Weighing foods - multi-ingredients and portioning

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justcat206
justcat206 Posts: 716 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
I've just started weighing my foods and I'm a little stumped. It's easy for things like watermelon where I can measure my portion and be done with it. But I cook lots of things like giant pots of soup with many ingredients - I can weigh each thing before I put it in for a grand total of what's in the pot, but how do I then determine how much of what I've eaten when I portion some out for myself? Or is that nitpicking a little too much (is it ok to say I ate 1/8th pot of soup totaling x calories when I may be getting a larger portion of chicken in my bowl and someone else gets mostly kale)?

I thought of it this morning when making our egg dish - I weighed it all out so I knew the total calories (and how much of each ingredient), and how much my portion weighed, but I had far more beans than eggs in mine and vice versa for the kids.

Thanks.

Replies

  • ahoy_m8
    ahoy_m8 Posts: 3,053 Member
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    Two part answer for me. Part one: when I am logging accurately. I cook for a family of 5. If it's not an unmanageable number of ingredients, I do as you described and weigh them before they go in. I weigh the empty pot and the pot full of the completed dish. I weigh my portion to determine the percent I'm serving myself then prorate the ingredients accordingly. If there are leftovers (as often there are), I estimate a subsequent serving the same way. I put my recipes in nutritiondata (which provides more nutritional breakdown than MFP but no logging).

    Part two: maintaining/not logging accurately. If it's a dish I cook routinely and have input, I guesstimate a percentage of the whole recipe. If not, I guestimate the 2 or 3 most caloric ingredients.

    Edit: I don't worry if the ingredients are not perfectly distributed to all servings.
  • cdickens13
    cdickens13 Posts: 11 Member
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    When I am fixing something like a large salad or soup, I put everything down and remember my meal (under quick tools). Then I say I ate 1/5 of that meal.
  • Azurite27
    Azurite27 Posts: 554 Member
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    When I make multi servings I log everything into the recipe builder and then portion out into equal containers. If some have more of some ingredients than others I figure it'll even out over time (a little over one day, under another)
  • smn76237
    smn76237 Posts: 318 Member
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    Use the recipe builder feature on the website. You've got all the steps down minus the final step-- weigh the final batch altogether and divide by whatever number you like. So, let's say your total soup batch weighs 500g; make it 5 servings of 100g.
  • Francl27
    Francl27 Posts: 26,371 Member
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    It's why I don't tend to make recipes, honestly... It's horribly inaccurate. Or I'll make eggs for the kids, then my own etc.

    Tonight I'm making some 'fish and chips' and will just weigh the fish pieces I take then add 1/5 of a cup of panko crumbs to my diary pretty much. Considering all the pieces will have different weights and won't necessarily have the same amount of topping too, it's just total guesswork anyway. I made meatloaf yesterday and just used the entry from last time, even if I didn't use exactly the same proportion of ingredients this time... but I weighed the pan after it was cooked, and a lot of the weight was juice, so just forget it, it's impossible to be accurate... For all I know I've been eating at maintenance instead of at a deficit because of it. Oh well.

    Bottom line... I either make my own dish or try to make simple things I can weigh separately 90% of the time.

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