MEAL PREP ideas ... how do you count cals
Replies
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An alternative for the recipe feature is simply logging the ingredients as a meal.
I usually choose a meal in the future where I add all the ingredients, I weigh the final dish, save the meal (with the total weight in the name).
After I've saved the meal, I delete the full dish from that future meal where I logged it, and just log the appropriate fraction when I eat a portion of the dish.
For example: the risotto I made yesterday weighed 3945gr, my portion weighed 809, so I logged 0.205 of the saved meal for my dinner.
This is exactly what I do, although this week I added 2 recipes using the old recipe calculator. But I much prefer listing ingredients individually.
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For me:
- hot pad or whatever I use to protect the scale -> tare -> weigh whole cooked dish in the pot
- subtract weight of pot to calculate weight of the dish (it's easier if you weigh the empty pot before you start cooking)
Then: put plate on scale, tare, serve individual portion and note the weight
Thank you, this is really helpful!
I've been going based on volume thus far but I figure I already bake by weight so it makes sense to get familiar with this too, especially as I get closer to my goal weight where variations in measurement make more of a difference. I have a pan of enchiladas in the oven now so we'll see! I have a rough idea of the calories just from making them before, so I shouldn't be surprised once I log the exact amount, but for right now the concept of a gram or 100 grams is basically meaningless to me. I imagine I'll get more familiar as I go along.0 -
MrsMellodoggerello wrote: »I have no idea...maybe I was trying to create drama by calling him infamous. He does have that quote that is heard everywhere about not eating what our grandparents wouldn't recognize. All hardcore processed food lovers must despise that! He is a bit of an expert...from Forbes magazine-"Bittman is not just a celebrity spatula slider though, like many TV chefs. He is a special advisor to Columbia University, where he lectures on food, public health and social justice; six-time James Beard Award winner; distinguished fellow at the University of California – Berkeley, and a fellow at the Union of Concerned Scientists. Bittman’s “What’s Wrong with What We Eat” TED Talk has close to 5 million views. "janejellyroll wrote: »MrsMellodoggerello wrote: »whatever, haha...even if it doesn't help in losing weight it's still good advice in general to limit processed foods.& lots of experts do agree like the infamous Mark Bittman. Anyway, the easiest method, for me, is to eat the same breakfast and lunch most days and then choose from 3 or 4 dinners that I already know fits into my calorie goals .I'll switch those dinners somewhat seasonally.buy a scale, weigh EVERYTHING
Read the backs of all packaging while shopping to find serving sizes
enter it all into MFP
and input all your recipes into the recipe calculator here
it works! that way you can make sure you are eating enough (females 1200 min cals a day)
Also, stay away from processed foods they are the worst! = sodium is one to watch & carbs!
Mark Bittman is a talented food writer. I enjoy his writing and cookbooks very much, but I think even he would agree that his writing skills don't make him a nutritional expert. Also unsure why you'd call him "infamous."
It wasn't Mark Bittman who said that, it was Michael Pollan, and it wasn't grandparents, but great-grandparents.
https://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/28/magazine/28nutritionism.t.html
Unhappy Meals
By Michael Pollan
Jan. 28, 2007
Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.
...1. Eat food. Though in our current state of confusion, this is much easier said than done. So try this: Don’t eat anything your great-great-grandmother wouldn’t recognize as food. (Sorry, but at this point Moms are as confused as the rest of us, which is why we have to go back a couple of generations, to a time before the advent of modern food products.) There are a great many foodlike items in the supermarket your ancestors wouldn’t recognize as food (Go-Gurt? Breakfast-cereal bars? Nondairy creamer?); stay away from these.1 -
kshama2001 wrote: »MrsMellodoggerello wrote: »I have no idea...maybe I was trying to create drama by calling him infamous. He does have that quote that is heard everywhere about not eating what our grandparents wouldn't recognize. All hardcore processed food lovers must despise that! He is a bit of an expert...from Forbes magazine-"Bittman is not just a celebrity spatula slider though, like many TV chefs. He is a special advisor to Columbia University, where he lectures on food, public health and social justice; six-time James Beard Award winner; distinguished fellow at the University of California – Berkeley, and a fellow at the Union of Concerned Scientists. Bittman’s “What’s Wrong with What We Eat” TED Talk has close to 5 million views. "janejellyroll wrote: »MrsMellodoggerello wrote: »whatever, haha...even if it doesn't help in losing weight it's still good advice in general to limit processed foods.& lots of experts do agree like the infamous Mark Bittman. Anyway, the easiest method, for me, is to eat the same breakfast and lunch most days and then choose from 3 or 4 dinners that I already know fits into my calorie goals .I'll switch those dinners somewhat seasonally.buy a scale, weigh EVERYTHING
Read the backs of all packaging while shopping to find serving sizes
enter it all into MFP
and input all your recipes into the recipe calculator here
it works! that way you can make sure you are eating enough (females 1200 min cals a day)
Also, stay away from processed foods they are the worst! = sodium is one to watch & carbs!
Mark Bittman is a talented food writer. I enjoy his writing and cookbooks very much, but I think even he would agree that his writing skills don't make him a nutritional expert. Also unsure why you'd call him "infamous."
It wasn't Mark Bittman who said that, it was Michael Pollan, and it wasn't grandparents, but great-grandparents.
I thought that too, but googled, and Bittman did say it, or he and David Katz (the interview weirdly doesn't distinguish): https://www.spiritualityhealth.com/articles/2020/02/24/how-to-eat
Q: How can a consumer read online stuff and not fall for clickbait? What should they be looking for in solid nutritional advice?
Bittman and Katz: If it sounds too good to be true, it is. If it wasn’t food in the day of your grandparents and their grandparents, it probably isn’t food now, either. It really isn’t complicated—you just have to decide not to be gullible. Alas, desperation tends to breed gullibility.1 -
Love Mark Bittman. All the nyt food writers are so talented. A true pleasure to read.2
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Reading all of this makes me a little thankful I live alone. I just throw all the ingredients in and divide by however many times I eat it. I weigh the nonpackaged stuff/stuff I won't use the entire container of.2
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kshama2001 wrote: »MrsMellodoggerello wrote: »I have no idea...maybe I was trying to create drama by calling him infamous. He does have that quote that is heard everywhere about not eating what our grandparents wouldn't recognize. All hardcore processed food lovers must despise that! He is a bit of an expert...from Forbes magazine-"Bittman is not just a celebrity spatula slider though, like many TV chefs. He is a special advisor to Columbia University, where he lectures on food, public health and social justice; six-time James Beard Award winner; distinguished fellow at the University of California – Berkeley, and a fellow at the Union of Concerned Scientists. Bittman’s “What’s Wrong with What We Eat” TED Talk has close to 5 million views. "janejellyroll wrote: »MrsMellodoggerello wrote: »whatever, haha...even if it doesn't help in losing weight it's still good advice in general to limit processed foods.& lots of experts do agree like the infamous Mark Bittman. Anyway, the easiest method, for me, is to eat the same breakfast and lunch most days and then choose from 3 or 4 dinners that I already know fits into my calorie goals .I'll switch those dinners somewhat seasonally.buy a scale, weigh EVERYTHING
Read the backs of all packaging while shopping to find serving sizes
enter it all into MFP
and input all your recipes into the recipe calculator here
it works! that way you can make sure you are eating enough (females 1200 min cals a day)
Also, stay away from processed foods they are the worst! = sodium is one to watch & carbs!
Mark Bittman is a talented food writer. I enjoy his writing and cookbooks very much, but I think even he would agree that his writing skills don't make him a nutritional expert. Also unsure why you'd call him "infamous."
It wasn't Mark Bittman who said that, it was Michael Pollan, and it wasn't grandparents, but great-grandparents.
I thought that too, but googled, and Bittman did say it, or he and David Katz (the interview weirdly doesn't distinguish): https://www.spiritualityhealth.com/articles/2020/02/24/how-to-eat
Q: How can a consumer read online stuff and not fall for clickbait? What should they be looking for in solid nutritional advice?
Bittman and Katz: If it sounds too good to be true, it is. If it wasn’t food in the day of your grandparents and their grandparents, it probably isn’t food now, either. It really isn’t complicated—you just have to decide not to be gullible. Alas, desperation tends to breed gullibility.
I was actually surprised when you didn't beat me to the Pollan shoutout
Regardless of whether it was Bittman or Katz, the book for which they are being interviewed, "How to Eat: All Your Food and Diet Questions Answered", just came out a year ago.1 -
alisdairsmommy wrote: »
So re: weighing for recipes:
I mostly cook for my family. I get weighing each ingredient to get the nutritional value of the entire recipe. Where I'm getting lost is weighing the whole dish at the end to figure out servings. Am I putting a hot pan or baking dish on the scale (that I already know the weight of)? Moving everything to a different dish and weighing that before I set it on the table? A hot pad, then tare the scale, then put the pan on? Then after that, I weigh my own portion out on my plate?
I feel really dumb for asking, and the answer is probably obvious, but for some reason I am getting really hung up on this, so help would be welcome. Thank you!
If I'm really on the ball, I'll weigh my empty pot/baking dish so I know how much to subtract, but my scale plate is metal so like...it can handle having a hot thing on it for the 20 seconds it takes me to read the number and write it down. I'm also not whipping that s*** out of the oven and throwing it straight onto the scale, like, I let it cool a little bit first.
If I don't think to weigh my empty cooking vessel, then I'll usually weigh out portions into bowls and storage containers and add those together to get the weight of the finished dish all together. I start by filling a bowl with what "looks right," see how much that is, then maybe tweak it a little by adding/taking away food to get to a nice round number to make the math easier. Like if I fill a bowl with 683g of stew, I might add another 17g to get to a nice round 700, then aim to fill the next bowl with another 700g and see where I'm at. I want my servings to all be pretty much the same, so once I have everything transferred from the cooking vessel to the serving/storing containers, I'll do some math and shift around bits until I have 4-6 servings that are all within a gram of each other. I generally tend toward "one pot" type of meals, but on the occasion that I do have a distinct main and side(s) I'll repeat the process with all components of the meal (e.g. divide my meatloaf onto 2 plates and 2 Tupperwares, then the mashed potatoes, then the steamed broccoli). Hubs and I eat a serving each for dinner that night, then leftovers for dinner later, and they're all already portioned out and ready to just reheat and eat.
Edit to add: I'm only cooking for two, I see you're serving a family. I would weigh out servings onto each plate just so you know how much there was - you aren't aiming to serve your husband and kids a particular amount, just go by what looks right and note down the weight. Once you've plated everyone's first serving, weigh what's left - I pack up leftovers immediately as noted, if you're a "go back for seconds" family then you'll need to transfer the leftovers into another container that's already tared out on the scale, again just to get that number. Add together all the servings you portioned out, including yours, plus the leftovers to get the total amount you made, input the recipe where 1 serving = 1 gram (or 10g or 100g, if the math works), and log the amount you ate.1 -
I find having the weight of the pot beforehand helps then I weigh pot with contents in it and subtract pot weight
To make it easier I then round to nearest 100 g and call it however many 100 g serves ie if total contents weighed 2300 g I would call it 23 serves.
Then weigh my portion, and log it as 3 serves if it is 300g etc.
I only do this for variable size serves, eg home made soup.
Things like home made chilli con carne that I use same ingredients in same size each time I just call 2 serves if my husband and I are having half each. No need to weigh total.
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I've never heard of Mark Bittman - but I suppose I could be called a hard core processed foods lover.
I eat plenty of it anyway - along with plenty of fresh food too. It isn't a binary all or nothing scenario.
As for not eating anything our grandparents wouldn't recognise - that is just silly.
My grandmother was born in 1918 and died in 1998. She was a very good cook but she cooked all 'western diet staples'
The idea that I should stay away from Asian stir fries or falafel on account of that seems ludicrous to me.
Fortunately I haven't needed to follow any such arbitrary rules to lose or maintain weight.0 -
https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/profile/usercard/54821409
Hope that link above worked its my attemp at a copied name lol
Ive attached a screen record of how “quote” doesnt let me reply
even the emojis arnt legit 
And the spinning wheel...
really can you just :-/
I get so many replies or comms & cant reply direct... so antiquated
I must seem so old and not techy LOL
My nxt option delete app im logged in so shouldnt lose anything🙏🏼🙏🏼0 -
I never browse the forums through the MFP app, I just use the browser app on my phone. Maybe that will work?0
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paperpudding wrote: »I've never heard of Mark Bittman - but I suppose I could be called a hard core processed foods lover.
I eat plenty of it anyway - along with plenty of fresh food too. It isn't a binary all or nothing scenario.
As for not eating anything our grandparents wouldn't recognise - that is just silly.
My grandmother was born in 1918 and died in 1998. She was a very good cook but she cooked all 'western diet staples'
The idea that I should stay away from Asian stir fries or falafel on account of that seems ludicrous to me.
Fortunately I haven't needed to follow any such arbitrary rules to lose or maintain weight.
His cookbooks are pretty good (and do sometimes call for processed foods). He isn't binary "all or nothing" either, despite how some would wish to present him.1 -
Reading all of this makes me a little thankful I live alone. I just throw all the ingredients in and divide by however many times I eat it. I weigh the nonpackaged stuff/stuff I won't use the entire container of.
I do the same. Never thought of what I'd have to do if I lived with someone else0 -
Reading all of this makes me a little thankful I live alone. I just throw all the ingredients in and divide by however many times I eat it. I weigh the nonpackaged stuff/stuff I won't use the entire container of.
I do the same. Never thought of what I'd have to do if I lived with someone else
Sometimes the quantities can be daunting, for sure! Or when I pour my heart into something and get grumbles at the table. *shakes fist* At least they mostly remember not to say anything out loud!
I find cooking for one to be very challenging, although meal prep helps and that's what I did when I was single - I could cook once or twice a week and be set.0 -
@standy73 I been on my journey for just over 5.5 years now, I haven't had surgery but I am one pound away from losing 230lbs total...
I could have lost more yes but everyone has setbacks, so you can't beat yourself up when you gain or something doesn't go right, as long as you don't fall off the wagon completely and keep throwing yourself back on it you will succeed, you can't give up when times are hard
I got made fun of in high school for being in shape and being one of the few girls into track/sports/weight lifting. I got bullied and made fun of for it and after graduation, I developed a bad relationship with food and a bad relationship with the guy, I was dating at the time.
I gained 300lbs in just over 3 years, I didn't think anything of it till after I got married, tried to lose weight before failed, failed again when I tried again.
You can read all about that on my page or in the success forum here on MFP
But just know you aren't in this alone, it can be done you just have to think of it as a life change and its gonna be just that FOR LIFE, have fun with it, enjoy it, try new things and keep the scale handy
Do things you wouldn't normally do!
I did, I went to wrestling school and graduated 2 programs from it in a year! Never in my life would have I thought! But I did and made quite a few debuts, made some fans, and just having fun!
You can and will do this!
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Guys
i have att a photo of podcasts im listening too very inspirational talks about CICO (cal in cal out) & gen health advise ...Jillian & Dr Axa actually work together alot & Paul Saulter as well all very educational if not only pep U up on your travels. I listen in on the road as i am merchandiser.0
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