Estimating calories for home cooked meals

Basically what you said. I add all the ingredients together and then when it is done cooking I weigh out the total weight of the food, minus the dish and figure out what the calories per 100g is.

malibu927 wrote: »

Recipe builder+food scale. Weigh the total product before you cook it, then weigh it after its done.

Yup this.....most of what I eat is made at home by me...I have 11 pages of recipes in here.....

I use the MFP recipe builder. Click "Food" in the headings, then "Recipes." I got frustrated with the "Import Recipes" hokum so now I always select "Add Recipe Manually." Be patient. If you're like me it will seem pretty clunky but you get used to it and once the recipe is in your "Recipe Box" Its simple to add it to your diary. The next time you make it, if anything changes you can just edit the ingredients that are different.

OldHobo wrote: »

I use the MFP recipe builder. Click "Food" in the headings, then "Recipes." I got frustrated with the "Import Recipes" hokum so now I always select "Add Recipe Manually." Be patient. If you're like me it will seem pretty clunky but you get used to it and once the recipe is in your "Recipe Box" Its simple to add it to your diary. The next time you make it, if anything changes you can just edit the ingredients that are different.

should try the importer again...it's been working like a charm lately (just check quantities sometimes if it looks wonky)

Just to verify: It's important whether I indicate raw vs. cooked in the recipe ingredients, yes? Otherwise the weight/calorie ratio would be incorrect? I would imagine the caloric info would be skewed to be under after water -- by itself or contained in ingredients -- cooks out.

I add up all the calories from individual ingredients and measure the total quantity at the end by volume. To keep it simple, my 1 serving is always equal to 1 cup. For smaller preparations, 1 serving = 1/4 cup.

If it is something not measurable by a cup measure like meatballs, which I made today from scratch, 1 serving = 1 meatball and while making them I made 2 meatballs out of each 1/4 cup of meatball mix, so I know they are all equal sized.

Everything else, I weigh the final product and to keep it simple 1 serving = 100gms (I don't understand ounces).

For stew meat dishes I calculate the calories of all the ingredients except the meat and add it up and add up the meat calories separately. Example: veggies=500 calories and meat=150gms or ounces or whatever. At the end, I separate the meat from the liquid sauce/soup/curry and measure the liquid as 1 serving=1 cup and the meat by weight and calculate servings. So if 380gms of meat=450 cals and after cooking it yielded 300gms, I just put it as 1 serving = 100gms in the recipe builder and I know that 100gms is 150 cals.

If it is shredded meat or small pieces of meat, it all just gets calculated as 1 serving = 1 cup.

Little fussy, but it works.

nuffer wrote: »

Just to verify: It's important whether I indicate raw vs. cooked in the recipe ingredients, yes? Otherwise the weight/calorie ratio would be incorrect? I would imagine the caloric info would be skewed to be under after water -- by itself or contained in ingredients -- cooks out.

Not sure I full understand but getting the right ingredient and quantity out of the database is 90% of it. "Raw" is a good keyword to enter because it will often return the item from the USDA National Nutrient Database (NDB) which is very often the one you want when it is available. You can recognize the NDB items in the list because they are not preceded by an asterisk.

The other semi-tricky thing is the servings. You can must specify the number of servings in the recipe but that's your only choice - servings. You can't indicate Tablespoons, cups, ounces or buckets. But you can edit it, and again, nothings perfect, especially this recipe builder. You get used to it.

The items I've had trouble with is homemade kefir and yogurt, and kefir milk, my husband is on a diabetic pump and each carb makes a difference as to insulin intake; but there are many numbers on this site and on the internet that disagree, so finally went by the usda as much as I could; Okara, wet or powdered homemade is another tricky one; then started having problems with metamucil and miralax, the labels for miralax says 0 carbs, but they had to have subtracted the fiber from the carbs because blood sugar was going through the ceiling, so started counting the fiber, also on metamucil they have listed 11 carbs for two rounded teaspoons, I think they did the same thing, subtracted the fiber from the carbs, doesn't work for us, so started adding the fiber numbers, still wondering about it, there hasn't been enough time yet to see if it's enough. We try to do no packaged foods, I make soy milk, grind almonds for flour and use soy flour to cut carbs and stay away from animal fat, we eat complex carbs not simple carbs most of the time; counting is the hard part for me. Also I find that the nutribullet is real handy for getting the veggies down in the form of smoothies. If anyone has ideas for me I would like to hear them.

It doesn't matter how you prepare your rice. The next time you do it, just measure how much raw rice you put into the vessel. If you put in 1 cup (which is about 650 cals), put that down in your recipe builder. After you are done boiling it to the consistency you like, measure the total amount it yields. If it yields 2.5 cups, put the number of servings in your recipe builder as 2.5 assuming 1 serving = 1 cup. Since that is the way you always make it, each time you add rice to your diary, simply log how much you put on your plate. If you put 1 cup in your plate, add 1 serving of rice from your recipe tab. It will be customised to your preference and you don't have to use the MFP database entries.