Homemade meals - calorie counting

Yep. Count the calories for the individual ingredients, add them together, and divide by the number of serves. This site allows you to add a recipe, which will doing the maths for you and save you having to enter all the ingredients every time you cook the same thing.

I'll measure my food a little differently, depending on what it is.

I'll click the Recipe tab and enter everything I put into the meal. If I can physically divide the dish easily enough into equal parts, I'll do that. (For example, if I saute chicken and vegetables, I'll literally draw a line through the food and divide it into 4 servings -- and I'll enter my recipe as 4 servings). Sometimes I will make the whole dinner, and then measure it out in cups. If there are 6 cups, then I'll enter the recipe as 6 servings and I'll then measure my own portion in cups. Other times, if it seems easiest, I'll measure the chicken, for example, in ounces and then calculate the rest of the meal separately.

You basically just have to enter every ingredient into the Recipe and then figure out whatever way you can to most easily divide it into equal servings.

Good luck!

Also, if you don't have one already, I highly recommend a food scale. I have found that many servings are measured by weight, and not measurable volume, or even if volume is included, it is estimated, but weight is way more reliable for most. Bed Bath & Beyond has a very nice "Biggest Loser" branded food scale for just $20 that has worked great for me. It even has a tare feature so you can exclude the weight of whatever container you are weighing it in. This has made my calorie tracking so much easier!

I agree about the food scale. For instance, last night I made roasted red potato "fries"....obviously they will not fit into cups and counting would not be an exact measure. So after I'm finished with something like that, I put it all in a big bowl, change the unit to grams and divide by whatever the number of servings is and divvy it out that way. Also with pasta, it may be tedious, but I boil the servings separately so that I know exactly how much I am getting. Rice I just use the cups since it's pretty standard. I always measure chicken and vegetables separately if it's not a casserole. With casseroles, I usually just eyeball it because pouring it all in one bowl would probably make it a little less appealing for some reason. It can be done!! Homemade meals are THE BEST for counting calories because you know exactly what you put in it and have total control! Good luck!