Recipes / serving size calculator help??!!!

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Farrell73
Farrell73 Posts: 94 Member
in Food and Nutrition
Is there a way to put a recipe into MyFitnessPal and it will figure out the serving size and calories for me?

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  • kommodevaran
    kommodevaran Posts: 17,890 Member
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    You put in the recipe, and MFP calculates how many calories that adds up to - you decide how many servings it yields, and MFP calculates calories per serving. You can decide number of servings by how many calories you want that meal to have. Calories per serving is total number of calories divided by number of servings. Serving size is total weight divided by number of servings.
  • abatonfan
    abatonfan Posts: 1,120 Member
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    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
    Farrell73 Posts: 94 Member
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    Thanks guys!
  • juliet3455
    juliet3455 Posts: 3,015 Member
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    @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/
  • Farrell73
    Farrell73 Posts: 94 Member
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    Thank you so much! I'm still learning about all this so.
  • kirkor
    kirkor Posts: 2,530 Member
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    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.
  • ModernRock
    ModernRock Posts: 372 Member
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    kirkor wrote: »

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

    No, the poster is only weighing after cooking for the purpose of dividing into portions relative to the total cooked weight. The change in mass during cooking is the result of water loss (or absorption) and not a change in calories. A 1/100 serving of the cooked item will have the same nutrition as 1/100 of the weight of the uncooked item. The unit of measurement for serving size is arbitrary.
  • Rogue_Girl
    Rogue_Girl Posts: 36 Member
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    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?
  • deannalfisher
    deannalfisher Posts: 5,600 Member
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    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
  • Rogue_Girl
    Rogue_Girl Posts: 36 Member
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    Thanks Deanna! That very well may be it. Time to tinker with the MFP database. :-D
  • deannalfisher
    deannalfisher Posts: 5,600 Member
    edited December 2016
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    Rogue_Girl wrote: »
    Thanks Deanna! That very well may be it. Time to tinker with the MFP database. :-D

    its caught me before - especially if the recipe calls for a fraction of a cup or something like that; you'll also get it more accurate if you build it using the actual brand ingrediants you are going to use, vice generic ones because the info can differ
  • NoNameJustMe
    NoNameJustMe Posts: 86 Member
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    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
    not_my_first_rodeo Posts: 311 Member
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    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.

  • deannalfisher
    deannalfisher Posts: 5,600 Member
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    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)
  • not_my_first_rodeo
    not_my_first_rodeo Posts: 311 Member
    edited December 2016
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    My favorite is the one for table salt that comes up as butter, salted.
  • Rogue_Girl
    Rogue_Girl Posts: 36 Member
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    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. :)
  • RandiNoelle
    RandiNoelle Posts: 374 Member
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    @abatonfan Doing serving size by gram is GENIUS! I've been having to keep a written record of how many grams per serving then testing my math skills if I even wanted more/less than a serving.

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