How to figure out servings per recipe

jessack21
jessack21 Posts: 9 Member
in Food and Nutrition
I was building a recipe in MyFitnessPal for chicken salad and I can’t figure out how many servings this recipe would be. Any suggestions?

Replies

  • COGypsy
    COGypsy Posts: 1,352 Member
    Weigh the finished dish and make the total your number of servings. Then weigh your portions as you go and just enter the number of grams as the number of servings in your food diary.
  • Corina1143
    Corina1143 Posts: 3,624 Member
    Like @COGypsy said. Weigh your finished product in grams,that's servings available. weigh what you eat.
    It sure looks funny when you eat 160 servings, but you get used to it quickly.
    If you don't weigh your food, use a cup, measure your finished product, log your cups eaten.
    It's so easy to weigh. If you don't have a scale, get one. It makes life so much easier.
  • Hobartlemagne
    Hobartlemagne Posts: 565 Member
    edited June 14
    is it a mayo-salad or a greens salad?
    If it's mayo based- (for comparison) I made a tuna salad recipe thats 140cal per serving. I usually put it on a wrap with some cheese, tomato, and greens. It takes some guesswork, but change your recipe's serving count until the calories-per-serving fits what you want. Dont be afraid of the yield being an odd number.
  • yirara
    yirara Posts: 9,941 Member
    jessack21 wrote: »
    I was building a recipe in MyFitnessPal for chicken salad and I can’t figure out how many servings this recipe would be. Any suggestions?

    I usually do this when cooking. Lets say I make a curry. I know the weight of the meat (if any) as I portioned it before it got into the freezer. I prep and weight my veggies and aromatics, same with cooking oil. Log everything while those go into the pot, including the spices. Say my standard dinner is about 500-600 calories, and now I have 900 calories total in the pot but I still want rice. So I add 180g of rice for 3 days and get a total of 1548 calories. That's 516 calories per serving. See what I get with rice and meal for 4 days, that's just 441 calories. I probably would eat this for 3 days, and add maybe a bit of almond, or desiccated coconut on top. At other times I might add more cooking ingredients on the fly to get more calories for more days. Thus basically I decide while cooking how many servings I'm preparing.
  • foreverhealthy3
    foreverhealthy3 Posts: 111 Member
    I haven't used a scale. so, when I do a recipe; I measure the total amount in a 2 cup measuring cup, or twice to figure total amount. then decide how many servings I want from that amount; and divide it to come to a serving size portion and nutritional information.
  • yirara
    yirara Posts: 9,941 Member
    I just cooked a stew. Well, it's still happily bubbling about. I'll serve it with feta and bread. So now I know how many calories are in that pot. Now I'm playing with various amounts of feta and bread until I get a calorie amount that fits with what I want to eat for dinner for the coming days. And I got 4 dinners.

    If this was for several people I'd work with adding enough extra stuff to make everyone happy.
  • AwesomeJanice
    AwesomeJanice Posts: 7 Member
    When I place my own recipe for the first time in MFP, I guess on how many servings. Once I cook it, I divide up the amount into bowls or plates in the amount I would eat, and weigh the bowls to be sure they are even. Then I edit the recipe for the exact number of servings I get before logging it.
  • Hobartlemagne
    Hobartlemagne Posts: 565 Member
    AwesomeJanice wrote: »
    When I place my own recipe for the first time in MFP, I guess on how many servings. Once I cook it, I divide up the amount into bowls or plates in the amount I would eat, and weigh the bowls to be sure they are even. Then I edit the recipe for the exact number of servings I get before logging it.

    Fantastic method. :smiley:

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