Chinese food everyday
KaidaYinYang
Posts: 2 Member
So I was gone a while from the app but decided to take it up again and I remembered why I stopped originally: it's impossible to count my dinner calories because I eat Chinese food almost every day.
I'm Chinese, and I live at home now which means I get Chinese food for lunch and dinner at least 4 days a week.
Dinner is usually a bowl of rice and putting in a mix of vegetables, fish, and/or meat (and other misc. things like the occasional tofu). But because it's so mixed I can't pinpoint how much I'm having and of what (as sometimes I don't even think the app has specifics listed).
Should I even bother trying with my lunch and dinners? But that's 2 meals I'd be missing calorie counts on.
Anyone else have this problem? I can't be the only one that eats home cooked Chinese food. Is there a resolution to this?!
I'm Chinese, and I live at home now which means I get Chinese food for lunch and dinner at least 4 days a week.
Dinner is usually a bowl of rice and putting in a mix of vegetables, fish, and/or meat (and other misc. things like the occasional tofu). But because it's so mixed I can't pinpoint how much I'm having and of what (as sometimes I don't even think the app has specifics listed).
Should I even bother trying with my lunch and dinners? But that's 2 meals I'd be missing calorie counts on.
Anyone else have this problem? I can't be the only one that eats home cooked Chinese food. Is there a resolution to this?!
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Replies
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You can get pretty close by measuring the rice, meat and sauce. The rice should be easy to measure. The meat well if you know you put 5oz. of beef in and you eat half the prep you can get a decent ball park.0
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Recipe builder? Are your parents cooking, and if so, are they on board with helping you determine portions? This doesn't really seem like a chinese food problem - there are many, many meals out there for which it is hard to identify exactly how much of which ingredient you're eating...
edit: if not, estimating is better than not trying at all. My sister logs very inaccurately, and she loses a lot slower than MFP says she should, but has still lost 35lbs. It can work.0 -
Who is doing the cooking?
Ideally you want to weight the raw ingredients and stick them in the recipe builder along with the number of people you intend to feed. Then weight the whole finished dish and make sure you get the right amount of it.
For example:
Let's say I cooked 100g white rice (dry weight)
100g broccoli
100g carrot
100g beansprout
100g chicken breast
1tbsp olive oil
And tell the recipe counter I'm serving 3 people, it tells me it's 393 cals per serving.
So I cook it all and weigh the entire thing, and it comes to 900g altogether, so I measure out 1/3 which is 300g. Now I know what I've eaten and how many calories.
I pulled those numbers out of the air but you get the point.0 -
Why would chinese food be any different to any other kind of food. It contains ingredients; it can be weighed and it can be counted.0
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Why would chinese food be any different to any other kind of food. It contains ingredients; it can be weighed and it can be counted.
That was my thought too. If MFP doesn't have a specific ingredient, add it to the database. Once it's in there once, it's accessible to you every time you log. For everything else, weigh and measure.0 -
Use the recipe builder. If you don't help with the cooking, surely whoever does do it would appreciate your interest in learning how s/he does it.0
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athenasurrenders wrote: »Who is doing the cooking?
Ideally you want to weight the raw ingredients and stick them in the recipe builder along with the number of people you intend to feed. Then weight the whole finished dish and make sure you get the right amount of it.
For example:
Let's say I cooked 100g white rice (dry weight)
100g broccoli
100g carrot
100g beansprout
100g chicken breast
1tbsp olive oil
And tell the recipe counter I'm serving 3 people, it tells me it's 393 cals per serving.
So I cook it all and weigh the entire thing, and it comes to 900g altogether, so I measure out 1/3 which is 300g. Now I know what I've eaten and how many calories.
I pulled those numbers out of the air but you get the point.
Relatives. Can't cook to save my life(yet...will eventually have to).
Anyway, this was extremely helpful.
Thank you for explaining and I'll see what I can do. Thanks again!0 -
Why would chinese food be any different to any other kind of food. It contains ingredients; it can be weighed and it can be counted.
This ^^
If you want to put in the work, any homemade recipe can be logged by weighing each ingredient, determining how much of the whole you eat (may have to weigh/measure again). There is a recipe app that is supposed to make it easier.
Nearly all of my meals are homemade and often contain many ingredients. I don't weigh them all because it's just too much work IMO. I estimate a lot.0 -
I think estimating is usually enough.0
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Ask whoever is cooking if they can provide you with the recipe/amounts of each ingredient they used.0
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I got the same struggle with you. I'm a Chinese and we often eat Chinese food. I always find it difficult to control my portion because the we could simply grab any dishes from the middle of table whenever we like. I like Western style which they usually distribute everything equally, for example one portion of fish, one portion of salad and one portion of mash potato.0
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KaidaYinYang wrote: »So I was gone a while from the app but decided to take it up again and I remembered why I stopped originally: it's impossible to count my dinner calories because I eat Chinese food almost every day.
I'm Chinese, and I live at home now which means I get Chinese food for lunch and dinner at least 4 days a week.
Dinner is usually a bowl of rice and putting in a mix of vegetables, fish, and/or meat (and other misc. things like the occasional tofu). But because it's so mixed I can't pinpoint how much I'm having and of what (as sometimes I don't even think the app has specifics listed).
Should I even bother trying with my lunch and dinners? But that's 2 meals I'd be missing calorie counts on.
Anyone else have this problem? I can't be the only one that eats home cooked Chinese food. Is there a resolution to this?!
Its indeed all about calorie counting, and weighing your food
Chinese, European, Thais food etc etc it doesn't matter
You have overweight and thin people in China...... just saying
So yes like the others said, start counting and weighing your food.
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I got the same struggle with you. I'm a Chinese and we often eat Chinese food. I always find it difficult to control my portion because the we could simply grab any dishes from the middle of table whenever we like. I like Western style which they usually distribute everything equally, for example one portion of fish, one portion of salad and one portion of mash potato.
Actually, it's not a Chinese/western thing. Many times the same is done in western style restaurants. If it's on the table it's called "family style" or it can be a buffet.0 -
What I do is put my bowl on the scale, weigh the rice, then zero the scale, add the veggies, then zero the scale and add the meat. That way I have the weight for everything (then I just use the 'cooked' entries, but I'd overestimate the rice because MFP's entries seem to be 20% off for cooked rice).0
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2 birds one stone. I'm sure your parents would be thrilled to have you in the kitchen learning how they make the food. You can write the recipes down for yourself to be able to cook them and to enter in the recipe builder to make it easier to log.0
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