Caution: unknown calories inside

Suck it up, start cooking. Really, that's the best advice I can give! Use the recipe builder (use the "old recipe builder" link on the lower right - the new one SUCKS).

Get a food scale, weigh your ingredients, work out the portions. It takes extra time, but unless you want to live on granola bars, it's a necessary evil!

It doesn't need to be complex. Some lean protein, a carb and some veg = meal. Weigh the ingredients, add to tracker!

Also check out lighter cooking blogs/sites like skinnytaste or cooking light, where the calorie count is done for you with the recipe (do be aware that it can be off and it's better to add it up yourself, but it is good for a ballpark).

I get why you're going for the packaged stuff, but if you want to eat home cooked meals with fresh ingredients, there's really only one way to go about it, and that's to use the tools at your disposal and add it all up.

Good luck!

if that's what you're ready for right now, do that. I've been slowly but surely adding my most-popular/frequent recipes to my recipe section so I can quick-add them, now. but if it's more comfortable to grab the granola bar because it's an easier add, don't feel bad about it. getting into the habit of being honest with your diary is fantastic. don't push comfort levels until you're ready to.

MFP's recipe calculator is pretty helpful, measure your food and put it in that.

Honestly it's so easy! I pre-log all of my foods so I know how many teaspoons of olive oil or oz of cheese to budget for my salad. That takes about two minutes per meal, if that.

When cooking, I just have my measuring spoons and cups, and food scale handy. It takes about ten extra seconds to weigh or measure out an ingredient.

Friend me if you'd like to get some ideas of the kinds of food I eat. I'm preparing 95% of my meals at home and they are generally pretty simple and satisfying.

It's easy to do simple meals... but once you pull out that slow cooker I feel like it's impossible to get exact calories!
So I feel you.

Totally! What I end up doing in that case is pulling out my big liquid measuring cup and figuring out how many cups of soup/chilli whatever, then usually assuming that a cup is one portion. It's a pain, but it's already done for the next time once its in the recipe calculator.

It's easy to do simple meals... but once you pull out that slow cooker I feel like it's impossible to get exact calories!
So I feel you.

That's true. I'm really finicky about counts, so I put it all into the recipe builder as raw weight, with however many serves, then when it's cooked I put it all into a container on my scale, get the total weight, divide be serves and serve according to that weight. But then I wonder about how one serve might have more meat than another serve, or less veg etc... But I figure that calories counting is an inexact science in any event and it will be close enough!

Yup! I usually weigh it all, put down the calories of each item, add the calories to a total, cook the food, transfer the food into a bowl, reweigh the food, then do the division for calories per each gram...
Then make my serving, weigh and multiply...
It's a hassle... but better to not underestimate and overeat! :laugh:

When Im lazy, Ill buy some "healthy" frozen foods. Easily trackable calories. Perdue lightly breaded chicken breasts, 190 calories. Steamfresh steamed broccoli, cauliflower, and carrots, 120 calories.A bit of dressing for the veggies, 50 calories. Maybe a couple of tortillas (200 calories) and a piece of cheese or two (80-160 calories).

Easy peasy and I get to eat a bunch of veggies and protein.

I DESPISE cooking. Really, I'd rather get "insert worst medical exam ever" in it's place everyday for a month then cook.

Then I started noticing that even those ravioli's are easy to make they are a lot of calories and in a couple hours I'm back in the fridge... racking up more calories. But by cooking up some meat and a veggie.. now I have a meal that sticks to my ribs and the snack monster takes much longer to rear it's calorie snatching head!!

Do I still grab a pre-packaged meal? Of course, especially when I have to work or when I am swamped with work or life or both but I tend to look now at cooking dinner as a break from whatever crap I was doing. And to perfectly honest, I'm starting to not hate cooking... dare I say perhaps even enjoy it?!

Also, I look on sites like Food.com and Pinterest for ideas, menus, inspiration and just some good ole' food porn!!

Ease into the cooking... it takes time but if you strive to cook even once a day and ramp it up from there you'll be fine... I know I was!!

I've been trying to cook all my meals instead of eating out/processed food. Sometimes I estimate, sometimes I use those little bakers measuring cups. When in doubt, I underestimate (except for salad stuff, always overestimate that). So far it's been working. I'll eventually get a food scale but either way gotta learn how to portion it out.