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Weighing food when cooking for family...help!
emiliebecause
Posts: 63 Member
I am trying to understand the food-weighing aspect of this program and I am finding it very confusing. For example, yesterday I made a giant bowl of salad with a million different veggies in it, some white chicken meat from a rotisserie chicken and my own (delicious) dressing. My kids and I all ate this for lunch. Can someone explain to me like I am four years old how I would go about weighing something with so many different ingredients? I often make meals in one big pot or pan for my family. I'd very much appreciate any tips!
Also, really in general if anyone has tips on how to manage your own dietary changes when you are also responsible for providing for kids and meeting their unique needs. It's kind of overwhelming and I don't want to have to spend as much time thinking of food as I am!
Also, really in general if anyone has tips on how to manage your own dietary changes when you are also responsible for providing for kids and meeting their unique needs. It's kind of overwhelming and I don't want to have to spend as much time thinking of food as I am!
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Replies
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Use the recipe builder! You enter all the ingredients, the number of servings, and it calculates everything for you.
Once you have the whole dish put together, weigh it and divide the total by the number of servings. That amount is what you should eat.
For example: I made homemade vegetable soup. It had tomatoes, carrots, onions, celery and cabbage, plus stock. I entered each of those separately. When it was done cooking, it weighed 80 ounces. I counted it as 8 servings, so each serving is 10 ounces.0 -
There's a recipe section under the FOOD tab, where you can add up all your ingredients and input how many servings.
I've just eaten less while trying to add more vegetables to our meals. We haven't really changed the way we eat. Your kids can and should eat what you are eating. If something is unhealthy, why are they eating it? However, you can, and should, have whatever you want. But measure out how much you can have that fits in your caloric goals.
If you've got picky kids, change it now. They're only picky because you allow them to. Short of an allergy, eating something they don't like will not kill them.
If you just started, you're just starting to learn. It takes a while to get into the flow of things. Keep at it. Add me as a friend if you'd like!0 -
OK thank you! I will check out the FOOD tab and see how long it will take me to figure it out. Wish figuring out computer stuff burnt calories. Jaqcan, I have 2 teenagers. One of them in particular is going through a massive growth spurt--I swear he has grown three inches in as many weeks. Also they are very active. So they need MUCH more food than I do and honestly sometimes they just need to be filled up like gas tanks. Salad with a bit of chicken just ain't gonna cut it, ya know? They are most certainly not picky. lol.
Thanks so much for taking the time to share these tips. I really appreciate it.0 -
The food tab combined with weighing the raw ingredients before they go into the mixing bowl / pot / pan should solve most of your issues here.0
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great, thanks
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With salad, I generally just set everything out in individual bowls rather than mixed and weigh them as I go. But if you wanted to make something like enchiladas:
1. Weigh your pan and write it down
2. Weigh each raw ingredient as you go. I write these ingredients too instead of dealing with the builder
3. Cook as usual
4. Weigh the whole thing
5. Subtract the weight of the pan. The weight of the food in grams=your number of servings
6. Put it all in the recipe builder and then log your 268 servings of enchiladas0 -
emiliebecause wrote: »OK thank you! I will check out the FOOD tab and see how long it will take me to figure it out. Wish figuring out computer stuff burnt calories. Jaqcan, I have 2 teenagers. One of them in particular is going through a massive growth spurt--I swear he has grown three inches in as many weeks. Also they are very active. So they need MUCH more food than I do and honestly sometimes they just need to be filled up like gas tanks. Salad with a bit of chicken just ain't gonna cut it, ya know? They are most certainly not picky. lol.
Thanks so much for taking the time to share these tips. I really appreciate it.
Yeesh teenage boys. I just have girls, 13 and 7. They don't eat like birds, but they're not boys either. Good Luck!0 -
OP, I just want to make sure you know this (because I did not!):
Turn your food scale On. Put the salad bowl directly on the food scale, and "zero out" or "tare". This subtracts the weight of the salad bowl. Now add your first ingredient. Write down that weight. Zero out again. Add the next ingredient. Zero out again. Keeping repeating, with zero-ing out in between each item and writing down how much each ingredient weighs (this would include each veggie, the chicken, and dressing). Easy peasy. Then, when you're all done, use the recipe builder and follow the above advice.0 -
i wish there was a 'like' button. thanks so much! very helpful. 0
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barbecuesauce wrote: »6. Put it all in the recipe builder and then log your 268 servings of enchiladas
ha! I could eat 268 servings of enchiladas RIGHT NOW. The stevia-sweetened 0% yogurt I just ate is decidedly not satisfying.
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Thank you! I was confused by this too... It was easy if I was making a pizza or pan of brownies that I can cut into equal pieces, but something not as easy to "measure" I couldn't figure out... Weigh it! Duh...rockmama72 wrote: »Use the recipe builder! You enter all the ingredients, the number of servings, and it calculates everything for you.
Once you have the whole dish put together, weigh it and divide the total by the number of servings. That amount is what you should eat.
For example: I made homemade vegetable soup. It had tomatoes, carrots, onions, celery and cabbage, plus stock. I entered each of those separately. When it was done cooking, it weighed 80 ounces. I counted it as 8 servings, so each serving is 10 ounces.
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Sometimes I forget that I need to weigh the finished product and get so annoyed with myself when I've already put it in a container (without first putting the container on the scale).0
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For the salad example if the salad itself was all low calorie items then I'd estimate on that. My salad main ingredients are spinach and/or other lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers. Each tends to be 5-7 cals worth per ingredient when I do weight them out. So a generic 25-30 calorie salad will be fairly accurate. And if I'm off by 5 calories - not really important. But for the chicken, cheese, dressing: I'd add those to my salad plate separately (rather than mixing them into the main salad bowl) and weigh each.0
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StaciMarie1974 wrote: »For the salad example if the salad itself was all low calorie items then I'd estimate on that. My salad main ingredients are spinach and/or other lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers. Each tends to be 5-7 cals worth per ingredient when I do weight them out. So a generic 25-30 calorie salad will be fairly accurate. And if I'm off by 5 calories - not really important. But for the chicken, cheese, dressing: I'd add those to my salad plate separately (rather than mixing them into the main salad bowl) and weigh each.
This is exactly how I do it.
If I'm eating a bowl full of carrots or cucumber or broccoli, I will actually weigh them. But if I'm eating one small broccoli floret, 2 slices of cucumber, and a pinch of shredded carrot, I don't.0 -
StaciMarie1974 wrote: »For the salad example if the salad itself was all low calorie items then I'd estimate on that. My salad main ingredients are spinach and/or other lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers. Each tends to be 5-7 cals worth per ingredient when I do weight them out. So a generic 25-30 calorie salad will be fairly accurate. And if I'm off by 5 calories - not really important. But for the chicken, cheese, dressing: I'd add those to my salad plate separately (rather than mixing them into the main salad bowl) and weigh each.
ohh great. Simple is good.
Here's a link to the dressing recipe as a Thank You. It really is very very tasty. http://www.hollyhocklife.org/recipewednesday-hollyhocks-famousyeast-dressing-revisited/0 -
emiliebecause wrote: »OK thank you! I will check out the FOOD tab and see how long it will take me to figure it out. Wish figuring out computer stuff burnt calories. Jaqcan, I have 2 teenagers. One of them in particular is going through a massive growth spurt--I swear he has grown three inches in as many weeks. Also they are very active. So they need MUCH more food than I do and honestly sometimes they just need to be filled up like gas tanks. Salad with a bit of chicken just ain't gonna cut it, ya know? They are most certainly not picky. lol.
Thanks so much for taking the time to share these tips. I really appreciate it.
Yeesh teenage boys. I just have girls, 13 and 7. They don't eat like birds, but they're not boys either. Good Luck!
Mine is just over 2 1/2. She doesn't always eat what we eat, but she will try a bite if we ask her a million times. To be honest, sometimes she just wants an entire dinner of fruit or veggies. We will ask her what she wants, so that she can feel independent in making her own decisions. Maybe when she is older, we will work on her eating the same thing as we do. Maybe the age thing is the difference, but at least she would rather than a plate of veggies than chicken fingers at Red Robin, ha ha! The other day, I got a vegetarian unwich at Jimmy John's. She kept making me tear off the lettuce, and she would eat just the lettuce chunks. She's a little weirdo sometimes. What did you do when yours were that little? We have a hard time getting her to eat chicken, because she ate so much of it in the beginning. Sometimes we just make her something different. So sorry for the derail, OP!!!!0 -
Honestly for salads I don't even bother using a recipe, it will be inaccurate anyway as you could get more chicken and less veggies and end up being off by 100 calories or more...
I just make a smaller bowl for me and weigh everything I put in that one. So much easier...
Otherwise, yeah, I use the recipe builder, weigh the whole thing once it's cooked and put the number of grams as the number of servings, so I can just enter the number of grams I put on my plate afterwards.0 -
For salads I also just estimate and then weigh out the bigger calorie items that others have pointed out.
I'll be honest, I don't weigh raw meat so I always have to be careful and look for cooked food entries when adding that to my food diary. I try to weigh everything else raw, or again, be certain to find entries for COOKED food.
As for the kids part, I have a 5 and 6 year old (both boys) and my husband and we all eat from the same meal, but our plates (proportionally) look different to cater to our tastes and needs. I just make sure that every meal has a minimum of one food that each person likes. My 6 year old and I are pretty easy to please and my 5 year old is the hardest (sensory issues with food--makes for fun dinner experiences).
For example, tonight's dinner was grilled pork spare ribs with BBQ sauce, steamed whole green beans, homemade oven fries, and rolls. My husband ate a little of everything, my 6 year old ate mostly vegetables and oven fries (three helpings of green beans--yay!), my five year old had pork, oven fries, and a half of a roll. I had a 5 ounce helping of green beans and about 3 ounces of oven fries. I don't do pork and I'm doing medically necessary low-carb so no roll for me either. Just an example of doing one meal and letting people make their own plates.
Best wishes!0 -
I forgot to comment on the second part too... Typically we just cook one protein, one veggie, and one other side (can be rice, pasta, homemade fries etc). Then I can just weigh things as I put them on my plate. If I make a bunch of fries for example, I'll use a cooked entry for potatoes and add 1 tsp of oil (knowing I used 1 tbsp for the whole recipe, and there's 4 of us). But yeah in that case I use cooked entries.
We don't do recipes much anyway because nobody ever knows what they want to eat so I just make easy things, and typically if I crave something specific and want to experiment I'll make a single serving for lunch for me (knowing the kids won't eat it). But if I'm making more than one serving, I definitely use the recipe builder.0 -
Ok I will definitely try out the more accurate version of my food weighing for tonight's supper! Thanks for all the tips.0
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Sometimes I forget that I need to weigh the finished product and get so annoyed with myself when I've already put it in a container (without first putting the container on the scale).
Weigh all your containers/pot and pans. Put weights in a spreadsheet for later reference.
Problem solved.0 -
I've had to put stuff from one container to another way too many times because of the same thing...0 -
Sometimes I forget that I need to weigh the finished product and get so annoyed with myself when I've already put it in a container (without first putting the container on the scale).
Weigh all your containers/pot and pans. Put weights in a spreadsheet for later reference.
Problem solved.
Yep!
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I've had to put stuff from one container to another way too many times because of the same thing...
Yep, and I hate having to wash another container!!
Interesting idea from another poster to weigh all the containers...I would have to write the weight with a sharpie right on the container since I'll never figure out what is what otherwise.0 -
I've had to put stuff from one container to another way too many times because of the same thing...
Yep, and I hate having to wash another container!!
Interesting idea from another poster to weigh all the containers...I would have to write the weight with a sharpie right on the container since I'll never figure out what is what otherwise.
That's my issue. I have a bunch of pyrex containers the same size, I'm not sure if they weigh the same or not...0 -
I've had to put stuff from one container to another way too many times because of the same thing...
Yep, and I hate having to wash another container!!
Interesting idea from another poster to weigh all the containers...I would have to write the weight with a sharpie right on the container since I'll never figure out what is what otherwise.
That's my issue. I have a bunch of pyrex containers the same size, I'm not sure if they weigh the same or not...
Yeah, all the containers/plates/etc seem to be off by any number of grams. Inside my cabinet, I keep a list of my skillets and pots. If I was going to use one of my Pyrex containers or metal baking pans, I would just write down the weight on the page with the recipe ingredients.0 -
I actually know by heart most of my baking dishes' weight by now...0
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