How do I count calories from home made food?

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funfang
funfang Posts: 200 Member
in Introduce Yourself
We don't eat out a lot and try to cook our own food. Sometimes it gets hard to calculate the calories. Like this morning I prepared Cheese Manicotti, using Polly ricotta cheese, New Zealand cheddar cheese, little bit Swiss cheese, and Parmesan cheese. I also made my own spaghetti sauce from tomato puree, canned dice tomato and corn and peas ( a way to get my kids to eat some vegetables) I can't help thinking how am I going to enter the calorie for my dinner tonight?

Any suggestion? Thank you for reading the post :-)

Replies

  • sixxkitty
    sixxkitty Posts: 27
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    The best thing you can do is enter some of your recipes that you fix often. Only you know what goes in them. That way whenever you fix that meal you just have to click on my recipes and add. It will take a little time at first but after the first time you will be done forever.
  • charmarbobar
    charmarbobar Posts: 251 Member
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    Use the recipe builder here on MFP. Add all the ingredients and how many servings it makes. It's a wonderful tool!
  • michellereneejenkins
    michellereneejenkins Posts: 16 Member
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    i get caught up in the same problem. you can get really stressed over each and every calorie. sometimes i just search the mfp database and find a recipe that most closely represents what i made and use it. i know i'm close and i save time. same with eating out if i can't find exactly what i had. i just try to get as close as possible. the main thing is to stay in the habit of tracking and keep accountable!
  • asciiqwerty
    asciiqwerty Posts: 565 Member
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    If it's aone off - I sort of do it manually, byt weighing every ingredient (especially the cooking oil), that's rather slow.

    For things where I follow a recipe (rare) I use the recipe function online to input all the ingredients, then check - the fiddle here is working out how many portions, so I tend to make the recipe, measure the outcome, then divide by a nominal "approximate portion" and record hte size of the resulting portion in the title of hte recipe when I make hte listing, then when I eat it, I also weight the serving and when i log it i work out how many "recipy servings" or fractions of serving i ate and log that.
    An example of that was my home-made bread - i weighed the final loaf, and set 10 servings and recorded in the title that a serving was 62g but when i ate a slice i weighed it and when it came in a 54g i logged 0.87 of a serving

    For many of my meals - i don't follow a recipe - but i make frequently with similar ingredients (say a home-made tomato pasta sauce) but will often vary in weight of each ingredient, and will often contain whatever veg i happen to have in the fridge, I enter it once manually, then save it as a meal - next time i select the emal and change the quantities, for this i weight every ingredient as i cook and write them on the fridge with a whiteboard marker, then when I serve up, I know whether it made 2 portions with no leftovers or whether it made 2 portions plus 3 leftover portions, then I divide the weights for each ingredient by the total number of portions and use that in my log. It;s approximate - but better than nothing.

    It's fiddly but worth it, good luck with your logging, and i look forward to seeing other people's tips too
  • editorgrrl
    editorgrrl Posts: 7,060 Member
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    http://www.myfitnesspal.com/recipe/box
  • BlueBombers
    BlueBombers Posts: 4,065 Member
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    Use the recipe builder here on MFP. Add all the ingredients and how many servings it makes. It's a wonderful tool!

    ^ This
  • hush404
    hush404 Posts: 95 Member
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    Yep, as everyone else has been pointing out, the recipe builder is golden for that. Lets your put in your ingredients and calculate that way.
  • toutmonpossible
    toutmonpossible Posts: 1,580 Member
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    I would weigh the individual ingredients, calculate their calorie value and try to be a little under in my consumption of other food that day to make up for any problems with the estimate. Actually, I always assume that I've underestimated a bit, partly because of the calorie labeling regulations, so I'm never upset if I'm a little under. This is not a precise process.
  • funfang
    funfang Posts: 200 Member
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    Thank you! just did it, wow, lots calories~~~
  • funfang
    funfang Posts: 200 Member
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    Thank you all! sorry, first time using this and apparently I replied too many times～～～
  • _lyndseybrooke_
    _lyndseybrooke_ Posts: 2,561 Member
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    I like to use the recipe tool, but when I'm not using a particular recipe, I tend to try to overestimate the calories. I usually have no idea how many servings are going to come out of most dishes I make.

    Last night, for example, I made tacos. I made enough to last us (my husband and me) two nights plus two days of lunch for him. He uses a large burrito tortilla and A LOT more meat than I do on my regular sized tortilla, so I've never sat there and measured out how many "servings" we get out of it. So, this is what I logged:

    Flour tortilla
    3.75 oz 93/7 lean ground beef
    1/8 cup low sodium tomato sauce (just an estimation of how much ended up on my serving of beef)
    48 g low fat refried beans
    1/4 cup yellow rice (there was no weight listed, so I had to use a measuring cup)
    1/8 cup shredded cheese (another estimation, it was likely less than that)
    1/8 of 2 oz recipe for homemade taco seasoning (I used the recipe tool for this one, but estimated the amount on my serving)

    It's hard to really know, but when I do get a chance to actually measure/weigh something accurately, I find that I was eating less than I thought, not more. For example, last night was the first time I actually weighed out my ground beef. I pre-logged it as 5 oz until I realized that I wouldn't be able to roll up the taco if I put that much meat on there.

    As long as I feel as if I'm overestimating, I'm okay with it. I try to be as accurate as I can when I can, but sometimes you just have to estimate. The meat up there, for example, had to be weighed cooked, but meat should be weighed raw. If I've got 3 lbs of meat cooking, there's no way I'm going to measure out 3.75 oz and cook it in a separate pan.
  • brookemart81
    brookemart81 Posts: 62 Member
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    It takes a little time, but the recipe feature works really well.

    When I have some free time I've been going in and adding recipes I'm planning to make soon, that way they'll be in there and ready to go when I want to make them. It's kind of nice to have all the nutrition info worked out ahead of time because then you can make modifications and see exactly what impact they're going to have, and tweak the recipe to fit your goals.

    My real challenge is restaurant food. It's easy if you eat at chain places, because most things are in the database. But those aren't the kinds of places I tend to eat. I've actually been avoiding restaurants or deliberately choosing chain places just so I know what I'm getting- but I'm not happy with that long term. I've tried finding something in the database that seems to match closely, and I've tried recreating a restaurant recipe as best I can (adding in extra oil, butter, etc- because I used to be a cook and I know what's up!) But those meals are still kind of questionable for me. I've been trying to choose better foods when I'm out, and pay more attention to portion size (vs. just eating all of whatever's on my plate) so at least it's not just a calorie free for all!
  • maryetamfp
    maryetamfp Posts: 70 Member
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    Agree, I also use the recipe tool! I measure all my ingredients while I'm preparing the meal (and I LOVE the scanning feature) and set up the servings accordingly to the amount of food I'm doing and... voila! If you happen to eat more or less than "1 serving" you can always add 1.5 servings, 3/4 servings, etc.

    It's all a bit tricky at the beginning but I find it much much easier and quicker now.

    Good luck!
  • _Zardoz_
    _Zardoz_ Posts: 3,987 Member
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    i get caught up in the same problem. you can get really stressed over each and every calorie. sometimes i just search the mfp database and find a recipe that most closely represents what i made and use it. i know i'm close and i save time. same with eating out if i can't find exactly what i had. i just try to get as close as possible. the main thing is to stay in the habit of tracking and keep accountable!
    That's why we get all these posts about 'why am I not losing weight' how do you know that you use the same amounts or ingredients from someone else's recipe? There is absolutely no point tracking if you aren't going to even attempt to be accurate doing it your way you may as well look at a meal and say that's 530 calories because that's just as accurate.

    To the original poster just use the recipe builder it really doesn't take long and after a while you have a list of your most used recipes that you can call on.
  • CharleneG_Barnes
    CharleneG_Barnes Posts: 25 Member
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    Every recipe I create in the recipe tool I assume a serving size is ONE CUP so it doesnt matter how much anyone eats -- I know how much each pot holds and log what I make then I portion out how much I take -- one cup, part of a cup etc. which helps me feel like I am being as close as possible to correct calorie count.

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