Calorie counting

nicole3736

How do I count calories when I make my own meals e.g sauces or casseroles thankyou

goal06082021

Use the recipe builder. Works best when you weigh all of your ingredients on a food scale while you're cooking; I keep a pad of paper and a pen by the scale in the kitchen and make notes as I go, rather than trying to just remember or futz with my phone while I have crud all over my hands, as often happens while prepping meat and veg for cooking.

On the desktop site: Food > Recipes, click "enter ingredients manually"
In the Android app (I assume iOS is the same): hamburger menu > Recipes, Meals & Foods, tap Create Recipe at the bottom of the screen

I have two approaches to how I build my recipe, depending on what I'm making.

If I'm making something with a serving size that may vary, like soup, pasta sauce, chili, etc: Weigh the entire finished dish in grams, record that as the number of servings (i.e., 1 serving = 1 gram; a pot of 3534 grams of chili makes 3534 servings). Then, when I go to log it in my diary, I weigh out my portion and log that number of servings. It looks a little weird to see "60 servings" or "200 servings" of something in the diary, but the math checks out. If the amount I make comes to a nice round number, I might input it in the recipe builder as per 10g or per 100g (i.e., 1 serving = 10g or 100g, respectively; 3530g chili per 10g is 353 servings, 3500g chili per 100g is 35 servings).

If I'm making something that has discrete components, even if I cooked it all together, I'll break it into servings (2, 4, 6, however many I'm expecting), weighing the components to make sure all the servings are the same, and log the recipe as having that many servings. For example, last week I made corned beef and cabbage in my Instant Pot - the corned beef cooks in liquid (2 cups water + 12 oz beer) for a while, then while it's resting you cook the cabbage and potatoes in the resulting broth. So when everything was done, I divided the components evenly between 6 containers and logged the resulting meal as a single line-item in my diary rather than each part individually.

wilson10102018

You have to have a scale to count calories. $18 on Amazon. this is the best choice.

callsitlikeiseeit

wilson10102018 wrote: »

You have to have a scale to count calories. $18 on Amazon. this is the best choice.

'best choice' is totally subjective.

I would not like that one much at all. My plates would cover the display.

the 'best choice' is one that is accurate. Beyond that, it is all subjective.

wilson10102018

You would have to learn how to use it.