Tracking home-cooked food only

mejonbigtree
mejonbigtree Posts: 2 Member
edited November 11 in Food and Nutrition
Hi,

Forgive me if this is a common topic. I'd like to start keeping a food diary - but my previous attempts through the MFP app have fallen down due to the difficulty of only tracking home-cooked food.

A lot of what I cook has many different ingredients - and while I appreciate I can save recipes and record eating portions of those, what usually causes problems is that I rarely make the same dish in the same way twice. As a result, it becomes very time-consuming to record exactly what it is I've eaten. I appreciate this isn't exactly a big issue - but it's enough of a barrier to actually starting a proper food diary. The whole thing becomes less worthwhile if I cut too many corners with what I record, so I want to track things faithfully!

In short - I'd really appreciate any advice from anyone who has had a similar question and can suggest a couple of ways around this. Many thanks in advance.

Replies

  • dlionsmane
    dlionsmane Posts: 674 Member
    I have a similar problem actually. I do mostly home cooking with lots of multi-ingredient meals that change from making to making. So the recipe section on this site is quite maddening actually. (I just posted on my profile this exact thing!) I have asked along with others to have the recipe section searchable (I have 19 pages or recipes) and it hasn't happened yet. It's also tough to even enter a recipe correctly as you cannot easily edit, even as you are entering items for the recipe. The match items option is not always accurate and it doesn't edit at all right now. You select Edit, Replace or Remove and the screen just bounces to the top of the page... maddening!! (I use the web page, not an app)

    So sorry, I am just really complaining right now.. not offering any help, because I too have found it difficult and have no real answers for you except to just add quantities to your diary individually. Which is what I have been doing and I can only best guess based on all the measuring I have done over the past two and a half years...
  • stephylynn190
    stephylynn190 Posts: 33 Member
    I had this trouble too, especially when I started trying to eat as clean as possible. It is a time consuming process to figure out the nutrition info on home cooked food. I'm not aware of any way to calculate it other than the old fashion way of adding it up manually and then diving out by serving size.

    I ended up creating a spreadsheet in excel which sped up the process some. That way I just have to plug in the numbers and it does all the math for me. I still have to get around to adding them all into MFP. Baby steps I guess. :)
  • a_candler
    a_candler Posts: 209 Member
    My issue w home cooking and figuring is determining a serving size and # of portions. If making a pot of soup for instance how do u gauge and figure amt of servings?
  • felblossom
    felblossom Posts: 132 Member
    Your MFP recipes are easy to edit when you use a different quantity of something or to add or remove ingredients from time to time, and the previously used entries don't change! It's a bit of work, perhaps, but no worse than logging anything on here imho. Maybe my cooking style is different, but I've never found this problematic, just edit it while you're cooking!
  • kristydi
    kristydi Posts: 781 Member
    Don't let perfect be the enemy of good. Accept that all calorie tracking is an estimate and do what you can. Is better to track less than accurately than it is to just give up and do nothing. I have found that as I get used to tracking, I find ways to be better at it.

    I rarely follow the same recipe exactly the same way twice. I enter the basic recipe, usually with the highest calorie options in the recipe builder. For example, in tomato soup I may use heavy cream, half and half, or even milk depending on what's in my fridge when I make it. I entered the recipe with heavy cream. I don't bother changing it no matter what I make the soup with.

    I also don't bother to change the recipe if I use different veggies or different proportions of veggies. If doesn't affect the calorie count enough to make it worth the effort.
  • cwolfman13
    cwolfman13 Posts: 41,865 Member
    Use the recipe builder...I have an *kitten* ton of recipes in my recipe builder now. Even if you tweak the recipe a little, it's usually a good enough estimate...at least it always was for me.

    Keep in mind that it's all estimation...don't get too hung up on "exactness"...because it doesn't exist.
  • TheVirgoddess
    TheVirgoddess Posts: 4,535 Member
    a_candler wrote: »
    My issue w home cooking and figuring is determining a serving size and # of portions. If making a pot of soup for instance how do u gauge and figure amt of servings?

    I use 1 ounce as a serving. Say a pot of soup has 40 ounces, and I eat 5 - so I log 5 servings. It's the easiest way to log things IMO.

    OP - I often change up my recipes as I cook them. I don't mess with changing the recipe on MFP, unless I change a main ingredient. I don't measure when I cook (unless I'm logging the recipe for the first time). I figure the changes end up being a wash, so I don't sweat it.
  • beynelle
    beynelle Posts: 1 Member
    a_candler wrote: »
    My issue w home cooking and figuring is determining a serving size and # of portions. If making a pot of soup for instance how do u gauge and figure amt of servings?

    I usually cook at home for the week. When I build the recipe, I estimate the number of servings. Then when the food is done I portion it out for the week. I put it right in containers. If I want 6 portions out of the pot I ladle it out into the 6 bowls. Sometimes I weigh the bowls. Sometimes I just eyeball it.
  • JPW1990
    JPW1990 Posts: 2,424 Member
    I measure ingredients as I go, and calculate the entire recipe elsewhere (I really cannot stand the recipe builder on this site, any time I've tried it, it's been like getting a toddler to put their socks on). Then I enter it here into my foods as a single serving at however many grams the entire thing comes in. When I go to enter a serving of it, I use the servings of 1g setting. So, for example, the entire recipe comes in at 1 serving of 4000 calories, 1022g, and so on, with the total nutritional values for the whole batch. Then I enter it as a serving of 130g, and it automatically calculates the rest of the info to that serving size.

  • lemurcat12
    lemurcat12 Posts: 30,886 Member
    a_candler wrote: »
    My issue w home cooking and figuring is determining a serving size and # of portions. If making a pot of soup for instance how do u gauge and figure amt of servings?

    Measure the final and then choose a serving size. As Virgoddess said, 1 oz is easy (so for 40 oz there would be 40 servings). I usually do grams, so for 652 grams might say there are 6.52 servings of 100 grams. Then when you log it and measure 132 grams you just say it's 1.32 of a serving.

    On the OP's question, I eat mostly home-cooked meals but don't mess with the recipe builder a lot. I guess maybe I don't do lots of ingredient dishes, but I do tend to have a bunch of different components to my meals. I'll just list out the ingredients and when I use them a lot they are in recent.

    I don't usually bother measuring out herbs or spices or (for some reason) garlic--the calories are minimal enough. If I'm making Brussels sprouts for 4 people I tend to eyeball what 1/4th of the whole is and log that. I'm more precise with things like meat that have more calories, but that's easy enough as I can claim my own piece of meat (or weigh cooked if necessary).

    I cook just for myself a lot, though, and I know that makes it easier.
  • avskk
    avskk Posts: 1,787 Member
    I find recipe editing to be a hassle too (I'm another who cooks a lot and never makes the same meal the same way), but for me it's less of a hassle than not tracking accurately... or maybe I should say that accuracy is more important to me than convenience right now? Either way, I go in and edit the recipe every time I make it differently.

    As for calculating portion sizes, I weigh the finished dish, then serve up what I consider to be a normal serving and weigh that. I enter the total servings based off of how many of my servings fit into the total weight. For example, I made a quinoa salad last week. The total weight was 1168 grams. I dished up the amount I wanted and it was 233 grams, so I divided the total weight by my serving and came out pretty close to 5 (I think I had, like, two grams left over). That recipe is in my box as a 5-serving recipe now, I made a note that a serving was 233 grams, and if I change it in future I'll update the weights/serving sizes as appropriate.
  • eat_hike_b33r
    eat_hike_b33r Posts: 82 Member

    a_candler wrote: »
    My issue w home cooking and figuring is determining a serving size and # of portions. If making a pot of soup for instance how do u gauge and figure amt of servings?

    if you have a scale, you can weigh your pot of soup (whole thing) write down the weight, at the end subtract out the pot to get a total weight for the recipe eg. 1000g of soup...
    Then weigh how much soup you take - eg. 100g
    Then when you enter the recipe, enter it with the total weight in the title, and set it to one serving. That way when you choose that recipe you just say you ate 0.1 of a serving (eg. 100g).
    The next time you make the recipe - it won't matter how much soup you make as long as the ratios of ingredients are approx the same you just enter the weight of the soup you took out of the total amount from the original recipe (no need to weigh pot ever again even if you do 2 or 3x recipe).
    Sorry if that is confusing - I found this is the easiest way, its annoying the first time but after it works really well and is very accurate. To me this is really important as I eat a lot of curries where the calorie content is very high, and I don't want to under or over estimate what I am taking.

    To OP - I am in the same position as I do a lot of home cooking of multi-ingredient mixed meals so... I don't know if this helps but for example - I make a lot of thai curries - so I enter the curry sauce as one recipe - then when I make a new curry with different ingredient - I make a new recipe but add the 'curry sauce' + veg and/or meats - or if it is a vegetable recipe I don't worry so much about the veggies since they are low cal. I just keep the same...

    sorry this is long.....
  • mejonbigtree
    mejonbigtree Posts: 2 Member
    Thanks for the replies everyone - really helpful to read.

    I guess the main thing that's come out is to not let perfect accuracy get in the way of tracking at all. V useful to know that I can change recipes without affecting previous entries, and I like the idea of splitting recipes into smaller components. Will give that a try.

    What would help immensely is if MFP allowed a photo food diary within the app - then I'd worry even less about the accuracy of what I've recorded, as there would never be an excuse not to make some sort of record. I'm sure that's been requested many times though...

    Thanks again all!
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