Serving Sizes

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mulletmaggie
mulletmaggie Posts: 8 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
I know there is a MILLION threads talking about serving sizies in MFP but I STILL don't get it :(

I made a HUGE batch of delicious Cauliflower 'Potato' Salad and I haven't even touched it because I dont know how to divy it up correctly. I want to avoid cups and stick to grams as it's more accurate.
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  • RobertWilkens
    RobertWilkens Posts: 77 Member
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    I think MFP has a thing called recipes (not sure haven't used yet) and i think you add the ingredients you used to make your 'cauliflower potato salad', and it'll probably tell you the total calories, if you tell it the portion you made (did you make x # of cups?) you can do some math (or maybe it does it for you) to figure out the serving sizes that are appropriate....

    I've not done this before on MFP but years ago i did on other similar sites.
  • jemhh
    jemhh Posts: 14,261 Member
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    Weigh the whole thing in grams and make each serving one gram. If you eat 50 grams, log it as 50 servings, etc.
  • mulletmaggie
    mulletmaggie Posts: 8 Member
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    jemhh wrote: »
    Weigh the whole thing in grams and make each serving one gram. If you eat 50 grams, log it as 50 servings, etc.


    What do I put as the overall serving size? I inputted the recipe under the 'recipes' option.

  • kshama2001
    kshama2001 Posts: 27,906 Member
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    jemhh wrote: »
    Weigh the whole thing in grams and make each serving one gram. If you eat 50 grams, log it as 50 servings, etc.

    That's a cool idea. Much simpler than trying to figure out how many grams a servings should be and dividing that into total grams.

  • JustMe2691
    JustMe2691 Posts: 111 Member
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    mulletmaggie wrote: »
    jemhh wrote: »
    Weigh the whole thing in grams and make each serving one gram. If you eat 50 grams, log it as 50 servings, etc.


    What do I put as the overall serving size? I inputted the recipe under the 'recipes' option.

    The number of servings will be the total amount in grams. That will make 1 gram the serving size. Then, when you take a portion, you will weigh that and put in that number as the number of servings you are eating.

    If it weighs 100 grams, you record it as 100 servings in the recipe set up. Then when you log it, you will eat 40 grams, so your number of servings for that meal will be 40.
  • mulletmaggie
    mulletmaggie Posts: 8 Member
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    JustMe2691 wrote: »
    mulletmaggie wrote: »
    jemhh wrote: »
    Weigh the whole thing in grams and make each serving one gram. If you eat 50 grams, log it as 50 servings, etc.


    What do I put as the overall serving size? I inputted the recipe under the 'recipes' option.

    The number of servings will be the total amount in grams. That will make 1 gram the serving size. Then, when you take a portion, you will weigh that and put in that number as the number of servings you are eating.

    If it weighs 100 grams, you record it as 100 servings in the recipe set up. Then when you log it, you will eat 40 grams, so your number of servings for that meal will be 40.

    Thank you so much for explaining! I think I finally understand. Will try it out tonight!
  • TimothyFish
    TimothyFish Posts: 4,925 Member
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    A serving of potato salad is about 100 grams.
  • Sued0nim
    Sued0nim Posts: 17,456 Member
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    mulletmaggie wrote: »
    I know there is a MILLION threads talking about serving sizies in MFP but I STILL don't get it :(

    I made a HUGE batch of delicious Cauliflower 'Potato' Salad and I haven't even touched it because I dont know how to divy it up correctly. I want to avoid cups and stick to grams as it's more accurate.

    Weigh all the ingredients
    Use the recipe builder
    Weigh the final dish
    Divide by the number of 100g portions there are
    when you log it eat log the weight ...eg 50g = 0.5 serving, 350g = 3.5 servings
  • mulletmaggie
    mulletmaggie Posts: 8 Member
    edited June 2015
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    ok so i just weighed the entire dish, not including the bowl - and it came to 1565g. I made that the serving size, and wanted to eat 200g so i put 200 of 1 serving - and it says there is only 1 calorie per serving. this doesnt make sense!
  • RobertWilkens
    RobertWilkens Posts: 77 Member
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    1 calorie per serving, but 200 servings makes it around 200 calories, does that make sense?
  • mulletmaggie
    mulletmaggie Posts: 8 Member
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    yes but this is way too confusing. Im really upset cause i basically just wasted all this food because there is no legit way to log it
  • BWBTrish
    BWBTrish Posts: 2,817 Member
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    Did you wrote down and weighed all your ingredients?
  • jemhh
    jemhh Posts: 14,261 Member
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    mulletmaggie wrote: »
    ok so i just weighed the entire dish, not including the bowl - and it came to 1565g. I made that the serving size, and wanted to eat 200g so i put 200 of 1 serving - and it says there is only 1 calorie per serving. this doesnt make sense!

    So your 200 grams of cauliflower salad would then be 200 calories. Makes sense to me.
  • Sued0nim
    Sued0nim Posts: 17,456 Member
    edited June 2015
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    jemhh wrote: »
    mulletmaggie wrote: »
    ok so i just weighed the entire dish, not including the bowl - and it came to 1565g. I made that the serving size, and wanted to eat 200g so i put 200 of 1 serving - and it says there is only 1 calorie per serving. this doesnt make sense!

    So your 200 grams of cauliflower salad would then be 200 calories. Makes sense to me.

    Yes

    @mulletmaggie you told it there are 1,565 x 1g servings in your entire recipe

    MFP is telling you each 1g serving will cost you 1 calorie

    You would never eat 1g of this .. so you enter 200 servings (which equals 200 x 1g servings)

    so it will cost you 200 calories to eat 200g of your cauliflower potato salad
  • LKArgh
    LKArgh Posts: 5,179 Member
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    If you find logging several portions of 1 gram confusing, just look at your salad. How many servings does it look like to you? 3, 4, 10? Let's say 10 for simplicity. So, you have 1565 grams for 10 servings, so 1 serving is 156 grams, say 150 for simplicity it will not change things much. Now, when you are ready to eat, weight your food. Divide by 150. Say you have put into your plate 350 grams. 350/150 = 2.3 servings.
  • mulletmaggie
    mulletmaggie Posts: 8 Member
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    jemhh wrote: »
    mulletmaggie wrote: »
    ok so i just weighed the entire dish, not including the bowl - and it came to 1565g. I made that the serving size, and wanted to eat 200g so i put 200 of 1 serving - and it says there is only 1 calorie per serving. this doesnt make sense!

    So your 200 grams of cauliflower salad would then be 200 calories. Makes sense to me.

    I figured it out :) Works out to be 166 calories per 200g. Thanks everyone.
  • BumbleBreeBuzz
    BumbleBreeBuzz Posts: 83 Member
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    With my recipes, i usually go off how many servings the recipe says it makes. (Usually if it gives a range i go with the lower end. Ex: recipes says 4-6 servings, i tell mfp that it is 4 servings) With potato salad u could measure out how many cups the recipe made. Say it made 12 cups then log it as 12 servings. MFP will do the rest for you
  • strong_curves
    strong_curves Posts: 2,229 Member
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    jemhh wrote: »
    Weigh the whole thing in grams and make each serving one gram. If you eat 50 grams, log it as 50 servings, etc.

    OMG this helps me so much! I didn't think of this, it makes so much sense. Thank you!

  • JohnBarth
    JohnBarth Posts: 672 Member
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    Conversely, you can make the entire batch as 1 serving. This will give you the entire batch as XXXX calories. If you want 100g to be your serving size, portion out as many 100g servings as the batch contains and update the recipe to that # of servings.

    I did this with a huge pot of chili. It weighed about 14 pounds by the time I was done (I make huge batches of lunch items and freeze them). Because I wanted 14oz servings, I divided the 14 pounds (224oz) by 14 and got 16 servings.

    It can be a little tedious at first, but once you figure it out, it's really easy.
  • nbrisky
    nbrisky Posts: 1 Member
    edited August 2015
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    For entering data into recipes, here is the formula: S*N=T. S=serving size, N=number of servings, T=total amount put into the recipe.
    S and T are given, so solving for N gives, N=T/S Example: S = 1 apple, T= 2 apples, then N=2/1=2. You will see that your recipe will have 2 apples in it. If you want your recipe to actually provide 10 portions (which you will enter when you save the recipe), then each serving will have 1/10 of the nutrients in the total recipe. Unfortunately, "number of servings" takes on different meanings. I used the term "portions".

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