Calorie Counting help!!!

Weigh things. You'll soon know what your portion size is.

Also, if you don't lose weight, you are underestimating (or under-recording) what you eat.

If in doubt, record higher, exercise longer.

Hi!

For having a few spoonfuls, I would guestimate how much of the serving that would be. (like one quarter of the recipe for example). So then I would go into the food, and change it from 1 to 0.25. (sorry, just in case you were asking that as well.) For half more, make it 1.5 serving. It will do all the calculations for you.

I'm not exactly sure all the time how to log all foods, but I try to google as much as I can if I can't find it on the database.

Sorry if there is a lot of stuff in here that you already know. I'm not trying to talk down to you, just don't know how experienced you are on this site at this point, so I wanted to cover the bases.

Hope at least something from this helps!!

Jennie

These are the things that makes it difficult to pinpoint exactly how many calories you consume. I have always given it my best estimate in these cases and left myself a few calories to spare (when I can) to make up for miscalculations. I often say, even if you eat a 6 oz steak in a major restaurant that has a number on a website for the caloric value... that number will not be exact to the "penny"... Maybe your steak happens to be 6.25 oz or it may be 5.75 oz... Both would be within the margin of error... Variations in how one chef/cook prepares a dish varies from another restaurant... Believe me... They don't sit there with a food scale to make sure they are dead on. Like I say, I leave 100-200 calories to spare (with exercise included... which in itself has variation)

By all means, logging has its value... I am just saying that it will not be exact no matter how you do it.. Just get as close as you can and make adjustments if you don't get the results you want... Best wishes on your journey

did you know that you can change the serving size of any food item? the default is "1 serving" but in the case of 3 bites of rice, you could enter "0.2 servings" or something like that. if you haven't tried this before, you can change the serving size by clicking on the name of the food in your diary (or when you first enter it, you are given the option also).

as far as american rice versus cultural rice goes, perhaps you should start using the recipe function and create your own recipes (even if its not "your" recipe)? if you actually add in every ingredient in the dish, you should get a pretty accurate calorie count. you might enter the rice, the oil or butter, whatever else goes in it, etc. Then just select the appropriate serving.

when in doubt, OVER estimate your calories. worst case here is you are pleasantly surprised with your results

Well, you have a few options. First, the MFP food database is pretty extensive; when you log a food, look for a product that has the most user confirmations so you know that others have verified the nutritional contents of your food. So, if you are eating long grain, enriched white rice, find the one with the most confirmations and use that to log your food. If you have the original packaging for the rice (or whatever product), that is the best because you can either find one in the database that matches what you ate, or else you can add your own product to the database using the nutritional table on the back or side of the package.

It gets trickier trying to estimate calories if you just grab a few spoonfuls of something. In that case you do have to roughly guess. So, if you know that 1/2 a cup of rice is one serving, then try to guess--were those three spoonfuls about 1/4 cup? If so, then log .5 serving of rice. Or if you think it was a little shy of 1/4 cup, then enter .4 servings, or .25 servings, or whatever. I always try to guess high just to be sure I don't inadvertently go over on my calories by nibbling...

A better option is to have some "quick grab" foods at the ready so that you don't feel like you need to quickly eat a few spoonfuls of something as you're running out the door. Have some pre-bagged veggies or fruit ready in the fridge that you can grab, or a box of Fiber One bars, etc. That way you can more easily enter the calories because you'll know exactly what you ate without so much guess-work.

If you don't want to spend a lot of time trying to figure out portions, etc., you can always just estimate the calories and then "quick add" the calories. Just be careful not to do that very often so you keep an accurate measurement of your intake. :-)