Determining serving sizes

dngrmonkey7726

I am currently using MyFitnessPal's database to track the majority of my food. However challenges when trying to enter the food I eat for dinner that is homemade. I have a large family and my makes large meals. The problem is that for the meals we make th serving size is not always easily determined. I was wondering if anyone has any tips on ways to enter all of our ingredients then determine what the serving size should be there for helping to determine the amount of calories per serving. Any help would be appreciated thanks in advance

jennifries227

Have you checked out the 'recipes' section under Food? You can enter in a recipe you make at home and how many servings it is and it will tell you the nutritional content per serving. You have to learn to measure out things before you add them into your meal, which can be difficult, but you get the hang of it eventually.
As for figuring out what a good serving size for something is... I'd say start with 1 cup and go from there. For rich items that may be too much, but you might want more for fresh veggies. 3-4 ounces is generally one serving of meat. Remember you can always eat more than one serving, just make sure you count it properly!
I also HIGHLY recommend getting a food scale. It's a lifesaver. They're fairly inexpensive on Amazon.com (mine is Ozeri brand, $15 and it's great.) and you can find them easily locally, too.

jitsuda

^^^^^^

This...

Sometimes when I'm too lazy to even calculate my recipe, I will try to log from food that has measurable serving.. like 1 cup of lasagna ...

This week I make pot roast .. I entered "beef roast, lipton onion, potatoes, carrots".. and picked the one closest to what I make.

It's not ideal at all to do this .. Calories may be way off.. but to me it's better than not logging

liz_walkerrr

I second creating your own recipes on here. That way they are all saved for future references. Take for example; lasagna. If you make a huge pan of lasagna, you can add each individual ingredient you used to make it to your recipe on mfp. THEN, before you serve the lasagna, cut it into equal slices.. (one slice= one serving.) After that, you can adjust the recipe for that many servings, and it will give you the nutritional info per serving. This is probably confusing, but it's the best that I can explain it!

dngrmonkey7726

Yeah we are going to be picking up a digital scale to better measurement s. Our big issue is stews and casseroles. Things that can't be "cut" into equal portions. I have been using the best guess method so far as indicated above because I feel if I don't log it somehow I will lose my rhythm.

Ninkyou

For stews I weigh the individual components and then add it all together, and divide into portions. IF there's meat it's a little more difficult, but I suppose if it's like in the crockpot, you can weigh the inside pot and then when it's all done, weigh all together, subtract the weight of the pot then divide the portions by weight.

chezjuan

When I do things like chili, soups, and stews, I weigh all the individual ingredients when I am prepping, then add the recipe with my estimated number of servings (usually 4-6). I weigh the finished product in the serving dish, and divide the total weight by the number of servings. Then I can portion out the servings.

I've also seen where some people will weigh the finished product and enter the total weight in grams as the number of servings (so a 1000 gram chili would be 1000 servings). Then they can weigh their portion in grams, and enter the number of grams as the number of servings eaten, which allows them to have variable-sized servings.

SephiraRose

Make your own recipes in your food tab . Input your ingredients then divide it up for your portion size.

csmccord

Yeah we are going to be picking up a digital scale to better measurement s. Our big issue is stews and casseroles. Things that can't be "cut" into equal portions. I have been using the best guess method so far as indicated above because I feel if I don't log it somehow I will lose my rhythm.

We weigh all the ingredients after cooking, then divide it into how many servings we want. It helps that it's just my wife and I though. It's not perfect because you'll never get an even amount of meat or such in each one, however it's much better than nothing.

Francl27

Yeah we are going to be picking up a digital scale to better measurement s. Our big issue is stews and casseroles. Things that can't be "cut" into equal portions. I have been using the best guess method so far as indicated above because I feel if I don't log it somehow I will lose my rhythm.

We weigh all the ingredients after cooking, then divide it into how many servings we want. It helps that it's just my wife and I though. It's not perfect because you'll never get an even amount of meat or such in each one, however it's much better than nothing.

It's what I do. I enter everything raw, then weigh the whole thing and just enter the weight in gram as the number of servings. This way I can just weigh my portion and enter that as the number of serving.

It will never be totally accurate obviously, your portion might have more noodles and less meat or something, but there's so much you can do.

dngrmonkey7726

Thanks for all the tips everyone. Looks likely b picking up a digital scale.

AmieJess

Creating your own recipes and meals on MFP are time savers in the long run. I also switched to eating off of a side plate instead of a regular dinner plate and have found that a simple way to decrease portion sizes.

HeidiSmith419

I create the recipes in MFP as I cook them. So each time I may have to go in and make slight adjustments to the qty of ingredients but in general it's the same. If the food is say, in a casserole dish? I just score out 9-12 servings depending on the macros I want for my meal. Now people can take what the want but you will have a fairly accurate idea of how much of one recipe you have consumed.

I've also known people who had the weights of their pots/casserole dishes taped up in a cabinet. The finished product was weighed, pan weight subtracted and the total weight of the actual food divided. Each serving was then weighed out precisely.

littlelexical

This is copied/pasted from my blog as i keep seeing people having this trouble

I keep seeing people saying they are struggling with recording accurately what calories they consume with family meals - especially the 'one pot' variety where everyone has a different portion size (think bolognaise, chilli, curry, stew etc)
But it really doesnt have to be so difficult, honest - and all it requires is one more step (that includes a large, clean bowl - a serving bowl if you will!)

1)Build your recipe in MFP for EVERYTHING you put in your one pot meal & cook
2)When cooked, put your serving bowl on your scales & tare it back to zero - pour in the entire cooked meal
3)Note the weight & put this in as your 'serves' in grams in the MFP recipe builder.
4)When dishing up the meal, dish yours up on the scales - however many grams you serve yourself, is your 'portions' of the recipe you made.

**To make this easier, if I have a cooked recipe weight of 2kg - i put portions in as 40 & put in the recipe title '50g portions' - then so long as i have a number with a zero on the end, it is super easy still to log my food & im not playing with tiny numbers & the macros come out more accurate on the recipe builder too**

This can also work with mixed meals - where you have one main part & then top up with carbs and salad - think sloppy joes, hamburgers, tacos, burritos, enchiladas etc.

1)Build your recipe in MFP for EVERYTHING you put in your one pot meal & cook
2)When cooked, put your serving bowl on your scales & tare it back to zero - pour in the entire cooked meal
3)Note the weight & Check how many 'serves' it is meant to give (ie. my store bought taco mix comes with 10 tacos - so i want the mixture to spread easily amongst them)
4)Enter the 'serves' into the 'serves' box in the recipe builder
5)Divide the weight by the number of serves & enter this into your title (one serve equals 62g)

Make up your mixed meal on your scales (which you would be for logging all your salads etc anyhow) and never stress that you have eyeballed something wrong again.

Now i know there are a few flaws - dishes heavier than what your scales can provide, people thinking this is just taking weighing too far, having to use the scales in front of your family, etc etc etc. I know it isn't a fix for everyone - but hopefully it is a great start for some.

SunnyDuckling

Tick another one for the recipe builder! I weigh each ingredient before cooking, and then I weigh the final cooked amount. As I'm metric, I find it easiest to break something into '100g serving sizes'. Eg, the last pasta & sauce onepot I made ended up as 3340 grams, so I made each serving 100g and weigh the food out when I'm going to eat it.

If I am portioning it to stick in the freezer or take to work, I write the weight on the container in whiteboard (dry erase) marker.

And yes, I suppose you can't always get the portion division perfect, more meat in one, more liquid in another, etc, but I feel that in general, those amounts become tiny (5-10 Cals difference) and even out over the time you have the food.

pepperpat64

I love MFP. This is the exact dilemma I was facing this evening after making chili in the crockpot. I did a search for "determine servings" on the message boards and found this right off the bat. :-)

serindipte

When I do things like chili, soups, and stews, I weigh all the individual ingredients when I am prepping, then add the recipe with my estimated number of servings (usually 4-6). I weigh the finished product in the serving dish, and divide the total weight by the number of servings. Then I can portion out the servings.

I've also seen where some people will weigh the finished product and enter the total weight in grams as the number of servings (so a 1000 gram chili would be 1000 servings). Then they can weigh their portion in grams, and enter the number of grams as the number of servings eaten, which allows them to have variable-sized servings.

I do it this way though, instead of doing the 1000 grams of chili into 1000 servings, I go with 10 servings of 100 each. Still easy to measure out/weigh how much I take and figure the calories.