Taking your own food and adding new recipe to your food diar

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live2smyle
live2smyle Posts: 592 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
I am really worried I am not doing this right. I want to be able to eat the same foods I cook for my family and have never made a recipe for anything :/ With that said I thought I would post this so I know I am doing it right. This was for mash potatoe I figure I would use this as an example because there are so few ingrediants. OK sooo... I cut up 6 potatoes and boiled them. I added the milk butter and salt and mashed them. It made 6 cups.

I went in the food list and looked up potatoe medium and added that. Then I looked up butter 6 pats and added that. Then the milk added that. Finally the salt because I am trying to keep my sodium down.

Now the serving size....Ugh I cant figure this out on my recipes. :cry: I figured since it made 6 cups it would be easy to say it serves 6 at one cup each.

When I made a big pot of Red Beans & Sausage the bean bag (dry beans) said the bag served 13 so I made the recipe to serve 13 but then how do I figure out exactly how much a portion is? The bag says one serving is 1/4 cup dry so I went online and found out what that "grows" too after its cooked 3/4 of a cup and made that the serving size.

Am I doing this right? I dont want my home cooked meals to be tanking my progress, meaning I am thinking its such and such calorie and I am way off :frown:

Obviously math was never my strong suit :grumble:

Here is what I go for Mashed Potatoe...Thanks for all the help here I appreciate it!


Number of servings 6

Calories Carbs Fat Protein Sodium Chol
Idaho - Medium Potato, 6 potato 660 156 0 18 0 0
Butter - Salted, 6 pat (1" sq, 1/3" high) 215 0 24 0 173 65
Milk - Nonfat (fat free or skim), 2 cup 172 24 1 17 255 10
Salt, 1/2 tsp 0 0 0 0 1,180 0
Add Ingredient
Total: 1047 180 25 35 1608 75
Per Serving: 175 30 4 6 268 13

Replies

  • ErrataCorrige
    ErrataCorrige Posts: 649 Member
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    I had the same problem when I made pea soup. The dry servings just where too hard to figure out with everything. I just put the calories for everything I put in the pot in the recipies, then once it was cooked I actually used a measuring cup and counted each cups worth as I moved it from one pot to another. Messy and used more dishes, but I knew for sure that that recipe made 12 cups of soup. So I entered it as serving 12 people. Now when I make the recipe I know how much each cup is.


    I think you are doing it right
  • Pinkranger626
    Pinkranger626 Posts: 460 Member
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    That's what I did for my spaghetti and meatsauce that I love to make and my peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, as long a when you eat that recipe you use the same stuff every time and you keep track of how many servings you're eating it should just make it easier to enter into your tracker. Looking at your mashed potatoes recipe it would mean that each serving is 1 cup, so just make sure you're honest with your portion sizes. Hope this helps :)
  • jfer1977
    jfer1977 Posts: 139
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    If you are entering everything into the recipe section on here it will calculate the calories for you. Just put in all the ingredients and how much of them you use. As for the serving size, that is based on what it is for your family. With the potatoes are there six of you eating them? And are you all taking the same amount? You need to know that. For example.....I have sloppy joes in my recipes, the can of Manwich says it has about 7 servings, but once I get it all made it is four servings for my family. Like I said, just enter all the ingredients and the amounts you use and figure out how many it serves in your house. The program does the rest. Good luck. Feel free to add me if you want and if you have any more questions you can send me a message if you'd like.
  • kymyas
    kymyas Posts: 10
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    I checked the same on spark.com recipe section and got your totals too. You just need to make sure you are eating 1/6th of that portion to calculate 175cal. :o]
  • live2smyle
    live2smyle Posts: 592 Member
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    OK but how do you know what a serving size should be for I dunno normal people :/ Portion control was never my strong suit...Is there a site I could use? One that says HEY a Serving size of watermelon should be such and such not half the melon HAHAHA
  • missgreen74_2003
    missgreen74_2003 Posts: 52 Member
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    As you the question about portion controll I take as much as my calories allow. if i have 500 cals for dinner and meat is 250 cal and my veg is 50 cal then i know i have 200 cal for my potatoes. If one cup is 175 cal then you can have one cup. :D I usually eat 1/2 cup of everything though. Like a typical dinner for me is 4 oz chicken 1/2 veg and 1/2 patatoe/rice/noodle. I hope that helps
  • kymyas
    kymyas Posts: 10
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    According to USDA potatoes are considered a STARCHY vegetable and the USDA allowance (for someone following a 2000 kcal) is 3 cups PER WEEK. 1 medium potato is equivalent to 1 cup potato. Here is the link to the USDA website if you have questions about portion size and how much of it you should eat of the food albeit daily or weekly. Hope this helps. http://www.mypyramid.gov/pyramid/vegetables.html#
  • live2smyle
    live2smyle Posts: 592 Member
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    Thank You for all your help everyone :flowerforyou:

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