Home cooking calories?

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Hi all!

Just wondering how you go about logging calories for home cooked meals?

I home cook 99% of my meals from scratch and it just seems very laborious weighing each ingredient, writing it down, adding it together and trying to work out how much of that dish I ate, what my husband ate, what's left over...it also doesn't seem to be that accurate? I mean what if I get half way through cooking something and realise the dish needs more of an ingredient... Do I really have to weigh every last drop before I can add it in? And I ant actually guarantee how much of each ingredient will be in my portion (for example a curry/chilli type meal) And meals are different each time depending on what I have in the fridge so it's not like I can just do it once.

Sorry if I sound super lazy haha I just love cooking and this seems like it's going to make it a bit of a chore...so I was wondering home you guys get around this.

Like last week I was bringing salads for my lunch to work and I spent like half an hour adding each veg into mfp...

Any advice is much appreciated. Thanks so much!! Xxxx

Replies

  • pleasurelittletreasure
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    Once you do add that meal, if you have it again you can go back to that date and copy it to the current date. That would save you some time. I'm one of those nuts who loves getting into the minutiae of things like that, so it's kind of a wonder I don't do it more often. ;)
  • Hell_Flower
    Hell_Flower Posts: 348 Member
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    Yep, I do this. I have a repertoire of about 9 meals I make A LOT especially during the week, so I only really had to do it about 9 times.

    If I add anything else to my jukebox of dindins, it's usually on the weekends when I have a little more time. I've also found that you actually get pretty damn accurate at weighing things by sight (took me 6 months to learn this ability!), the more you weigh/measure things and I'm always within about 5g. So if I'm pushed for time or have to alternate one or two ingredients, it's not too bad.

    Honestly? Like anything else, it just becomes habit. Things I tend not to weigh are spices and oil. I know that a tablespoon of oil is 100 calories etc etc.
  • jenilla1
    jenilla1 Posts: 11,118 Member
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    It's a little bit of a time investment, but it's never bothered me to log home cooked meals. I cook probably about 80% of my meals from scratch. I cook with a lot of the same simple ingredients so many of them are already on my frequently used list. I never log trivial things like spices, so there aren't that many things for me to log beyond the basic ingredients. Also, if you enter everything in as a recipe (I have several dishes I like to do frequently), you can always go back to it next time you cook and not have to log the separate ingredients. :drinker:
  • pixtotts
    pixtotts Posts: 552 Member
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    add it to your recipes and you only have to do it the once, then when you make that dish again you can just select it from your recipes.
    Those that you have already done you can go back and save them to your meals.
    It does take a while to get going but then you can just go back and select them. Also consider any variations you make when your doing it and you can save even more time.
    For example I make a green thai curry quite often, sometimes it's veggie sometimes it's chicken so I have it saved without the chicken and just add the chicken on when I make it. Also some things you might have done slightly differently but it actually makes no difference to the calorie content of the meal, like the thai curry I switch my green veg up quite often, last week I used mange tout - 32 cal (for 100g), this week sugar snap peas - 34 cal. 2 calories is neither here nor there so I don't change the recipe. I only change things on here if it's 50+ cal difference.
    You also get to know what 100g of such and such looks like. I'm quite a fan of the American Cups measuring system for this... say I use 100g of flour in something I make often, the first time I'll weigh out the 100g I'll then pop that into cups to figure out how many cups it is so I can speed it all up next time.

    There is an initial time investment but it can be stream lined and is worth it in the long run I think :)
    I hope this makes sense....
    x
  • astartig
    astartig Posts: 549 Member
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    you make a recipe, take each ingredient and reckon it in. There are some things where the protein is able to be weighed separately. I find i make the sauces pretty much identically each time. Once I enter a recipe it's there. If something significant is different I change it. I do weigh the portions and figure out the complete numbers and how many servings there were. yeah, not everything may be exactly identical in each individual serving but that's going to be true for just about everything including meals you eat out from well known restaurants. it's just the way of it. it's not exact. but it gives you a pretty good idea. and while not exact pretty darned close.
  • JenniDaisy
    JenniDaisy Posts: 526 Member
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    I very rarely use the recipe function and tend to add the ingredients just to the alotted meal. I just weigh everything as i'm putting it in, and then split it in half for me and Husband. So I weigh 200g and cook of something but only log 100g, If there's any leftovers I just try to adjust it later. So say I cook something that I think is two portions but it turns out to be three because we aren't hungry or I realised it was loads, instead of logging 100g, I'll only log 70g.
    It seems to work best for me as I change a lot of things as I'm going along.
  • Patttience
    Patttience Posts: 975 Member
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    Also, if you enter everything in as a recipe (I have several dishes I like to do frequently), you can always go back to it next time you cook and not have to log the separate ingredients. :drinker:

    Yes you can go back and adjust your recipes for reuse. Although i'm having trouble getting back to my earlier recipe pages.

    I make all my food from scratch too but i don't mind logging it. If you are busy i can see why you wouldn't want to do it. I tend to make a new recipe every time and don't make the same things over and over again. However, i do have several serves of each meal in a recipe most of the time since i'm only cooking for myself.

    The thing is, you don't have to log and count calories. You can lose weight if you just keep a detailed food diary which includes what goes into your recipes and quantities.

    It is good to have a record of what you eat in one form or another so if things go wrong you can see where.
  • leomcdee
    leomcdee Posts: 60 Member
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    We home cook all our meals, I found logging every single ingredient actually helped me with portion control. There's just two of us, and neither of us are really leftovers people, so we just cook enough for the one meal. I split the recipe down the middle, but even if my other half eats a little more than me, I'll keep those calories as a kind of buffer. Also, if I don't finish my meal, again, I don't take the calories away, I just act like I ate them.

    Like other's have said, I don't log spices, herbs and I've stopped using oil, so it's usually really easy to log stuff like vegetables, meat and sauces.
  • justalittlecrazy
    justalittlecrazy Posts: 88 Member
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    If the recipe is from online, you can enter the URL and it looks up every item and assigns the proper calories. Did a recipe yesterday in about 10 seconds!
  • UmmSqueaky
    UmmSqueaky Posts: 715 Member
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    I weigh each ingredient as I add it, and write it down. Once everything is done cooking, I weigh final product in grams and then divide by 100. That gives me x number of servings that are 100g each. Then when I serve out my portion, I weigh my portion (again in grams) and know exactly what's going into my mouth. Will I do this forever? Probably not. But since I eat a lot at home and I've seen how successful I can be accurately logging calories, sure as heck I'm going to be doing it for quite some time.
  • Liftng4Lis
    Liftng4Lis Posts: 15,150 Member
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    If you make the same meals often, it gets easier because they're saved. It is time consuming at first, but after you're use to it, it becomes second nature. Plus, so worth the payoff!
  • higgins8283801
    higgins8283801 Posts: 844 Member
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    I plan it out ahead of time. Add calories of every single ingredient and then divide it by the number of people eating. It's not accurate persay, but works for me.
  • indieb23
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    Wow didn't expect so many replies! Some great advice there - I will definatly stick at it and hopefully it will become second nature. It is interesting as well I find seeing the calories in my home cooked meals even if it's estimated - and it's a god way to see where I go wrong on the calorie front.

    Thanks again all! Xxx