Recipes / serving size calculator help??!!!

What I like to do is weigh out all my ingredients (make sure to weigh the pan first), cook, and then weigh the entire recipe (remembering to subtract the weight of the pan to get the actual weight of the cooked food). I input the ingredient weights into MFP's recipe builder, input the weight of the entire recipe as the serving size, and then can weigh out my portion to the gram.

So, I prepped a frittata for lunches this week. I weighed out my 400g of cauliflower, 300g eggs, yaddy yaddy yah and placed the weights of that food into MFP's recipe builder ("400g of raw cauliflower", "300g of raw eggs", etc). I determined that the weight of my pan was 250g. When the frittata came out of the oven, I weighed the pan and it was 1250g (using simple numbers in this example). When subtracting the weight of the pan I get 1000g of food. I place the number of servings in my fittata recipe as 1000. I portioned out 250g of frittata for my lunch on Monday, so when I go to prelog my meal for Monday I will put down 250 servings of my frittata (1 serving = 1g).

@Farrell73 I recommend the following links as a good resource - Its like an Index of good MFP Reads.

https://blog.myfitnesspal.com/the-beginners-guide-to-myfitnesspal/
http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/833026/important-posts-to-read/p1
http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/1234699/logging-accurately-step-by-step-guide/p1
http://blog.myfitnesspal.com/meal-planning-for-beginners/
https://blog.myfitnesspal.com/nutrition-101-recap-top-5-tips-to-eat-more-nutritiously-infographic/

abatonfan wrote: »

What I like to do is weigh out all my ingredients (make sure to weigh the pan first), cook, and then weigh the entire recipe (remembering to subtract the weight of the pan to get the actual weight of the cooked food). I input the ingredient weights into MFP's recipe builder, input the weight of the entire recipe as the serving size, and then can weigh out my portion to the gram.

So, I prepped a frittata for lunches this week. I weighed out my 400g of cauliflower, 300g eggs, yaddy yaddy yah and placed the weights of that food into MFP's recipe builder ("400g of raw cauliflower", "300g of raw eggs", etc). I determined that the weight of my pan was 250g. When the frittata came out of the oven, I weighed the pan and it was 1250g (using simple numbers in this example). When subtracting the weight of the pan I get 1000g of food. I place the number of servings in my fittata recipe as 1000. I portioned out 250g of frittata for my lunch on Monday, so when I go to prelog my meal for Monday I will put down 250 servings of my frittata (1 serving = 1g).

If you are putting the ingredients in as uncooked, and weighing after you cook, you are dramatically underestimating what you're eating.

Just jumping in to ask a question - I'm pulling a recipe from a site that's giving me the total calories per serving, but when I upload it into here, it's increasing the caloric count (ex. Greek Lentil Salad - 3 servings. Original recipe calories: 150 MFP calories: 328)

This is, obviously, a dramatic increase and I don't want to over / under my calories. Any thoughts?

Thanks Deanna! That very well may be it. Time to tinker with the MFP database. :-D

Rogue_Girl wrote: »

Just jumping in to ask a question - I'm pulling a recipe from a site that's giving me the total calories per serving, but when I upload it into here, it's increasing the caloric count (ex. Greek Lentil Salad - 3 servings. Original recipe calories: 150 MFP calories: 328)

This is, obviously, a dramatic increase and I don't want to over / under my calories. Any thoughts?

MFP's food database, being member generated, is notorious for being incorrect. Which is why I enter my own entries under "My Foods" and don't share them with the database.

not_my_first_rodeo wrote: »

deannalfisher wrote: »

Rogue_Girl wrote: »

Just jumping in to ask a question - I'm pulling a recipe from a site that's giving me the total calories per serving, but when I upload it into here, it's increasing the caloric count (ex. Greek Lentil Salad - 3 servings. Original recipe calories: 150 MFP calories: 328)

This is, obviously, a dramatic increase and I don't want to over / under my calories. Any thoughts?

check the foods that MFP selected - there might be a weird entry that is throwing off the calories

In my personal experience, it's wise to do this every time. The ingredients MFP tends to pick are almost always wrong and will come in at insane calorie amounts.

yup! first thing I always do (that dang 3000cal garlic has caught me out a few times)

NoNameJustMe wrote: »

Rogue_Girl wrote: »

Just jumping in to ask a question - I'm pulling a recipe from a site that's giving me the total calories per serving, but when I upload it into here, it's increasing the caloric count (ex. Greek Lentil Salad - 3 servings. Original recipe calories: 150 MFP calories: 328)

This is, obviously, a dramatic increase and I don't want to over / under my calories. Any thoughts?

MFP's food database, being member generated, is notorious for being incorrect. Which is why I enter my own entries under "My Foods" and don't share them with the database.

Excellent advice.

Thanks to everyone who chimed in! I truly appreciate the feedback and know that I have a long road of rewriting recipes.