracy is king.

    If it tends to have the same ingredient list, maybe plus/minus a few, another option is to log the full list as a meal, log the meal, then adjust quantities or delete/add a few things as needed on that day, right on the diary page - can still be quicker than logging every ingredient individually every time. (I do this every day with my many-ingredient oatmeal breakfast . . . never can get an exact amount of molasses, dagnabbit. 😉)
  • cwolfman13
    cwolfman13 Posts: 41,874 Member
    Options
    tidyme wrote: »
    Bought a niji professional mixer the other day wondering how to count calories, individual ingredients or another way?

    You would have to log individual ingredients and amounts or create a recipe.
  • springlering62
    springlering62 Posts: 7,466 Member
    Options
    @AnnPT77
    These OXO squeeze bottles are worth every penny. You can really control portions. They are cheaper at target than Amazon but not all Targets sell both sizes. This is my vanilla and my molasses bottles. Also use them for Skinny Syrups and balsamic. I keep a couple in the drawer to rotate because they take a while to dry out after washing.
    2vhepk9lwoy5.jpeg
  • springlering62
    springlering62 Posts: 7,466 Member
    Options
    Why does every single photo I post come out rotated on MFP???!!!!
  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 32,170 Member
    Options
    springlering62 wrote: »
    @AnnPT77
    These OXO squeeze bottles are worth every penny. You can really control portions. They are cheaper at target than Amazon but not all Targets sell both sizes. This is my vanilla and my molasses bottles. Also use them for Skinny Syrups and balsamic. I keep a couple in the drawer to rotate because they take a while to dry out after washing.
    2vhepk9lwoy5.jpeg

    I didn't try that brand (though I can look for them). I tried another type of squeeze bottle for the molasses, and I actually got worse results than pouring from the bottle. The brand I like is really thick. If the spout is big enough for it to come out at a reasonable rate, the total is at least as hard to manage as bottle pouring. If the rate is controllable, it's way too slow. (I'm not getting terrible results from the pour. It's just not precise enough to use an MFP recipe. Probably I'm being too compulsive about the grams for the amount of calories' difference it makes, but it's easy to save it as a meal and tweak that one thing most days.) On the rare day (using up the last of a package, say, or wanting some extra protein so more yogurt, or subbing an unusual seed or nut), I change some other item(s), too, so saving it as a meal works nicely as a time-saver.

    I have some other recipe-like things saved as meals, too, just to have a list of commonly-used-together things in a form where I can log them and tweak details vs. add a dozen things one at a time. Personally, I only use MFP recipes for really complicated things I make and will eat over multiple days (and probably never again, because I don't mostly use recipes to cook) or for a few baked goods that I do make the same way every time.

Categories