Calculating Portion Size - please help

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iamkarens
iamkarens Posts: 3
in Introduce Yourself
Hello to all! I'm new to MFP and have lost 5 lbs so far in 3 weeks and my husband has lost 9 - we are very happy about that!
I have a question regarding portion size. I managed to create a few of my own recipes and the calculator tells me how many calories it is per serving. This is totally cool, but - how do I figure out how big the portion is? 1 cup? 2 cups? For example, soup or stew...does anyone know? I've just been eye-balling it but I think I have the portion size way too low.

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  • gsager
    gsager Posts: 977 Member
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    I think that one cup of soup is a serving.
  • shirleygirl910
    shirleygirl910 Posts: 503 Member
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    I saw a commercal that stated Weight Watchers on line was free. WW helped me with portion size for all kinds of things. See if you can go on long enough to get thier portion helps.
  • kandrews24
    kandrews24 Posts: 610 Member
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    Since you are entering the recipe, you determine the portion size (1-2 cups). You do kinda half to guess how many servings a batch makes (unless you measure it out), but you can get pretty close looking at the volume of ingredients you put in.
  • MommyTKD
    MommyTKD Posts: 61 Member
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    For soup or stew, I would literally take a ladle and pour liquid into a measuring cup. Once you know how much your ladle holds, I would use that to determine how many servings your recipe makes. For me, I know it was worth the time to go ahead and fill my soup pot with "ladles" of water to figure out how many cups it would hold and I know my bowl serving is about a cup and half. Does that make sense?
  • DenverKos
    DenverKos Posts: 182
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    Since you are entering the recipe, you determine the portion size (1-2 cups). You do kinda half to guess how many servings a batch makes (unless you measure it out), but you can get pretty close looking at the volume of ingredients you put in.

    ^^^This. When I make something, I put all the ingredients into the recipe so it calculates the total. If my husband and I are splitting it and eating the whole of what I made, then it's 2 servings. If I'm baking something and I portion it out into 4 or 6 pastry bowls, then it's 4 or 6 servings each. I made a casserole, and I knew I was going to cut it into 4 equal pieces, so I called that 4 servings. I love that recipe option!

    Though, it will be difficult to determine servings if I make a soup or stew that we don't immediately half and eat - it's easy to cut up a casserole, but portioning out liquids and trying to estimate what you will have once you're done cooking is a little more difficult since you don't know how much of it will cook down and reduce. I think I would probably just determine that with all the ingredients I'm putting in that I plan on yielding 4 servings (or however many), and once it's done cooking I would measure the total volume of the finished product in a large measuring bowl and separate it into however many equal parts. I have a large Pampered Chef glass measuring bowl that would work great for pouring large quantities of liquid into to see how I can separate it.
  • iamkarens
    iamkarens Posts: 3
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    Thanks for the info. I will try this with a measuring cup. What I made was beef stew in a crockpot. At one point I thought it was too full and might overflow, but when it was done, the pot was barely at half. Everything shrunk down. :\
  • DenverKos
    DenverKos Posts: 182
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    Yeah, that's what I was talking about which makes measuring before a little difficult :) It's amazing how it shrinks!
  • iamkarens
    iamkarens Posts: 3
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