Tracking everydsy

Just thinking about weighing a full pot of food...

Couldn't you weigh it on your bathroom scale if it's too heavy for a kitchen scale? Would that be too gross?

I echo with the weighing before and after thing. One thing I do is each time I make that recipes again I go in to the recipe section and edit everything that is different from last time. Sometimes I add different ingredients it's only a slight adjustment but at least I know it's correct.

RoxieDawn wrote: »

A lot of times, the people around us are not dieting when we are. I do think it is a little important to make sure that everyone in the household is on board with your goals!

i do not make separate meals for anyone. we all eat the same. i cook, therefore i know whats in the food and how much. i weigh mine. they dont. they all eat more than i do, with exception of my 10 year old (and even then, sometimes he does). even when Sir cooks, he will write down everything in it (nothing is ever swapped out just for me) and keep track of it for me, or I'll sit in the kitchen and we'll chat and ill write it down as he does it. he knows to weigh the piece of meat (ie: chicken or steak) and keep track of where mine is, while cooking.

and i didnt lose 80 pounds by DIETING. I lost it by making sustainable, long term eating and exercise habits and changes. A diet ENDS. what I do, does NOT.

LuckyAndi wrote: »

@stephenhopkins2 You almost answered your own question. You would measure all the ingredients individually, cook the dish (if applicable), weigh the finished product to get the total calorie amount for the whole dish, and then weigh out your portion to figure how many calories you're eating.

With chili, for example, you may add a 15oz can of beans. You're not eating the entire can, and you can't separate the beans from the chili to weigh what you put in your bowl. Same thing with your ground meat, tomatoes, etc. You have to know the weigh of whole pot of chili and subtract your bowl from that to get your calories.

I find the recipe builder very helpful for this sort of thing: I have basic recipe for, say, my oat flour-honey loaf. The basic amounts are the same every week, so all the ingredients are stored in the recipe database; I know that a half-cup measure (I know, I know, bad for measuring with cups!) is a serving (because that fills a muffin cup for baking).

From week to week, if I vary my recipe with additions or revisions, I just edit the existing recipe, and, if necessary, the amount of servings that week's yield will be. This week, I added ground flaxseed to my dry ingredients and ended up with 12 muffins, so I adjusted my number of servings to 12, and the program calculated how many calories, etc. each serving would be. Last week, it was 16 servings - I assume the flaxseed drank up a lot of my added water and reduced the number of scoops in my nice big mixing bowl - it certainly was thicker than usual.

So I'd do something similar with chili - log my basic ingredients and amounts into the Recipe Builder. All the calories and macro info will be loaded into the little file. Then. Weigh out what would be your portion. Estimate your husband's portion (or better, ask him to weigh it out for you). Pretend it's twice as much as yours. So now you can ballpark about how many servings there are in your chili recipe. Fill that number into the Servings cell, and now you have a fair idea of where you stand. And you have the foundation for any variations in the future (beef instead of beans, let's say).

bwogilvie wrote: »

A useful motto to keep in mind: "The perfect is the enemy of the good."

When I make a new recipe (and I have about 150 I've created in MFP), I add the raw ingredients to get a total calorie count for the dish. I then estimate the number of servings, which gives me calories per serving. I'm usually making leftovers, so if it's something like soup whose serving sizes might vary, I'll use my ladle to parcel it out into fridge/freezer containers. That lets me know how many ladles there are per estimated serving. So if it's 3 ladles per serving, then I'll write that on a piece of masking tape affixed to the container.

If I make the recipe again, I don't worry about using 120g of onions vs 100g because onions don't have very many calories. I'm more careful about oil, fat, meat, sugar, and other ingredients with a high calorie density.

And if I'm not sure whether I've gotten the serving sizes right, I'll log a bit extra and not worry too much about it.

In short: do your best, worry most about high-calorie ingredients, and focus on being consistent. If you log 450 calories, and it was really 500, that's a lot better than not logging at all and eating 800.

I was going to say something very similar...don't major in the minors. Weight loss takes a long time, and it's more important to find a balance so that you can maintain your new behaviors in the long run without making yourself insane or burning out and giving up. Pay the most attention to the things that will make the most impact (such as oil/fat/meat/sugar, like bwogilvie mentioned above), but be okay with letting other things go (like the extra 8 calories from those extra 20g of onions). 8 calories will never make or break your eating plan, but worrying about those 8 calories regularly could make you decide that calorie tracking is too difficult and quit.

If it hasn't already been mentioned, take advantage of the "Meal" tab by saving meals you frequently make. Also, use a recipe builder site that can tell you how many calories a serving size can be. So for the chili, put in all of the ingredients (20g of onions, 15oz bean, etc) and then tell it how many serving sizes you want it to be, so 4 servings of 6oz portions, and that the site will give you the amount of calories in each 6oz portion. Then put a bowl on the scale, and weigh out 6oz. If you want seconds, put bowl back on scale and weight out 3-4oz.

https://caloriecount.com/cc/recipe_analysis.php