Advice, please, on recording foods on log????

carrierella
carrierella Posts: 109 Member
edited September 18 in Food and Nutrition
Hello, everyone!

I am wondering if any of you could help me.

I rarely eat processed/packaged foods, trying to cook wholly from scratch. However, my problem is this: how do you record things like casseroles? Whole grain blueberry muffins? Etc...

Today, for example we ate:

Breakfast: Whole wheat blueberry muffins (2 eggs, 3 cups wheat flour, baking powder, salt, frozen blueberries, milk, cinnamon, 3 tlbsp brown sugar), coffee (the children drank milk, of course! Not coffee! :tongue:
Lunch: Lettuce salad (mung bean sprouts, leaf lettuce, carrots) and dressing, air-popped popcorn, iced water
Supper: Oven omelet (2 large potatoes, 1/2 chopped onion, 1 cup cheese, 8 eggs, 1/2 cup milk, fresh chopped parsley), iced water, cantaloupe, peach crisp for dessert (from fresh peaches we put up last summer, 1/2 cup brown sugar, 2 cups oats, 1/2 cup margarine, cinnamon, 1 cup flour)

Now, our family consists of ten people.

So, obviously, when I ate the crisp, it was just a small portion of what I cooked. How do I count it?

And the oven omelet? How do I count that?

I know this question was disjointed, but I HAVE to get off of here and tuck the children.

Just feeling like I need advice here as maybe I'm not counting things right? Maybe that's why I gained back? Not losing as fast as I ought?????

Carrie

Replies

  • carrierella
    carrierella Posts: 109 Member
    Hello, everyone!

    I am wondering if any of you could help me.

    I rarely eat processed/packaged foods, trying to cook wholly from scratch. However, my problem is this: how do you record things like casseroles? Whole grain blueberry muffins? Etc...

    Today, for example we ate:

    Breakfast: Whole wheat blueberry muffins (2 eggs, 3 cups wheat flour, baking powder, salt, frozen blueberries, milk, cinnamon, 3 tlbsp brown sugar), coffee (the children drank milk, of course! Not coffee! :tongue:
    Lunch: Lettuce salad (mung bean sprouts, leaf lettuce, carrots) and dressing, air-popped popcorn, iced water
    Supper: Oven omelet (2 large potatoes, 1/2 chopped onion, 1 cup cheese, 8 eggs, 1/2 cup milk, fresh chopped parsley), iced water, cantaloupe, peach crisp for dessert (from fresh peaches we put up last summer, 1/2 cup brown sugar, 2 cups oats, 1/2 cup margarine, cinnamon, 1 cup flour)

    Now, our family consists of ten people.

    So, obviously, when I ate the crisp, it was just a small portion of what I cooked. How do I count it?

    And the oven omelet? How do I count that?

    I know this question was disjointed, but I HAVE to get off of here and tuck the children.

    Just feeling like I need advice here as maybe I'm not counting things right? Maybe that's why I gained back? Not losing as fast as I ought?????

    Carrie
  • bonkers5975
    bonkers5975 Posts: 1,015 Member
    Hi Carrie,

    I have had the same problem, as we don't eat processed foods either, alot of casseroles and breads baked with whole wheat and soy flour, etc... if you go to www.sparkrecipes.com (I hope that's right!) they have a recipe calculator where you enter each ingredient, and then the number of servings, and it will break everything right down for you. It's awesome! You still have to guess at some of the things, but they do have a large database of raw ingredients.

    Hope this helps!
    Ange
  • LokiFae
    LokiFae Posts: 774 Member
    http://recipes.sparkpeople.com/recipe-calculator.asp

    This is a recipe calculator. If you put in the things that you put into whatever you cook, it will give you a calorie count. And that's awesome that you cook everything from scratch! I wish I could do that!
  • blondeheat
    blondeheat Posts: 254 Member
    I know what you mean. I went to lunch - Chinese. They don't have calories posted, so I end up just taking something that looks simliar! Anyway here's a site that's supposed to calculate calories in a recipe. I haven't tried it but it sounds good!

    http://www.recipecal.com/servlet/DisplayWelcomeAction
  • Helawat
    Helawat Posts: 605 Member
    Hi Carrie,

    You need to calculate your recipes using a recipe calculator then decide how many servings you actually ate. For example, if you cooked one casserole with 10 servings but only ate 1 serving, you ate one tenth and input it as 0.1 servings.

    I hope that helps you out, even more I hope my math was right! Here's a recipe calculator:
    http://recipes.sparkpeople.com/recipe-calculator.asp
  • pam0206
    pam0206 Posts: 700 Member
    Carrie,
    You can input your recipes here: http://recipes.sparkpeople.com/recipe-calculator.asp.

    There are two catches: you have to input each ingredient separately and then you figure out how many servings are in your dishes. As for the muffins, obviously, that's easy....The casseroles are more difficult for me, but the site might give you an idea if what you've been recording is fairly accurate. GL.
  • carrierella
    carrierella Posts: 109 Member
    Wow, you all are fantastic!

    THANK YOU!

    Carrie
  • MsLadybug
    MsLadybug Posts: 55
    You can use the recipie calculator above (thanks, i hadnt seen that before) or, what i do is

    enter the ingredients under the meal in the food diary, click remember meal and name it
    Once saved, delete the individual items and enter it under the meal name.

    This way you can put your serving in (if you eat a quarter of what you made then you enter .25 for the serving size of the meal). The benefits of doing it this way is that you don't have to enter it in the recipe calculator and then reenter it on MFP. Also, if you save the meal then you don't have to re-enter everything if you eat the leftovers for another meal.
  • gabrielled
    gabrielled Posts: 247 Member
    Also, once you do what MsLadybug said, you can enter, say, a tenth of the recipe (10 servings and you ate one), and then save THAT as a meal calling it "Recipe Name" (single serving).
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