Logging homemade foods

cmcclary · November 2017

I have a hard time logging homemade foods trying to calculate their calories. Any suggestions?

toxikon · November 2017

Here's my process. I use grams for everything that isn't liquid.

1. Weigh each raw ingredient on my food scale as I prepare them. Or measure liquids in measuring cups. I keep a notepad handy to mark down values.
2. Cook it all up.
3. Weigh the whole meal with the food scale, mark down weight.
4. Open the MFP Recipe Builder, input each ingredient and set the Servings as the weight (grams) of the whole meal.
5. When you're ready to eat a portion, put your plate on your scale, tare, then use the gram weight of your portion as your "Serving".

So as an example, let's say I'm making quiche.

My ingredients are: 200g raw egg, 200g raw onion, 100g spinach, 1 cup milk, 40g butter.

After my quiche is made, I put a plate on the scale, tare it to zero, then place the finished quiche on top. Let's say it weighs 900g.

I enter my ingredients into the Recipe Builder, and set the "Servings" to 900.

I cut myself a slice of quiche, place my plate on the scale, tare to zero, add my piece. If it weighs 200g, I set my Serving size to 200 in my diary.

toxikon · November 2017

Another tip to add: say you're making a casserole and you don't want to remove it from your baking dish to weigh it out.

Weigh your baking dish BEFORE you put anything in it, and mark down the weight. Then weigh your dish + casserole when it's done baking, and subtract the dish weight from the dish+casserole weight. Easy peasy.

guacamole17 · November 2017

Ill add to that...I keep a list of the weights of my regular pots and pans handy, so I don't have to dirty another dish or try to get a quiche out of a pie pan. So I can weigh the quiche + pan = 2000g and subtract the 1100 the dish weighs, to get total 900g for the quiche.

deannalfisher · November 2017

are you using the recipe builder function?

Ready2Rock206 · November 2017

If you're doing any of your own cooking you really need to be using the recipe builder. If you're using the recipe builder and still having troubles maybe you can be more specific as to what problems you're having with it so we can give more targeted advice.

Jthanmyfitnesspal · November 2017

I usually give it a WAG (wild-assed guess). Example: home-made spaghetti with meat sauce. Entered 1C spag (measured), 1C spag sauce base (typ from a can with a nutrition label), 3 oz ground beef (est from total amount added).

More involved recipies can be entered into the recipe builder. It works well, but isn't any better than a WAG if you don't measure all ingredients accurately.

PS I lost 22lbs in the winter/spring and have kept it off doing this sort of thing.

vingogly · November 2017

Ready2Rock206 wrote: »

If you're doing any of your own cooking you really need to be using the recipe builder. If you're using the recipe builder and still having troubles maybe you can be more specific as to what problems you're having with it so we can give more targeted advice.

This. And the nice thing is, once you've entered your recipe, it's there forever.

Rosered3333 · November 2017

Jthanmyfitnesspal wrote: »

I usually give it a WAG (wild-assed guess). Example: home-made spaghetti with meat sauce. Entered 1C spag (measured), 1C spag sauce base (typ from a can with a nutrition label), 3 oz ground beef (est from total amount added).

More involved recipies can be entered into the recipe builder. It works well, but isn't any better than a WAG if you don't measure all ingredients accurately.

PS I lost 22lbs in the winter/spring and have kept it off doing this sort of thing.

This is my method too. If it's a dish I eat frequently, then I go through the process of adding the recipe. I also don't have a ton of time to log food so it's a pain in the *kitten* for me to do all the detailed additions. Note: I don't have the weight loss to back up this theory so I may need to become more precise in my process.

Logging homemade foods

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