how to calculate calories

tudazies

Hey there,
I am new to counting calories, I understand it when I am eating a full serving according to the nutritional information. However for example this morning I was not to hungry after my work out so I had 2 and 1/2 tablespoons of liberte 0% Greek yogurt which is 100 calories for 3/4 cup or 175 grams and 4 slices of a navel orange lots of different calorie options come up with the orange how do I know which ones right. Have same problem with my homemade salads as I'm real busy to make individual bowl so I make one big bowl for whole week and do not know how to portion out the calories of all ingredients. Any help would be so greatly appreciated.
Thanks Kristine

melaniecheeks

It can be a bit daunting to begin with - and you WILL have to make estimates along the way.

Whats in your salad - if its leaves and veg like tomato and cucumber, then those wont be very much. If there's an oil based dressing, or cheese, or croutons, then those will have non-negligible calories.

Get some kitchen scales. Get to know how much is in a spoonful of yoghurt.

The databse is user generated, so there are a LOT of errors in it - try finding items with no asterisk beside them as thet have been input by admin, rather than users.

tudazies

Thank you so much for the wonderful advise on weeding out the asterisk items.That is one thing I really need to invest in is a kitchen scale lol. Love the scanning ability it really helps except for things like celery,green onion,green pepper and cucumber which are all in my salad also baby carrots,radish,red onion and I use krafts fat free Italian dressing as its only 5 calories per tbsp. I compared it to the calorie wise and it was better. Also do not know any low calorie like 5 per less per tbsp homemade ones. I measure in my measuring cup how much of each ingredient in my salad I use the hard part is knowing what to input. For example for 3/4 cup and I use less then half I seem to only be able to input .13 or .25 not sure if that makes sense as it does not allow me to put any other form of measurement.

tudazies

Oh forgot to mention the lettuce is romaine heart that are in the bags(2per bag) 20 calorie for 6leafs

lisaabenjamin

To work out approximately how many cals are in your big salad, enter it as a recipe and set the posrtion size to the number of lunches you'll get out of that salad. I do that a lot with homemade soups and cous-cous salads - I make a big pan-full on a Sunday and divide it up into 5 takeaway containers to take to work with me. I know roughly how many cals are in the big pan-ful because I work it out as I go along, then you just divide by five. Nothing's ever going to be spot-on accurate but you can do your best!

tudazies

Holy never even thought of that thanks so much. I am newer to MFP. That one just slipped over my head lol. Thanks again that really helps!

Timshel_

It can be a bit daunting to begin with - and you WILL have to make estimates along the way.

Yup. I always error to being over on calories I eat and underestimate calories I burn.