I love chilli / stew, how do I know what the macros of a bowl are?

WarningTheHermit
WarningTheHermit Posts: 18 Member
in Food and Nutrition
Here's my dilemma, I love eating chili as well as "stew" typically you make a pot of chili in a very large volume. While I can measure or weigh out ingredients going in, I have no way of knowing the exact measurements of anything when I actually go to eat a bowl. " other than weighing a bowl lol " but that doesn't exactly tell me what I'm eating in that particular bowl. So how do others log a bowl of chili etc? ( my chilli usually isnt just 2-3 ingredients, its more of a chili with veggies in it )

Replies

  • pineapple_jojo
    pineapple_jojo Posts: 440 Member
    Enter it as a recipe and work out how many portions it makes total, then just add the number of portions you eat to your diary
  • WarningTheHermit
    WarningTheHermit Posts: 18 Member
    pineapple_jojo wrote: »
    Enter it as a recipe and work out how many portions it makes total, then just add the number of portions you eat to your diary

    Is this what most people do? I would imagine probably type in a little bit larger just in case said bowl has more of 1 thing?
  • JeromeBarry1
    JeromeBarry1 Posts: 10,179 Member
    edited August 2018
    A good method is to weigh in grams every single ingredient that goes into the pot. Even weigh the water. Once you have your total of grams added to the pot, let's say it's 5000 grams, you use the '5000' as the number of servings in your recipe. Then when you are ready to slop some into your bowl, you need only weigh the empty bowl, then slop some stew or chili into the bowl, and then weigh the bowl again. That will be something close to 400 grams, so you log 400 servings.

    Don't worry if doing so yields a calorie value of "0" per serving. That's just rounded down. Once you log several hundred servings, the calorie total will look realistic.
  • kami3006
    kami3006 Posts: 4,979 Member
    edited August 2018
    JeromeBarry1 wrote: »
    A good method is to weigh in grams every single ingredient that goes into the pot. Even weigh the water. Once you have your total of grams added to the pot, let's say it's 5000 grams, you use the '5000' as the number of servings in your recipe. Then when you are ready to slop some into your bowl, you need only weigh the empty bowl, then slop some stew or chili into the bowl, and then weigh the bowl again. That will be something close to 400 grams, so you log 400 servings.

    Don't worry if doing so yields a calorie value of "0" per serving. That's just rounded down. Once you log several hundred servings, the calorie total will look realistic.

    ^That's what I do.

    As for the bowl having possible one more thing, I would just let that fall into the margin of error that comes along with logging. Those things are usually blips that balance out over time.
  • WarningTheHermit
    WarningTheHermit Posts: 18 Member
    Thanks for the info everyone.
  • kommodevaran
    kommodevaran Posts: 17,890 Member
    For anything to work, you have to have practical strategies, and with soups and stews, you have to tolerate deviations in composition of each individual bowl, and trust that it evens out over time.

    Or you can do as I did as a child - pick all the meatballs :D
  • pineapple_jojo
    pineapple_jojo Posts: 440 Member
    edited August 2018
    janejellyroll wrote: »
    WarningTheHermit wrote: »
    pineapple_jojo wrote: »
    Enter it as a recipe and work out how many portions it makes total, then just add the number of portions you eat to your diary

    Is this what most people do? I would imagine probably type in a little bit larger just in case said bowl has more of 1 thing?

    No. If I've accurately measured what is going in the total dish, I don't feel the need to inflate the serving size. Yes, one bowl may have 35 grams of kidney beans instead of 28. But the serving I have for lunch the next day will likely balance it out. Or the different dish I make the next week will have slightly fewer calories than I estimated.

    General accuracy is good for weight loss, but most of us don't require hyper-accuracy. Feel free to enjoy your chili!

    Same, if I eat one portion I log just one. It balances out, even packaged foods aren’t perfectly accurate.
  • livingleanlivingclean
    livingleanlivingclean Posts: 11,751 Member
    JeromeBarry1 wrote: »
    A good method is to weigh in grams every single ingredient that goes into the pot. Even weigh the water. Once you have your total of grams added to the pot, let's say it's 5000 grams, you use the '5000' as the number of servings in your recipe. Then when you are ready to slop some into your bowl, you need only weigh the empty bowl, then slop some stew or chili into the bowl, and then weigh the bowl again. That will be something close to 400 grams, so you log 400 servings.

    Don't worry if doing so yields a calorie value of "0" per serving. That's just rounded down. Once you log several hundred servings, the calorie total will look realistic.

    It would be more accurate to weigh the cooked product to determine servings.

    Weigh everything in to the pot (excluding water as it has no calories) to determine the total calories, then weigh after cooking to determine serves.
  • hesn92
    hesn92 Posts: 5,966 Member
    I also make the number of servings on my recipe the amount that it weighs. I don't worry about getting an equal amount of beans vs. meat or whatever. Being that precise is not sustainable. Besides it will probably even out over a few days if you eat it more than once.
  • hesn92
    hesn92 Posts: 5,966 Member
    JeromeBarry1 wrote: »
    A good method is to weigh in grams every single ingredient that goes into the pot. Even weigh the water. Once you have your total of grams added to the pot, let's say it's 5000 grams, you use the '5000' as the number of servings in your recipe. Then when you are ready to slop some into your bowl, you need only weigh the empty bowl, then slop some stew or chili into the bowl, and then weigh the bowl again. That will be something close to 400 grams, so you log 400 servings.

    Don't worry if doing so yields a calorie value of "0" per serving. That's just rounded down. Once you log several hundred servings, the calorie total will look realistic.

    Foods can change weight with cooking though, due to water loss or whatever. I will weigh ingredients individually when adding them into the recipe, but at the end I just weigh the entire dish after it's cooked and use that as my number of servings.
  • kami3006
    kami3006 Posts: 4,979 Member
    hesn92 wrote: »
    JeromeBarry1 wrote: »
    A good method is to weigh in grams every single ingredient that goes into the pot. Even weigh the water. Once you have your total of grams added to the pot, let's say it's 5000 grams, you use the '5000' as the number of servings in your recipe. Then when you are ready to slop some into your bowl, you need only weigh the empty bowl, then slop some stew or chili into the bowl, and then weigh the bowl again. That will be something close to 400 grams, so you log 400 servings.

    Don't worry if doing so yields a calorie value of "0" per serving. That's just rounded down. Once you log several hundred servings, the calorie total will look realistic.

    Foods can change weight with cooking though, due to water loss or whatever. I will weigh ingredients individually when adding them into the recipe, but at the end I just weigh the entire dish after it's cooked and use that as my number of servings.

    I completely missed that point when I cited Jerome's thread. I absolutely weigh afterwards to determine the grams of the finished product. Then enter the total grams as the number of servings.

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