How Do You Really Know?

boricua3177

I don't eat fast food, I usually cook during the week so that I can bring left overs for lunch. The problem I am having is that it is hard for me to tell exactly how many calories I am actually eating with my home cooked meals. I very rarely purchase processed foods - I make my own gravies, sauces, etc. One of the few things that I do purchase that is processed is pastas but not much else. How does one really track the calories in home cooked meals? Any tips??

catherine1979

I use a recipe calculator tool like the one st sparkpeople.com, or if it's a simple recipe I just enter the ingredients separately. I know I'm not going to have 100% accuracy, but I try really hard to get as close as possible.

Cathyvil

You can use a recipe calculator. Here's one I have bookmarked:

http://recipes.sparkpeople.com/recipe-calculator.asp

I made my own excel spreadsheet (it just seemed easier to me). I look up all the individual ingredients on the database here or on the package, plug the numbers in and calculate out for each serving. I know there are more recipe calculators out there as well if you do a google search

stylistchik

It's not gonna be exact, but you can add up all the ingredients (i.e. 1 cup chopped carrots, or 1 lb chicken breast) and divide by the number of servings. It can get tedious but you can save the meals on here so each time you make it you don't have to recalculate.

stroutman81

Good advice above. You either use a recipe calculator or calculate each ingredient of your recipes yourself. There's not much else you can do. And if you're going to be as accurate as possible, you need to use a digital food scale.

boricua3177

Ok, thanks! It's going to be a bit difficult for me since I don't measure when I cook. But I will try to get it as close as possible. That recipe calculator tool seems very nice!! Thanks all!!! :-)

iplayoutside19

We use sparkpeople too. And don't think for a minute that any nutrition label is 100% accurate.

mrsgiffin

I create a table in word and put all the ingredients on the left and at the top I put calories, fat, carbs, etc. Then add all of them up at the bottom and measure out how many cups are in each recipe that I make. It is tedious but I have found its pretty acurate, and I can change it each time if I add something different to the recipe. I just save all of my recipes into a separate folder for Britts Recipes. It works for me. The spark recipe counter was not very easy for me to figure out.