Cooking for 3 . . . dividing total calories (and macros) . . . does anyone else do this? Is it okay?

nayaritism
nayaritism Posts: 2
edited November 15 in Health and Weight Loss
Hi. My first post.

I'm going on month three and I've been consistent with logging and weighing and every little facet. And I'm losing. I've lost 20.2 lbs so far. So I feel like what I'm doing IS working, but I still have concerns.

Basically I'm cooking for 3 people. Technically 4 servings of everything, since I have to always have leftovers for my husband's lunch the next day. I weigh everything. I measure everything. I'm specific down to the oil and herbs and condiments used. When I cook it, I count it all. But it's so hard to individually establish what I'm eating, because I can't make a special meal for me, or separate all the stuff once made into just my portion and weigh it or count it. And everything I've researched or read about with calorie counting takes only individual servings or one person into account. So I assumed the best way to go about doing this is to take all the totals and divide them by the number of servings I had made. Usually that number is 4. I made salmon spinach cakes the other day, and ended up with 10 of them, so I divided by ten. If I have two, I double that number. I've even created my own "meals" where I make my own sauces or condiments, and I account for every single ingredient there and then add them to my dishes.

I've lost. Everyone in my family has tightened up, and my husband has been losing. So it's working, but I'm wondering as to the actual accuracy here.

But it's horrible to continue to see you're -3000 calories or something as crazy on my food diary, and I have to keep a whole other diary where I apply the math and get a much more "specific" look at what I'm working with. I even always round my math up!

What I want to know is if anyone else does this? Does this sound right? How accurate could this be? Will this method "stop" working for me? If this isn't the best way to go about getting my calorie count when bulk cooking, what is?

Any help/advice is appreciated. Thanks guys!

Replies

  • barbecuesauce
    barbecuesauce Posts: 1,771 Member
    I cook for 3 people and what I do is this:
    1. Make a list of pan/serving dish weights and tape it inside a cabinet
    2. Go into the recipe builder, enter all of your ingredients as you normally do. Do not save the total number of servings yet.
    3. Weigh the entire finished meal and subtract the weight of the pan.
    4. The number of grams is the number of total servings. You could also divide it into fourths and make sure you don't exceed the portion.
  • Sued0nim
    Sued0nim Posts: 17,456 Member
    when you've cooked your recipe (entering all raw weights of ingredients into the recipe builder) weigh the entire dish and then divide it by the number of 100g servings

    then when you serve yours up weigh it and log the number of 100g servings you've taken

    it can help to keep a list of weights of the pans / dishes you use to cook in
  • JoRumbles
    JoRumbles Posts: 262 Member
    If you are losing you are doing it right- except the bit where your diary says you are at 3,000cals? Is that becuase you are not entering the number of servings in the recipe builder? So for the salmon fish cakes change the "number of servings" box to 10, and then enter that you ate 2 servings?

    I don't worry if things like the fish cakes weigh the exact same amount as long as I am losing weight I am happy to have a margin of error.
  • TimothyFish
    TimothyFish Posts: 4,925 Member
    If you're looking for accuracy, what you are doing won't work because there is no guarantee that the ingredients are evenly divided among the portions. The good news is, weight loss doesn't require accuracy. What you are doing will work fine.
  • honeybee_kisses
    honeybee_kisses Posts: 172 Member
    I cook for 5 of us, count calorie total for the entire dish then work out a fifth of that as my portion. I know it's not 100% accurate but I'm losing so it's good enough!
  • Liftng4Lis
    Liftng4Lis Posts: 15,151 Member
    Use the recipe builder, enter the servings, bam, done! It's never going to be an exact science, but as you've stated, you're losing. You win!
  • crazyjerseygirl
    crazyjerseygirl Posts: 1,252 Member
    I do sort of the same thing. There might be slight inaccuracies (one meatball larger than the next) but I figure it evens out all the time. I wish there was a way to do every recipe by weight, I can't seem to figure that out :/
  • melanieliving
    melanieliving Posts: 69 Member
    Honestly, I build a recipe based on the raw ingredients (measured) and then divide by the amount of servings. I usually just eyeball the serving portion. I always build in a degree of overestimation and it works out for me. I can't be bothers to be super obsessive about the details, 1- I don't have time and 2-it's bad for my relationship with food. Also we eat mostly paleo/keto, which means it's less important since it's all incredibly healthy food and doesn't impact my weight as much as other food items.
  • Jruzer
    Jruzer Posts: 3,501 Member
    As others have said, use the recipe builder. That will make your tracking much easier.

    Besides that, you're doing it right as far as I'm concerned. We're in a similar situation, with 2 adults and 4 kids, each having varying portion sizes and usually some uncontrolled amount of leftovers. I take the recipe and do my best to guesstimate how many servings I've eaten. I really don't have any other way to do it. Like you, this has worked for me and I lose or maintain as desired when I do it consistently.

    MFP is a tool to be used, not a set of requirements.
  • StaciMarie1974
    StaciMarie1974 Posts: 4,138 Member
    I use the recipe builder - and once I weigh the final dish, I use the # of grams as the # of servings. Say I make sloppy joes (ground beef, onions & bell peppers, vinegar, ketchup, etc.). I log all ingredients. Then if the final product is 1800 grams, I enter it as 1800 servings. Then I weigh my portion and log. Say mine is 250 grams - I log 250 servings. My food log may look funky to some people, but as long as it makes sense and tracks reasonably well for me: its all good.

    This way I don't need to worry about everyone getting equal portions. I may not eat the same amount as each person in the house and that's ok.
  • nayaritism
    nayaritism Posts: 2
    Thanks guys!

    I've never even looked at the recipe builder tab!

    So I'm going to take these recommendations and try them. I've been just adding all the ingredients and weights to my daily total to get that calorie number then dividing. Maybe the recipe tab will be even more accurate, or I can try the way I've been doing it and compare it to the recipe tab and see what sort of statistical deviation I get.

    This is helpful stuff! That way I can play around with a couple different methods and have back up numbers which can hopefully get me as close to accurate as possible.

    Still learning the site and the best way to do things I guess :)
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