how to calrie count home made food?

Geekyfatgirl

So, I don't know if this has been answered before. But It's driving me insane lol. How would you count calories for home made food where... The servings can be as small or large as you want? Let's say you make a pot roast with veggies. Use a whole roast, five golden potatoes, half a bag of baby carrots and a whole onion. Would you count up the calories of everything you used and that would be the total calorie intake of the whole pot roast, then... Say if you were going to make 1 cup a serving, see how many cups it takes to use the whole thing. So if it takes 5 servings, you would take the total calorie intake and divide by 5? @.@ I am terrible at math so this has me all confused! If anyone knows a way to calculate it, and perhaps log it into mfp, I would love that!

paulaviki

You can add recipes so you just put in all the ingredients and the number it serves and MFP works out the calories per portion. It's under the 'foods' tab.

Geekyfatgirl

Ohh, well I feel dumb!! Thank you!

paulaviki

Ohh, well I feel dumb!! Thank you!

Don't feel dumb, it took me ages to notice it!

Geekyfatgirl

Lol! Well thank you! I feel better now.

needamulligan

Sometimes if it is a simple recipe it's easier to enter the potatoes/carrots you eat, and measure or estimate the amount of chuck roast you serve yourself.

xSCiNTILLATEx79

Took me awhile to figure out the recipe place on this site too now its SOOO valuable. I use it all the time even for something as simple as a sandwhich so I dont have to put it all in seperately...enjoy!

Geekyfatgirl

Aye! I use the mobile app all the time, so I'm used to scanning everything and just guessing what I used. Usually leaves me putting in 11 different items!

janemem

I (almost) always make my meals fro scratch and this is what I do.......

First off every time I buy food I input the nutritional info from the label into 'My Foods'. Obviously if I buy the same items and brands week after week I don't do this every time, only for new foods. I've built up a huge bank of foods over the past 9 months so mostly my foods are in 'My Foods'.

So, when I start a recipe I go to 'Food', then 'Recipes' and choose to create a new recipe.
After I have named the recipe I add that '100g = 1 Serving' (this helps later).

I'll log each food item in the recipe, making sure I weigh as accurately as possible and log it all down to the last 1g.

When the dish is finished I will weigh it (having already taken note of the weight of the dish/baking tray/casserole pot etc BEFORE adding any ingredients) and divide that by 100g, this gives you the amount of servings to input in the recipe.

Now you'll have the correct amount of calories for the whole dish and also per 100g.

I then just weigh each portion I dish out (for eating or freezing) and can work out the exact caloric value by going back to the recipe and entering how many servings I've used (i.e. a 300ml portion = 3 servings).

This probably makes no sense but I hope you can get the general idea.
It really is worth taking the time to enter your foods into the database (personalise them so you now it's yours and therefore correct) and weighing cooking vessels before and after so you really do know what is in each portion.

Or maybe I just have too much time on my hands........... :ohwell: