Calculating Home Cooked Meals?

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getfitceci
getfitceci Posts: 14
edited January 2015 in Food and Nutrition
Hi friends. I'm kind of having issues trying to figure out how much calorie is in each serving if I cook a home cooked meal (ie. meatloaf). I enjoy making meals at home instead of going out. It's discouraging sometimes so any tips or suggestions you may have will be greatly appreciated :)

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  • slider728
    slider728 Posts: 1,494 Member
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    I personally use this calculator:

    http://caloriecount.about.com/cc/recipe_analysis.php

    The only thing that seems a bit off about it is the serving size by weight. The calculated grams per serving seems to be about 10% high usually.
  • getfitceci
    getfitceci Posts: 14
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    Thanks, I will def give it a try.
  • flatlndr
    flatlndr Posts: 713 Member
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    I use the recipe option in MFP ... put in all the ingredients, getting the total calories for what has been prepared. The tricky part is determining how many portions are in the meal, and how many servings/portions I've had.
  • getfitceci
    getfitceci Posts: 14
    edited January 2015
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    Yep that's what I'm having trouble with. I really enjoy the meals I cook but would like to know how much calorie I'm taking in. It's healthy recipes but I might be overeating it.
  • FitFroglet
    FitFroglet Posts: 219 Member
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    I use this myfitnesspal.com/recipe/box and then click add recipe manually if the recipe is from my head or from a book.

    Just double-check that it picks the right ingredients (Wednesday it thought I'd added 185g runner bean casserole to my meal rather than runner beans), decide how many servings your meal will make and you're good to go.

    I tend to take a notepad into the kitchen so I can jot down the weights of everything (1 onion can weigh a lot different to the next for example).

    Hope this helps.
  • naomileetaylor
    naomileetaylor Posts: 1
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    I just create my own recipe in the app as I'm going. I weigh each ingredient as I add it to the cooking and then put it in the app. When done it shows the total calories in the recipe and then you just need to work out how many servings it makes to get to the no of calories you want. Ie last night I made a meal with about 1000 calories so if I ate 1/4 that gave me 250 calories with leftover for more veg and some pita bread. Does that make sense? It's a bit of work initially but once you save your main recipes you make it will be easy :-)
  • soidade
    soidade Posts: 116 Member
    edited January 2015
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    Use a scale! This is the best way to avoid guesswork. Weigh your meat, weigh your bread, weigh your cheese, weight any ingredient that has a lot of calories that you might be prone to underestimating. Grams don't lie.
  • getfitceci
    getfitceci Posts: 14
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    Thank you everyone. I didn't know about the recipe app on here so I'll def try it out when I get home. My husband explained how he did it but it's too much math (least fav subject) but it is what it is and I have to calculate it to know.

    My hubby said to weight the food prior to cooking it, then weight it again after it's cooked since food can vary in weight afterwards? :neutral_face:
  • FitFroglet
    FitFroglet Posts: 219 Member
    edited January 2015
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    getfitceci wrote: »
    Thank you everyone. I didn't know about the recipe app on here so I'll def try it out when I get home. My husband explained how he did it but it's too much math (least fav subject) but it is what it is and I have to calculate it to know.

    My hubby said to weight the food prior to cooking it, then weight it again after it's cooked since food can vary in weight afterwards? :neutral_face:

    He's right. Weighing it before it goes in tells you how many calories of each ingredient goes in. While you're cooking it some of the water evaporates, making your finished dish lighter than the sum of its ingredients.

    If I'm making a pot of something for my husband and I, I simply decide "That looks like 4 days worth, I'll call it 8 servings". Then so long as we get 4 servings each, we haven't overeaten. (Any overly generous portions simply mean less food later on in the week and it all evens out.)

    If it's a recipe like meatloaf or cake where you're taking slices of a whole thing then I either cut it up into equally sized slices (if it's all being eaten there and then) or weigh the whole thing, call it one portion and work out what proportion my slice is by weighing that too.
    So if your meatloaf weighs 600g and you have a 95g slice you've had 95/600 = 0.1584 of the whole.

    If I'm making a casserole with chicken thighs in I tend to count the pieces of chicken and call each of those a serving. So if I dish myself up 3 thighs I'll call it 3 portions - it only becomes an issue if you hog the sauce :smile:
  • acheben
    acheben Posts: 476 Member
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    FitFroglet wrote: »
    If it's a recipe like meatloaf or cake where you're taking slices of a whole thing then I either cut it up into equally sized slices (if it's all being eaten there and then) or weigh the whole thing, call it one portion and work out what proportion my slice is by weighing that too.
    So if your meatloaf weighs 600g and you have a 95g slice you've had 95/600 = 0.1584 of the whole.
    I have found it helpful to save my recipes with 100g serving sizes. It makes it a lot easier to log since I just have to weigh the portion and enter it based off of 100g. I make sure to note the serving size in the recipe title.

  • Francl27
    Francl27 Posts: 26,371 Member
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    I just enter all the ingredients in the recipe builder, then weigh the final product and enter the number of grams as the number of serving. So if I weigh my portion and it's 321g, I just enter 321 servings. Doesn't get easier than that.

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