How do you weigh home-cooked meals?

fenharels
fenharels Posts: 12 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
I've become pretty proficient at weighing my breakfast and snacks, but I have trouble with weighing and logging home-cooked meals accurately. As I still live with my family, we usually cook for four or more people, and I'm never quite sure how to calculate my portion. Maybe some of you could tell me how you do it? :)

Replies

  • MichelleH1304
    MichelleH1304 Posts: 140 Member
    Hey :) My suggestion is that you serve yourself and weigh out your foods one at a time onto your plate. If you have a scale with a tare button it is really useful as you can tare (go back to zero) after each food. I find this even works for food like curry.. I weigh my rice, then poke out some chicken and weigh it and then weigh the sauce. It saves you from meticulously weighing everything before cooking, especially if someone else is cooking! Hope that helps :)
  • jonbrown1227
    jonbrown1227 Posts: 7 Member
    A lot of the foods you can find in the search bar. My wife and I have been looking on Google, to find what is in meals and then putting in the detailed parts of the recipe: like Bbq sauce, butter, etc. when we cook for the family, we will google what a serving size per meal is and then measure it out. That's just how we do it! Hope it helps and good luck!
  • IzabellaK
    IzabellaK Posts: 3 Member
    Here is a great sight that helps with tracking calories of specific foods and nutritional value - I find it very annoying to find to look for certain foods on the search bar of this app.
  • IzabellaK
    IzabellaK Posts: 3 Member
    https://ndb.nal.usda.gov/ndb/search/list
  • CassidyScaglione
    CassidyScaglione Posts: 673 Member
    edited March 2016
    I weigh all the ingredients, then i weigh the final product, then based on that weight, I divide it into servings of 100 g or 200g in the recipe builder.... then whatever I eat, i weigh and log as servings or porportions of servings. I choose 100g and 200g servings because i tend to eat more smaller meals... and also because the math is easier... lol.
  • fitdoesntquit
    fitdoesntquit Posts: 7 Member
    As I'm cooking the meal, I jot down on a white board on my fridge which ingredients I'm using and how much they weigh. I plug it all into the recipe builder and then split it up into how many servings I think it will make. Since I'm just cooking for myself and my SO, there's usually about 3 servings: 1 for him, 1 for me, and 1 for lunch tomorrow or we split it if we're hungry enough to go back for seconds. That's the simplest way I've been able to do it. Spend the money on a simple digital kitchen scale, it makes logging so much easier.... especially if you're portioning out cereal and things for breakfast. I just put my bowl down on the scale, zero it out, and pour however much the box says is a serving. Then it goes in a baggie and in my lunch box for work. It's truly a lifesaver!
  • Seffell
    Seffell Posts: 2,244 Member
    edited March 2016
    I weigh all the ingredients and input them into a "recipe" in MFP. Then if the food can be separated into portions, like item-wise (say # of stuffed peppers), I do this otherwise I weigh the cooked food and then decide how big one portion is.
    I log into MFP 1 portion from the created recipe when I eat it.

    Edit: I'm lucky cos my husband started MFP as well so when he cooks he does that too and I don't have to :)
  • mkakids
    mkakids Posts: 1,913 Member
    CassidyScaglione wrote: »
    I weigh all the ingredients, then i weigh the final product, then based on that weight, I divide it into servings of 100 g or 200g in the recipe builder.... then whatever I eat, i weigh and log as servings or porportions of servings. I choose 100g and 200g servings because i tend to eat more smaller meals... and also because the math is easier... lol.

    I do this except that i enter the total number of grams for the finished recipe as the number of servings... i cook for 6 so sometimes i have recipes with 3,000+ servings lol. Thats helpfull, imo because when i dish out my portion, i put the plate on the scale, hit tare, and then just scoop out however much i want. I log the # of grams as the number if servings...so 185 grams = 185 servings.
  • fenharels
    fenharels Posts: 12 Member
    Thank you, everyone! This helped a lot. <3
  • CasperNaegle
    CasperNaegle Posts: 936 Member
    If it's a recipe I will add the ingredients in the recipe section so I can get the entire meal. Then you can break your meal into equal portions for servings. If you have a chance like me since I cook I will weigh everything and then make sure our servings are in equal portions and we weigh it as we serve it. If it's meat which will lose about 20% moisture when you cook it, I add that to the cooked weight to make sure I'm getting the proper calories in.
  • awhited815
    awhited815 Posts: 11 Member
    mkakids wrote: »
    CassidyScaglione wrote: »
    I weigh all the ingredients, then i weigh the final product, then based on that weight, I divide it into servings of 100 g or 200g in the recipe builder.... then whatever I eat, i weigh and log as servings or porportions of servings. I choose 100g and 200g servings because i tend to eat more smaller meals... and also because the math is easier... lol.

    I do this except that i enter the total number of grams for the finished recipe as the number of servings... i cook for 6 so sometimes i have recipes with 3,000+ servings lol. Thats helpfull, imo because when i dish out my portion, i put the plate on the scale, hit tare, and then just scoop out however much i want. I log the # of grams as the number if servings...so 185 grams = 185 servings.

    How did I never think of doing this?! That's a genius idea and I'm definitely doing that from now on. :)
  • foxlme
    foxlme Posts: 57 Member
    If there's an official recipe, MFP's recipe builder is great for this! When I cook at home for family I use it often. I don't generally measure out portions, but if the recipe says it serves four I generally do get four servings out of it, so I just put 1 serving and let MFP calculate it out.

    Now, when it's not something I made, like if we're eating at my mom's, I usually don't ask for the recipe or weigh my food because I'm not that hard-core into weighing and measuring. I'll look for something already in the food database that seems close. So if my mom made us a lasagna I'll look online for a lasagna serving and pick something that sems pretty reasonable for what I ate. My mom also cooks pretty clean, so I'll pick something that is a little lighter on calories. If my mother-in-law was the cook, I know to go far far far the other way. :)
  • CassidyScaglione
    CassidyScaglione Posts: 673 Member
    mkakids wrote: »
    CassidyScaglione wrote: »
    I weigh all the ingredients, then i weigh the final product, then based on that weight, I divide it into servings of 100 g or 200g in the recipe builder.... then whatever I eat, i weigh and log as servings or porportions of servings. I choose 100g and 200g servings because i tend to eat more smaller meals... and also because the math is easier... lol.

    I do this except that i enter the total number of grams for the finished recipe as the number of servings... i cook for 6 so sometimes i have recipes with 3,000+ servings lol. Thats helpfull, imo because when i dish out my portion, i put the plate on the scale, hit tare, and then just scoop out however much i want. I log the # of grams as the number if servings...so 185 grams = 185 servings.

    The way I do it is pretty easy too, and gives a better idea before hand of what my calories will look like vs trying to figure it out looking at the nutrition for 1 g. If i have 185 g serving, that 1.85 servings of 100g....

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