Help! Portion size for Homemade Recipes

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OutdoorAshes
OutdoorAshes Posts: 2 Member
in Food and Nutrition
When I was single, I used this app and lost 50 lbs with this app. I noticed that my biggest problem was how do I know what’s a portion size for my family meals I make? How big is it? Then making the nutritional facts for it. That’s my biggest problem getting into this app again. I’ve downloaded it probably ten times since then and never use it because I always come to a stop when dinner time comes. Please help!

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  • Corina1143
    Corina1143 Posts: 2,933 Member
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    Do you use the recipe builder?
  • yirara
    yirara Posts: 9,403 Member
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    When I was losing weight I guessed a bit. But we were only with the two of us. I know weight/calories of all served, how many serving spoons I too and how many he did. That was easy. Mind you, nothing else was cooking as a family meal or cooked at all, thus there was more uncertainty for one meal.
  • Lietchi
    Lietchi Posts: 6,127 Member
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    I use the Meals functionality instead of the recipe builder:
    - I weigh and add all my raw ingredients to a meal to know the total number of calories
    - I weigh the cooked meal (subtract the weight of the pot/pan) which I enter in the Meal name (so for example "spaghetti sauce 2350")
    - I weigh my own portion
    - I log the appropriate portion of the total meal: for example, 250gr of spaghetti sauce is 250/2350 = 0.106 of the meal should be logged in my diary.
  • kshama2001
    kshama2001 Posts: 27,906 Member
    edited July 2023
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    OutdoorAshes wrote: »
    When I was single, I used this app and lost 50 lbs with this app. I noticed that my biggest problem was how do I know what’s a portion size for my family meals I make? How big is it? Then making the nutritional facts for it. That’s my biggest problem getting into this app again. I’ve downloaded it probably ten times since then and never use it because I always come to a stop when dinner time comes. Please help!

    I first get the nutritional facts using the recipe builder. https://www.myfitnesspal.com/recipe_parser

    Because I've been doing this for a long time, I know a lower fat meal will fill me up at 400-500 calories, and that I will want a more caloric portion from a higher fat meal.

    I use grams instead of traditional serving sizes:
    TanyaHooton wrote: »
    ...When I make food, which is pretty often, I do this whole process of weighing everything, and write all the numbers in a notebook so I can input them into MFP. I weigh the pan/pot/container while it's empty. Then I weigh all ingredients. Everything: onions, cheese, butter, beef/chicken broth, mushrooms, everything. The only things I don't weigh are 1) meat bought at the meat counter in the store, because it's already weighed by them before it's packaged, 2) some liquids, because instead of weighing I can get accurate enough using cups or tablespoons, 3) a single leaf of lettuce because it's like 3 calories and possibly some celery because it's hard to even eat more than 20 or 25 calories of it. I write them all down. When it's done cooking, I weigh the pan/pot/container full of food. I take this larger number and subtract the weight of the empty pan/pot/container. For example, if my pot weighs 811 grams empty and 2311 full of food, the difference is 1500. That means this recipe has 1500 servings, probably at 1 or 2 calories each.

    Then I scoop it out of the pan onto my plate, which is also on the scale at 0. If the amount I scoop out is 300 grams and MFP has calculated that 1 serving is 2 calories each, that means what I put on my plate is 600 calories.

    It's kind of a pain in the *kitten*. I have to be disciplined. I have to remember to write down everything as I go. I have to type it all in MFP, if it's a new recipe. If it's an existing recipe, I have to edit it for this particular time, because maybe I changed the recipe to add bell pepper or had to use half-and-half instead of milk. But I want my calories to be exact as possible because I don't have much cushion and I want to squeeze every last calorie I can get instead of guessing and being wildly over when I'm really not.

    After the recipe is complete, I'll log @ 250 grams and see the calories. If this is a one pot meal, and 250 grams = @ 500 calories, that's what I'll use as a serving.
  • OutdoorAshes
    OutdoorAshes Posts: 2 Member
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    Wow everybody THANK YOU. I’m tearing up. This is what I needed so badly. 10 years later. Omg. I’m taking screen shots because it took a minute to find all this. But I really needed somebody spelling it all out. Thank you so much
  • no1racefan2
    no1racefan2 Posts: 84 Member
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    I use the recipe builder, as mentioned above--however I just put in servings instead of by total grams. For example, I'll log all the ingredients I used and then divvy up the pan into 4 servings or 6 servings or whatever is an appropriate amount I'll be eating. This is maybe slightly less accurate but it's working for me and it's really easy to just go edit the recipe ingredients whenever I make it the next time.
  • cwolfman13
    cwolfman13 Posts: 41,874 Member
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    For things like stews and soups and casserole type dishes I just kind of winged it and gave it my best guess using the recipe builder, which was usually good enough. In general though, I don't really do a lot of recipe type of things where everything is in one big dish. Our meals tend to be some kind of protein, some kind of veg, and some kind of starch or grain and that's pretty easy to add things up on an individual basis.

    Like last night was pan fried tilapia filets, peas, and quinoa...I don't log anymore, but that's pretty easy to just weigh out individual servings and log it.
  • frhaberl
    frhaberl Posts: 145 Member
    edited November 2023
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    I use the same approach as already mentioned - enter all ingredients into the recipe builder, enter the number of servings I expect to get out to the recipe and then figure out the weight of one serving (either by adding up all the individual ingredient weights or by weighing the finished recipe) and add the weight of one serving to the recipe name. It took me a while to get my regularly rotated meals in, but now I spend very little time entering homemade meal nutrition because I either make it exactly the same every time or only vary a few of the ingredients (like the exact weight of the meat I use) and am just editing the recipe slightly.

    One thing I have noticed is that some of the ingredients can get a little wonky if you are importing recipes. I had a meal that seemed to have an unexpectedly high calorie count per serving but shrugged and served myself a smaller portion to stay within my calorie goal. I think I made that recipe two more times without editing, then when I made it the third time and was adjusting the amount of meat I was adding, I noticed that 1 tsp black pepper had been brought in as 1 LB black pepper (over 1000 calories). I had a good laugh, adjusted that ingredient, and enjoyed a larger portion. :) Moral of the story is to take the time to read through ALL the ingredients if you import the recipe.
  • loulee997
    loulee997 Posts: 273 Member
    edited November 2023
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    OutdoorAshes wrote: »
    When I was single, I used this app and lost 50 lbs with this app. I noticed that my biggest problem was how do I know what’s a portion size for my family meals I make? How big is it? Then making the nutritional facts for it. That’s my biggest problem getting into this app again. I’ve downloaded it probably ten times since then and never use it because I always come to a stop when dinner time comes. Please help!

    I find this to be the easiest.

    I go to https://www.verywellfit.com/recipe-nutrition-analyzer-4157076 for the recipe calculator.

    I put in the entire family meal recipe. It gives me the total calories/fat/carbs/salt/sugar. The fitness pal one is confusing to me. I usually use the VeryFit one to calculate and then I just copy it into Fitness Pal.

    If I make homemade pizza and the total calories are 1064, I then have to decide what I consider a serving. I could make it 4 pieces, six pieces, eight. I try to consider what is a portion. If a portion is 1 cup, I slice, or 8 ounces, I then divide by that.

    So I would divide that tiny pizza by six for six slices.

    If it was a meatloaf, I might figure out how many pieces I would cut that pan into. The meatloaf might be six big pieces or 8 small pieces. As long as I cut all the pieces basically the same size, then each piece is a serving.

    For something like soup, I figured out with water how many cups I'd put in my soup bowl. If my bowl holds 2 cups and I fill it up--then my serving is 2 cups. I then figure out how many total cups of soup I have and divide by 2. If I made 16 ups of soup, this means that pot holds 8 servings of 2 cup size.

    As long as you have the total calories, you just need to figure out how much of that total will you eat if you are only eating 1 serving. Total calories--divided by the total number of portions.     I like the VeryFit calculator because it makes it easier to get serving calories/details.

    Just don't believe candy bar manufacturers...some candy bars say they are 2 servings--really?

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