Homemade food with no idea about calories?

oCarlao
oCarlao Posts: 1 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
How do you guys log homemade food when you have no idea about the calories? Like if you eat at someone's house or maybe a meal at church. Case in point, last night I went to a "Fix and Freeze" event at a local church where we all contributed money beforehand, and then we went and worked at putting casseroles together to go into our freezers. (My husband jokingly calls this Communist cooking! LOL!). We did 5 casseroles, and I only know the names of them. I have no clue as to the ingredients used except for the one casserole where I working. I mean, I know which ones have chicken, beef, pork chops, etc., but I don't have any of the recipes, so I'm clueless about ingredients and measurements. Do I just arbitrarily serve myself a "portion" and then maybe count it as 500 calories to be safe? I really don't eat much and don't have a huge appetite, but I've been trying to be a good girl and log my meals.

Replies

  • emmaxbon
    emmaxbon Posts: 123 Member
    I try to find a similar ready meal in the database and use that. Or completely overestimate and log it as 1000 calories and consider the day done lol
  • maizerage66
    maizerage66 Posts: 367 Member
    There are a few things you could do and unfortunately none are easy. The first thing you could do is use as accurate of a search as possible on that specific dish and just eyeball it. This usually leads to inaccuracy but what can you do? You could just eat less of it and still be fine...another thing is for the specific casserole/dish that you make, measure out each and every ingredient, calculate all of the macros and calories when all added together, and then divide by the number of servings based on a serving size to give you and idea. This takes a lot of work and sucks but is one of the more accurate methods.
  • lborsato1
    lborsato1 Posts: 1,011 Member
    If you know all of the ingredients, you can enter it in as a recipe and it will calculate the calories for you based on the number of servings....
    Be sure to over-estimate to be safe !
  • pythonesk
    pythonesk Posts: 20 Member
    Get the recipes from your cooking group and enter them into the Recipe calculator on myfitnesspal. It will do all the calculations for you if you can get the number of servings right.
  • qwicherbytchin
    qwicherbytchin Posts: 42
    ^^^ This

    I put home made meals in my recipes folder on here. Once you put it there it makes it easier to edit when needed and just add the servings. It will calculate all the nutrients and you tell it how many servings the dish has. I find that to be the easiest way to count home made meals. (Often because there are leftovers that I take for lunch the next day) :)
  • SezxyStef
    SezxyStef Posts: 15,267 Member
    Yes the recipe builder is great for that...

    I made a cheesecake a couple weekends ago...

    Logged all the ingrediants...weighed it when it was done and figured out each slice was 188grams @ 995 calories...hehe...

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