Lesson learned : always count BEFORE you eat
jelleigh
Posts: 743 Member
Join me for a small cautionary tail of why pretracking is a good idea:
I've bee off grains for over a month now (dr prrscribed ) and last night got a hankering for some good old crackers. Something crunchy and salty you know? Remembered I saw some grain free cracker recipes on Pinterest and whipped up a batch. They were mostly succesful. Yay me! Went great with guac.
Dawned on me this am that a cup of almond flour is not a small amount. Fed it all into MFP and those dang crackers cost me 750 cals!! Before the guac!!!
And that my friends, is why you ALWAYS figure out your totals BEFORE eating .
(Ok well maybe just for new recipes where you have no clue what it's worth)
Anyone else have this happened? Any seemingly obvious lessons you've learned the hard way?
I've bee off grains for over a month now (dr prrscribed ) and last night got a hankering for some good old crackers. Something crunchy and salty you know? Remembered I saw some grain free cracker recipes on Pinterest and whipped up a batch. They were mostly succesful. Yay me! Went great with guac.
Dawned on me this am that a cup of almond flour is not a small amount. Fed it all into MFP and those dang crackers cost me 750 cals!! Before the guac!!!
And that my friends, is why you ALWAYS figure out your totals BEFORE eating .
(Ok well maybe just for new recipes where you have no clue what it's worth)
Anyone else have this happened? Any seemingly obvious lessons you've learned the hard way?
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Replies
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Much like restaurants, I find a lot of recipes online to be very high calorie per quoted serving.
Beyond my inevitable substitutions along the way, I generally assume at least 33-50% more servings from a batch of a recipe than stated. For example if the site/book/source indicates the yeild will be 8 servings, I'll portion out 12 servings once the cooking/baking is complete.
And then I enter the ingredients into MFP lol
But, yes, best to know the "hit" and whether it's all worth it ahead of time.
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Ha! I cooked chilli con carne yesterday. Well, I wanted to cook it a few days earlier and had already pre-logged everything I wanted to put in, according to a recipe that looked promising. So then I deleted it again when I delayed the cooking and found another, more interesting recipe in the meantime. So I started cooking with a mix of both recipes. Oh, and lets add those 150gr cherry tomatoes that are getting a bit too ripe, and I need this ingredient as well. Oh, and chocolate!!!
Most dinners are around 550 calories. This one was quite a bit above, even after I reduced the amount of rice I wanted to serve with it. *sigh* but it's absolutely delicious and will be great for three dinners.5 -
I learned a long time ago not to believe calories listed in recipes. Besides, there’s always a tweak I can make to reduce what’s shown.
But lately I’m running into a schlew of tempting lo cal recipes. When I look further, a “serving size” is shown as 1 gram.
It’s not just one website either. It’s multiple. I think some are using a highly flawed plug-in on their websites. Thats the only explanation I can come up with.4 -
Oh gosh, I’ve done that a few times!1
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I always work out my calories before I make or during making the recipe, even when those recipe sites offer nutritional info at the bottom, I often find it vastly different from my own.5
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This is me to a tee I always log after the event. I’m trying at least to pre log brekkie and lunch then I know whether I’m facing a feast or a famine in the evening. Getting a bit better at doing this.4
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KrissFlavored wrote: »I always work out my calories before I make or during making the recipe, even when those recipe sites offer nutritional info at the bottom, I often find it vastly different from my own.
me too - I actually never bother to look at the nutritional information provided for a recipe. I also like to make substitutes for ingredients, and the calorie counts can differ even on the same thing made by two different brands!
I don't even use my own built in recipes without double checking them as I know I don't always use exactly the same amount of a particular ingredient every time.3 -
I prepared a pasta bake today for lunch with my parents. I usually do a seafood type pasta bake, with a béchamel sauce with fish stock. But I decided to switch things up and go for a cheesy béchamel sauce. I weighed everything, but couldn't calculate my calories till after my parents left.
1000 calories for one and a half portion! Way more than my usual pasta bake. No more cheesy béchamel for me
or not at that serving size anyway, lol. 1 -
I have always pre logged for this reason. It also makes you think twice about whether the calories are worth the satisfaction of eating the food. It is a great tool for me to prevent overeating.7
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It seems like every time I pre log my meals something always happens and I end up eating something different. Every. damn. time.4
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bmeadows380 wrote: »KrissFlavored wrote: »I always work out my calories before I make or during making the recipe, even when those recipe sites offer nutritional info at the bottom, I often find it vastly different from my own.
me too - I actually never bother to look at the nutritional information provided for a recipe. I also like to make substitutes for ingredients, and the calorie counts can differ even on the same thing made by two different brands!
I don't even use my own built in recipes without double checking them as I know I don't always use exactly the same amount of a particular ingredient every time.
Yeah. I often make substitutions also.
Like today, I made a recipe for pizza pasta in the instapot, the recipe called for ground italian sausage, but I wondered if maybe I could replicate the flavor using ground chicken.
Sure enough, there was a recipe lol. So I made that instead, it cut the calories for the ground meat required by half and still came out just as tasty. When I created the food for it for my logs I called it "Faux Italian sausage"
Still came out looking tasty
Also I made some spicy thai chicken tenders today. The recipe called for two cups of oil, I'm assuming for them to be deep fried in a dutch oven or whatever, but I figured I could probably get a decent result with using much less.
Which they did, came out quite nice using 1/4 cup of oil, for 2lbs of chicken tenders
End result. Perfect chicken fingers with way less calories.
Although I tend to make things exactly the same so I dont have to keep playing around with entries.. so I always create my own foods and I list what I used if I made adjustments. Or if the recipe uses things like oz. Lol cause everything here is ml.
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When cooking I tend to log the whole recipe (as determined by me) in my log and then divide by whatever portion I choose to eat (based on cals). If I didn't log when cooking I wouldn't recall. Mostly I get no surprises since I've done this for a while so can estimate well. I also always read labels before I use anything packaged.2
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Join me for a small cautionary tail of why pretracking is a good idea:
I've bee off grains for over a month now (dr prrscribed ) and last night got a hankering for some good old crackers. Something crunchy and salty you know? Remembered I saw some grain free cracker recipes on Pinterest and whipped up a batch. They were mostly succesful. Yay me! Went great with guac.
Dawned on me this am that a cup of almond flour is not a small amount. Fed it all into MFP and those dang crackers cost me 750 cals!! Before the guac!!!
And that my friends, is why you ALWAYS figure out your totals BEFORE eating .
(Ok well maybe just for new recipes where you have no clue what it's worth)
Anyone else have this happened? Any seemingly obvious lessons you've learned the hard way?
Mostly that there seems to always be another lesson to learn and that when I make my next mistake I should just laugh at how dumb it will likely be, learn from it, and move on.
I have gotten pretty good at ballparking recipes if I have experience with the ingredients. I would not have caught the crackers though. Crackers provide so little satiation for the calories they cost I almost never eat them.
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Great insight everyone. The crazy thing is that I can't even blame poor nutrition info on the recipe. I literally just didn't look? And then ate THE WHOLE BATCH. Then didn't log. Then woke up the next day and thought huh,I bet a whole cup of almond flour is high cal! Ugh. So silly 7
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I dont even think my brain would even allow me to do that.. I can with baby carrots lol.. and low calorie stuff like sugar free jello, but I'm pretty sure my brain would implode
Which you know what? That's so weird to say cause it's not like It did that while I was gaining weight and binge eating lol.. sitting there eating a large double salami pizza, medium garlic fingers and two donairs in one sitting LOL...
Who wants to work out those calories? Lol.. pretty sure that was like.. 5 or 6+ thousand calories and that was just one meal of the day..1 -
Great insight everyone. The crazy thing is that I can't even blame poor nutrition info on the recipe. I literally just didn't look? And then ate THE WHOLE BATCH. Then didn't log. Then woke up the next day and thought huh,I bet a whole cup of almond flour is high cal! Ugh. So silly
It’s ok though. Ur human, not silly. Imperfections are ok.4 -
Great insight everyone. The crazy thing is that I can't even blame poor nutrition info on the recipe. I literally just didn't look? And then ate THE WHOLE BATCH. Then didn't log. Then woke up the next day and thought huh,I bet a whole cup of almond flour is high cal! Ugh. So silly
I think those kinds of things are helpful though. One of the mistakes I made in the past was consider weight loss to be fragile. That idea would make me give up after a single night of eating way too much food. I thought I had blown it. Weight loss is not fragile and can withstand a lot of mistakes... I should know... I made most of them.
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I rarely pre-log. These days, I have a pretty good intuition for how things are going to turn out. Once in a while, if I want to be sure to be in-bounds, I'll pre-check some specific unusual thing.
But one thing I feel pretty secure about, at this point: One day, one "oops", in the big picture, is pretty meaningless. A drop in the sea. If I'm over my calorie goal, even lots over my calorie goal, it's no big deal, as long as it's a rare thing. And yes, it can be a learning experience - some of those are painful, but learning's still good for us.
Guilt and self-recrimination, not to mention self-hatred, are 100% optional. And they feel icky, so why do them?
About the only thing I remember being truly surprise by (but probably shouldn't have been) was that the fancy amendments-added real-ice-cream milkshake I drank after a race was around 850 calories all by itself.
(It was still fine, but yeah, I learned something.) 5 -
KrissFlavored wrote: »Also I made some spicy thai chicken tenders today. The recipe called for two cups of oil, I'm assuming for them to be deep fried in a dutch oven or whatever, but I figured I could probably get a decent result with using much less.
Which they did, came out quite nice using 1/4 cup of oil, for 2lbs of chicken tenders
End result. Perfect chicken fingers with way less calories.
I almost always find that recipes call for far more oil than is necessary. Salt, butter, cream, cheese, & smothering sauces are also frequently able to be cut back a bit without impacting the end result noticeably.
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I know by the time that I start cooking what I want to cook. I then log while cooking. Most ingredients are quickly done. Based on that I adjust the amount of rice/pasta/couscous/etc and never really go over my calories.1
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I prelog. Every Saturday I sit down and log for the week. Since I meal plan and prep ahead of time, this is easy for me. Especially right now because I don't have coworkers asking if I want to grab lunch! Now, I only prelog meals and don't do snacks because I don't know what I will be craving or if I will even be hungry. Even doing this, I allow myself to be flexible and change things up. Stuff happens. I just log into the site and put in the new information. Easy.2
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ChrysalisCove wrote: »KrissFlavored wrote: »Also I made some spicy thai chicken tenders today. The recipe called for two cups of oil, I'm assuming for them to be deep fried in a dutch oven or whatever, but I figured I could probably get a decent result with using much less.
Which they did, came out quite nice using 1/4 cup of oil, for 2lbs of chicken tenders
End result. Perfect chicken fingers with way less calories.
I almost always find that recipes call for far more oil than is necessary. Salt, butter, cream, cheese, & smothering sauces are also frequently able to be cut back a bit without impacting the end result noticeably.
I agree - many recipes I just leave the oil out all together or add just a little for flavoring. And I've found that in baked goods like cakes, fat free greek yogurt or sour cream makes a fantastic substitute for oil or butter.
I've also found that a little bit of butter can go a LONG way and its not necessary to use the 3 or 4 times amount that many recipes call for.3 -
bmeadows380 wrote: »ChrysalisCove wrote: »KrissFlavored wrote: »Also I made some spicy thai chicken tenders today. The recipe called for two cups of oil, I'm assuming for them to be deep fried in a dutch oven or whatever, but I figured I could probably get a decent result with using much less.
Which they did, came out quite nice using 1/4 cup of oil, for 2lbs of chicken tenders
End result. Perfect chicken fingers with way less calories.
I almost always find that recipes call for far more oil than is necessary. Salt, butter, cream, cheese, & smothering sauces are also frequently able to be cut back a bit without impacting the end result noticeably.
I agree - many recipes I just leave the oil out all together or add just a little for flavoring. And I've found that in baked goods like cakes, fat free greek yogurt or sour cream makes a fantastic substitute for oil or butter.
I've also found that a little bit of butter can go a LONG way and its not necessary to use the 3 or 4 times amount that many recipes call for.
Yep. I'm trying a new chicken recipe today, and it calls for 1/3 cup of oil in the marinade. For marinades, I usually go with enough to make it liquid, so depending on amount of spices and other liquids something like 1 or 2 tablespoons.1 -
bmeadows380 wrote: »
I agree - many recipes I just leave the oil out all together or add just a little for flavoring. And I've found that in baked goods like cakes, fat free greek yogurt or sour cream makes a fantastic substitute for oil or butter.
Kefir oh Kefir, how do I love thee......
1 cake mix (any flavor)
1 c kefir (or Greek yogurt and fat free works just fine but kefir is richer)
.5 to 1 c water
Mix and bake as directed on the box.
Comes to 1740 calories, divided by 9 (because it’s just easier to slice into ninths than tenths!) for 194 calories per generous serving. No eggs, no oils, no butter.
I sometimes add : 2 tbsp shredded sweetened coconut, 2 or 3 tbsp chocolate chips, shredded carrots, a few grams of any Jordan's sugar free syrup, or whatever else catches my fancy.
Even works with sugar free jello for a “poke” cake.
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Low carb recipes sure doesn't necessarily mean low calorie!0
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ChrysalisCove wrote: »KrissFlavored wrote: »Also I made some spicy thai chicken tenders today. The recipe called for two cups of oil, I'm assuming for them to be deep fried in a dutch oven or whatever, but I figured I could probably get a decent result with using much less.
Which they did, came out quite nice using 1/4 cup of oil, for 2lbs of chicken tenders
End result. Perfect chicken fingers with way less calories.
I almost always find that recipes call for far more oil than is necessary. Salt, butter, cream, cheese, & smothering sauces are also frequently able to be cut back a bit without impacting the end result noticeably.
I've made two recipes with canned beans lately that did not suffer from using one can instead of two, and one recipe even called for three cans of beans! A serves 6-8 affair!0
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