Tracking Calories of Home Cooked Meals

BrooBeetle

I have just started using MFP again after a pretty long hiatus and now I remember why I stopped. I cook almost all of my meals from scratch. In addition to being healthier I have several food allergies which make it hard to eat out or have prepackaged foods. I find myself guesstimating a lot of the time with the more complicated things I cook, even though I weigh out ingredients beforehand. Does anyone else find this challenging? I often save a recipe, only to tweak it the next time I cook it. Also, unless it is a stew and I can figure out exactly how many cups are in it, I find that my "number of servings" is often just an approximation. I would love to hear how others are dealing with this problem.

As a side note, this is my first post to any forum/group on MFP. I have never been active in the community. Recently, I lost some weight for the first time in my life. It feels great and I want to keep on this forward trajectory and be more active on MFP!

_runnerbean_

Welcome to the group broobeetle. I feel your pain when it comes to home cooked means. I assume you have tried the recipie function to log the calories of what you are cooking. It is hard to work out portions though. I made spag Bol the other day and had to guesstimate how many portions of the meat I ate. The only way to be accurate is to weigh out the total dish then weigh how much goes onto your plate but this can be tricky. I'd love to see some advice from others who struggle with this.

SkinnyMindyNC

I totally understand! I've only just started to track calories from home cooked meals. I've ended up counting the calories of the entire batch, and then dividing it by the number of portions. Since I will eventually eat the whole batch over the course of several days, I don't worry about the exact size of each portion--it all evens out by the end of the week.

BrooBeetle

Thanks, your advice is what I've been doing, but it's good to hear that others have found it difficult. Unfortunately I can't just know that I'll be eating the whole batch over the course of a week since my boyfriend and I always eat together. It's a good problem to have though.

Melonpaul

I can relate, I home cook most of my meals and I've found the same struggle. I will normally portion out the food (using the same serving utensil) onto plates or bowls and then remaining into tupperware containers to help me determine how many servings there are in the whole batch. I cook for myself and boyfriend so I usually end up making enough food for four to six people.

I hardly ever use the same recipe because I always end up changing or adding something. Lately I've been finding the recipes online and importing them using the link and I'll tweak the ingredients/servings before I save it.

(edited for spelling)

SkinnyMindyNC

It's just two of us here as well, so sometimes I go ahead and divide out my share (usually 1/3) of the whole batch before we eat. When we eat, I eat from my portion and he eats from his. Keeping it separate works for me. Granted, it's a lot easier with meals like stuffed peppers or soup than it would be for something like pasta!

Notreadytoquit

Sometimes I'll import a recipe and just add the extra ingredients. Usually I quick tool the meal, count up the number of cups of ingredients then figure out the percentage that constitutes a serving. Go back in delete the original meal after I've added my actual portion size again.

It's a bit of bother but so enlightening. Has really helped me make better food choices & especially portion sizes.. Managed to loose 1+ #'s this week so I must be getting pretty accurate.

It's good brain exercise to sharpen up your math skills and you certainly have to do that when you cook.