how to calculate calories, fiber, sodium etc. with homemade meals

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jessiemc12
jessiemc12 Posts: 6 Member
in Food and Nutrition
A beginner.. working on a weeks worth of meals so i know what I'm eating for next week. For example making White chicken chili with beans no cream sauce and If I pick something from database it don't show the fiber and seems like sodium is high when I will be using very little. It's very confusing because I'm finding this to be very time consuming. I don't mind but really don't have all day to create a weeks plan that is balanced with everything needed in meals and lower calorie. For example, I have oatmeal for breakfast and the carb are high but not enough fiber or something else for lunch low carbs but high in something else. No balance. Please help or if you have example of balanced meals to make at home I would be grateful. Jus till I can get the hang of this site. it's kinda frustrating but not giving up

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  • TeaBea
    TeaBea Posts: 14,517 Member
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    Create your own recipes here. Under the Food heading, look for the Recipes menu. I start with the importer (look for something similar) and tweak it from there.

    Favorite recipes websites - Skinny Taste and Cooking Light.
  • rosebarnalice
    rosebarnalice Posts: 3,488 Member
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    Definitely a recipe builder fan!

    A question that often comes up with newbies is about serving size for something like chili that's made on a pot and scooped into a bowl for serving.

    Rather than guessing 6 or 8 for a whole batch, I weigh the entire batch when cooked and use that as a "serving".

    An entire pot of chili might weigh 1761 grams. So when I enter the recipe, I will enter 1761 servings. Then when I scoop a portion of, say, 224 grams, I will log 224 "servings".
  • rosebarnalice
    rosebarnalice Posts: 3,488 Member
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    As for balance, once you get familiar with your regular cycle of "go to" meals and recipes, it'll be easier.

    For example, I tend to eat very similar meals every day at breakfast and lunch (oatmeal & veg, big salad w a protein). From experience, I know that usually gets me to +-40 g fiber and +-30 g protein and still well under my fat and sodium limits. So I typically exceed my fiber goal with those two meals, and only have to "plan" for more protein from dinner and snacks.
  • jessiemc12
    jessiemc12 Posts: 6 Member
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    Rosebarnalice .. I understand what you did there but how do you know what a serving is, you divide by 8? and how do you know the amount of fiber, carbs etc. in each serving. Thank you
  • penguinmama87
    penguinmama87 Posts: 1,158 Member
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    https://www.myfitnesspal.com/recipe_parser

    This is where the recipe builder is on a web browser, if you're having trouble finding it.

    You can decide for yourself how much a serving is for a recipe you make. Since I'm normally cooking meals to serve my entire family, it doesn't work well for me to divide a recipe into equal parts, so I use the total weight of the recipe as my number of servings. When I started logging this way, a serving was whatever I would normally serve myself, and I just logged that weight as my number of servings. For example, I normally eat 130-150g of baked oatmeal for breakfast each morning. So I cut my piece (or take a precut piece out of the container) and put it in my bowl on the scale, and that weight is the number of servings I log.

    If you don't have a food scale they are very inexpensive online or at any department store with a kitchen section.

    I felt very confused myself when starting out so don't feel bad if it's kind of overwhelming at first. I am pretty handy in the kitchen but learning how to use a scale to more precisely weigh my recipes was definitely an adjustment. It's now second nature but I definitely made mistakes at first. But I got to learn from them!

    If you make a recipe that in the past you would have divided into eight servings, yes, a good way to figure out how much to log would be to just divide your total weight by 8, if you want to prelog your food. I normally do that and then just adjust up or down as needed to get the precise weight I end up taking that day. It can feel awkward at first, but if you stick with it you really will get the hang of it. :)
  • rosebarnalice
    rosebarnalice Posts: 3,488 Member
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    jessiemc12 wrote: »
    Rosebarnalice .. I understand what you did there but how do you know what a serving is, you divide by 8? and how do you know the amount of fiber, carbs etc. in each serving. Thank you

    So in the chili example where the total weight is 1761, if I want to estimate the nutritional info of what I'll actually eat as a serving, I'll go ahead and log, say, 200 grams on the next day's lunch. Because that day has no other food logged, the nutritional info for the day will be the nutritional info for 200 grams of my recipe. Then I'll delete that log once I've reviewed the numbers.
  • TeaBea
    TeaBea Posts: 14,517 Member
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    Jessie - if you're not familiar with foods scales, they have what is called a tare button. That button sets the scale to zero. This is helpful in two ways.

    Place your dinner plate (or whatever) on the scale and hit tare. Then spoon your "serving" onto it. This is the weight of the food. This is great for building salads with multiple ingredients (tare - weigh - tare- weigh).

    A good many people assume salads are low calorie. Weighing your ingredients is a nice reality check; cheese, nuts and dressing will add up really fast. It helps you re-think what a serving size is for you.

    Another alternative is to place your jar of peanut butter (pot of chili, or whatever) on the the scale. Hit tare, then scoop a "serving" out. The negative number is your weight.

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