Portions

annalobdell

Ok, I have a silly question. When I am making a dinner that has several ingredients, how do I figure out the portion size so I can do my calories and what not. Heres an example, Tonight I am making a chicken noodle casserole. I use two cans of chicken, 4 cans of cream of mushroom soup, a can of peas and 2 bags of enriched egg noodles. Now, when I am trying to figure out what size for me, Do I read each package and add the calories for 1 serving? So like say a serving of egg noodles is 32 grams, and a serving of peas is 56 grams.... Do I add all the servings together? Then add all the calories and so on?

musicgirl99

I don't know if this will help but what I do for my homemade food is create a recipe. I go to the Food tab in MFP and click on recipes (or my recipes - not sure which one) and create a new recipe. You can list all of the ingredients in your recipe and how much of each you're using for the whole casserole. The tricky part is figuring out how many servings the whole recipe will yield. When I'm making a casserole, I usually look at the size of the pan/casserole dish that I'm using and try to visualize how many servings it will give and I input that number into the recipe that I'm creating. Sorry if that was confusing.

ashley0616

I do the same as musicgirl. A casserole made in a 9x13 pan is usually 6 servings, I believe. Just put it all in and MFP will do the rest for you. I do this ALL the time.

rvice2

I enter all of the ingredients through MFP. Then, once the soup or casserole is fixed I take ziplock containers and I evenly portion it to see how many it makes. For instance, I make a lot of soup and so I will portion 2 even ladels in each container. However many containers I get is how many serving it makes. This way, when I eat my meal or the leftovers I don't over-indulge! My fiance always like more than I eat so when I serve it I will dump two of the containers in a bowl for him. Seems like a lot of work, but it is the only way I don't cheat! My fridge is FULL of ziplock containers!

luv2ash

I add up all the calories of everything in there---as well as carbs and protein---THEN, depending on what I get is gonna determine how many servings I will makeout of it. For instance, I make turkey tacos, and when I split the whole recipe in half, it comes to 350 calories - so I am good with that, I can get two servings with that recipe.

jlmnk1313

I do the same as musicgirl and put in each ingrediant and let MFP do it for me basically! Once you do it once then it's there for you to use over and over!

seniorfaye

So glad this was posted. I've been wondering how to do this. Does it take a while to get all the ingredients in the database?

HawkeyeGuy

Here's what I do - you'll need a digital kitchen scale.

Make your dish (soups, casserole), and measure out how many servings of each you'll be adding. Let's do a simple example of chicken salad:

1 can of Costco Chicken
2 Stalks Celery
5 T. Olive Oil Mayo (Kraft)
1 t. Dijon Mustard
(Lemon pepper seasoning & a dash of Frank's Red Hot, don't add as not significant calorie source unless tracking sodium)

Now create a new Meal based on these items. DON'T EAT IT YET!!! Use your digital scale, and tare a clean bowl. Measure in grams the total weight for your dish. Say it comes to 1000 grams. Now when you're portioning, look at the total calories if you added it as a complete meal (this is how many calories are in the whole bowl).

To portion it, do one of two things...my preference is to figure out the calories per gram. Just divide the number of calories you got by the number of grams...this will tell you how many calories each gram has. Let's say it came to 500 total calories (and 1000 grams like above), this would be .5 calories per gram, or you could reverse it and say there are 2 grams for one calorie. So, if you wanted to have 300 calories worth of Chicken Salad, you could have 600 grams of chicken salad from you bowl.

The option above works great when you make a big pot of healthy soup for the week. Dish out what you need on the digital scale, and know that for every gram you drop in there, you have X calories. No more guessing.

A simpler option for casseroles (or other things that are eaten in less portions than soup), is to figure out the grams and the calories, and divide by an appropriate portion amount. So, if we had 500 calories in our 1000g total casserole, and we want 2 250 calorie servings, you get half (500g) and your sig other gets the other 500g.

I write down my healthy soup recipes, and then simply know how many calories per gram are in each of them every time I make them. Then eat them through the week knowing what I'm getting myself into. If it needs clarification, let me know. It's seems confusing, but once you do it, it's cake. BUT, you must have a digital kitchen scale...not just for this, but to make it to your right weight.

HawkeyeGuy

Here's an example of a soup I make below. It comes to 917 calories total. It also has 2700 grams of weight. Do the math, and you can see it's pretty close to 3 grams per calorie. So, if I want a 100 calorie soup snack, I measure out 300 grams of soup. To add it to your meal, just look at how many grams you had (300) and divide that by the total amount that you originally made (2700). If that was the case, you ate 11% or .11 of the meal. Add your food, and put down .11 of one serving and your entry is complete. Keep all your soups, burrito filling, anything relatively homogenous in your "My Meals", and your set.

Items in this meal Calories Carbs Fat Protein
Kirkland - Costco - Canned Chicken Breast, 2 container (7 ounces ea.) 420 0 7 91
Hyvee Brand - Diced Tomatoes Chili Ready, 1 container (1 4/5 cups ea.) 123 28 0 4
Onions - Raw, 1 medium (2-1/2" dia) 46 11 0 1
Archer Farms - Grilled Pepper Blend, 0.8 cup 25 4 0 1
Corn - Sweet, yellow, canned, whole kernel, drained solids, 1 can (12 oz) yields 171 39 2 6
Pacific Natural Foods - Organic Free Range Chicken Broth, 1 container (4 cups ea.) 40 4 0 4
Garlic - Raw, 3 cloves 13 3 0 1
Rotel - Diced Tomatoes - Extra Hot, 1 container (1 3/10 cups ea.) 50 10 0 0
Sauce - Salsa, 100 g 27 6 0 2
Total: 915 105 9 110