Guess-stimating?

MelWilB137
MelWilB137 Posts: 20 Member
in Food and Nutrition
Greetings,

I have been an on again off again MFP user, and I'm recommitted to work it until my vacation (9 weeks and 2 days from today, but heck, who's counting). I find one of the reasons I get lazy about recording or just struggle is all the "guess-stimating" I have to do everyday...some meals are straight forward or relatively so, but I'd guess that 25-30% of the time I'm just hoping I'm close. Here's an example from today:

Bfast- cottage cheese, fruit flax....easy to log

Lunch- Olive garden...easy to log

Dinner- homemade lasagna with bread...shot in the dark. Now, I made this dish and there is probably 10-15 ingredients going on and then obviously I only eat a section.

How is everyone addressing this? Do you enter the entire recipe? Are you cool with all the estimating or are you as precise as precise?

I can take the tough talk so if I'm being lazy, say so...if you are having success without weighing your ricotta and mozzarella, I'd like to hear that too.

Thanks for the expertise folks

Replies

  • editorgrrl
    editorgrrl Posts: 7,060 Member
    Dinner- homemade lasagna with bread...shot in the dark. Now, I made this dish and there is probably 10-15 ingredients going on and then obviously I only eat a section.
    That's what the recipe builder is for: http://www.myfitnesspal.com/recipe/box
  • caveninit
    caveninit Posts: 153 Member
    I made a ground beef casserole tonight and I added every ingredient into the recipe maker and saved it. It's a bit time consuming but I do it for all the meals I make as I don't eat out much.
  • maroonmango211
    maroonmango211 Posts: 908 Member
    I also use the recipe builder for almost anything with more than one or two ingredients, its time consuming for the first month or so while adding new ones almost every supper and some lunches but its definitely worth it now, also makes it easy to go back and change one or two things if I differ while making. Tonight I had lasagne as well but added mushrooms to the sauce, went to recipe builder saved, figured out how many servings I was going to cut the pan in and went from there.
  • Chickee8586
    Chickee8586 Posts: 155 Member

    Lunch- Olive garden...easy to log

    A couple years ago I looked up the soup salad and breadsticks from Olive Garden for calories. The lowest soup calories, 1 bowl of salad with dressing and 2 breadsticks came to over 1200 calories. Even if you don't stick to the 1200 daily calories, that's still the majority of pretty much anyone's calories for the day.

    See for yourself at their website.

    Rethink lunch.
  • serindipte
    serindipte Posts: 1,557 Member
    I use the recipe builder, put each weighed ingredient into that and then weigh the final product so I know how much the serving should be in grams. From tonight's supper:

    c3633263c8aef4a7d1c11ea8536901fb.jpg
    137249a552c90bf36484bf33edbe2879.jpg
  • MelWilB137
    MelWilB137 Posts: 20 Member
    Thanks @Chickee...

    You are not wrong, but I end up eating lunch out most days because of my work. There are places I'm willing to compromise and places I'm not.....i.e. I eat where my meetings take me, but I make my choices and live with the results.

    Today at Olive Garden, I had soup and salad...added the dressing myself and no croutons (>200 calories). I also did a bowl of the Pasta E Fagoli (about 130 cal). So no bread sticks or otherwise for me and to be safe I increased the portions entered to 1.25. I get around 1400 calories a day, so this was a suitable lunch and sustained me through my P90x3 when I arrived home.

    I know it doesn't work for everyone, but I want to be able to eat like I always have with adjustments...small portions, treats on occasion not every day.
  • MelWilB137
    MelWilB137 Posts: 20 Member
    Thanks for all the pushes on the recipe builder...guess I really need to just tough out a month or so, could be pretty eye opening.
    Cheers
  • aqualeo1
    aqualeo1 Posts: 331 Member

    Lunch- Olive garden...easy to log

    A couple years ago I looked up the soup salad and breadsticks from Olive Garden for calories. The lowest soup calories, 1 bowl of salad with dressing and 2 breadsticks came to over 1200 calories. Even if you don't stick to the 1200 daily calories, that's still the majority of pretty much anyone's calories for the day.

    See for yourself at their website.

    Rethink lunch.

    There's no way that's 1200 + calories. It's more like 550. No reason you can't have lunch at Olive Garden!
  • zoeysasha37
    zoeysasha37 Posts: 7,088 Member
    Weigh and measure your items, log them in with your recipe builder and then it will be there every time you need it
  • BRA_S
    BRA_S Posts: 111 Member
    I had no idea about the recipe builder this is gonna help me a lot!

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