If you track what you eat, how do you account for things like stews, casseroles, etc?

[ILiveInFlipFlops]

I'm getting back to using SparkPeople to track what I eat, and this works great for breakfasts and lunches, which tend to be composed of separate, measurable components, but not so much for dinners. Our dinners often tend to be things like soups and stews, and when I make them I don't really use a recipe or measure as I go. At one point I tried to measure out my main recipes and assign them nutrition facts, and then to figure out my portion of each, but that got to be really overwhelming and I stopped. 

 

How do you handle meals like this if you're tracking?

 

Thanks!

[Ravin]

I use livestrong my plate, and I either input a recipe (it lets you do this) or I guesstimate based on similarity to other recipes. Usually I'll guesstimate relative quantities of main ingredients.

[Carrie12345]

I used to try to keep to allrecipe recipes, since those are already calculated and it was pretty easy to find things close to my usual recipes.

 

I track in spurts, so I mostly try to avoid unknown foods for the first week or two.  I find that it's a decent amount of time for my body to "remember" what feels "appropriate" and can trust myself to eat a few uncalculated things without getting off track.

[NoPlaceLikeHome]

LoseIt has a recipe creator where you input all ingredients and serving size and it calculates calories. Perhaps there is a function like that.

[MEmama]

I do what you did.

 

I don't usually use actual recipes so it was a bit of work at first, but once I've entered in measurements they are saved for good. I didn't find it particularly onerous, and for sure it was a good exercise and helped me be aware of places I could easily scale back.

[Rachel]

I use LoseIt and create a recipe. Occasionally I'll make soup significantly different, so when I save it, I save it wth the date in the title. That way I remember it's different and don't use the same one next time when I make it my usual way.

[Soror]

Generally I will do my best to input the amount of each major component- divided by how many servings it ended up making, like for example with stew if it turned out to be 6 servings (which is about accurate for our family- as the girls servings are more like half sizes and dh will take some for work and I'll have a bit leftover) then I will input 4oz beef, 1/2 sweet potato, 1/4 c. onion, 1/4 c celery for example.

[Guest]

I add the whole recipe into my Loseit recipe file. Then I add whatever portion I ate, which is usually a quarter or third. It's very accurate.

 

Once you've built up a library of your regular foods, meals, and recipes, the daily tracking is very quick.

[pehp]

When I used my fitness pal, I just entered a fairly good 'guesstimate' of the recipe into the recipe-maker, and then divided it roughly into how many bowls/servings we'd get out of it.  I mostly tried to focus on accounting for the most caloric things, like oil, beans, etc.  Not so much for things like onions, tomatoes, celery, stock. HTH!

[ILiveInFlipFlops]

Thanks everyone! I'm not sure what I'm going to do, because trying to enter the recipes and track the portions was so frustrating to me that it almost derailed me last time, but at least I know it's pretty much the only option. Hmmm...

[mamaraby]

It's actually why I stopped tracking. I very rarely make the same thing twice so I was entering recipes every day which in MFP was a pain. We might have repeat one or two meals a month so it's a lot of recipe entry. I did save a little hassle by entering a week's worth of recipes at the beginning of every week, but not much.

 

If you're the type that eats a lot of the same meals, then once you enter the recipe it should be saved there for you to reuse. You can always edit it down the road if you change things up.

[kiana]

I guesstimated based on similar ingredients. If I hadn't been losing I would probably have gotten more uptight about it. 

[ILiveInFlipFlops]

It's actually why I stopped tracking. I very rarely make the same thing twice so I was entering recipes every day which in MFP was a pain. We might have repeat one or two meals a month so it's a lot of recipe entry. I did save a little hassle by entering a week's worth of recipes at the beginning of every week, but not much.

 

If you're the type that eats a lot of the same meals, then once you enter the recipe it should be saved there for you to reuse. You can always edit it down the road if you change things up.

 

This was probably part of the problem. I tend to get into a rut very quickly and am always looking for new recipes. That, and I rarely make a recipe the same way twice, so I'm always adding more of something or less of something based on what we're in the mood for or what I have to use up or what I don't have enough of, etc.

 

My main concern is carbs, not calories (I can eat lots of calories, but if I'm avoiding carbs, I still lose), so I think I'm just going to have to track what I can and make dinners at low-carb as possible (no potatoes, no rice, no noodles in my portions, etc.). I have to try to keep it low-frustration, because when things start to get too complicated, I start to go off the rails!

[Slartibartfast]

http://www.myfitnesspal.com/recipe/calculator

[VaKim]

Thanks everyone! I'm not sure what I'm going to do, because trying to enter the recipes and track the portions was so frustrating to me that it almost derailed me last time, but at least I know it's pretty much the only option. Hmmm...

Yep, that has made me quit on MFP many times! I rarely use a recipe for soups and such, and don't actually measure anything. And even if you know what ingredients you put in, it isn't like I am going to measure out how many servings are in a huge pot of something! And when you just try to pick something already on there, you get wildly varying amounts of calories that make it useless to even bother (like from 150 calories to 500 calories per serving).

[redsquirrel]

I do my best. And I do measure lots of other food.  So, if it were for my chickpea curry I might put in something like...

 

 

chickpeas .5 cup

dried coconut 1 tbsp

sweet potato: 50gm

light coconut milk .3 cup

frozen spinach .5 cup

oil 1 tsp

curry paste 1tsp

 

That is a breakdown of what is in my bowl. It's really not that difficult and I don't have to worry about 'servings'. I know what I put into the pot, and I know what is in my bowl, so it isn't difficult to extrapolate.

[Katy]

I use cronometer and enter the entire recipe.  My bowls hold two cups of soup.  The website does the math for me when I say I ate two cups.

[ILiveInFlipFlops]

I do my best. And I do measure lots of other food.  So, if it were for my chickpea curry I might put in something like...

 

 

chickpeas .5 cup

dried coconut 1 tbsp

sweet potato: 50gm

light coconut milk .3 cup

frozen spinach .5 cup

oil 1 tsp

curry paste 1tsp

 

That is a breakdown of what is in my bowl. It's really not that difficult and I don't have to worry about 'servings'. I know what I put into the pot, and I know what is in my bowl, so it isn't difficult to extrapolate.

 

Thanks redsquirrel, this is pretty much exactly what I did tonight. I did go a little further to try to pin down just what 2 oz of dried orzo looks like when it's cooked ( a lot less than I thought, so it was a good thing I checked!), but it was way less overwhelming than entering the whole recipe. I did start to enter the recipe and hit a bunch of obstacles and finally just gave up again :lol: So I think the middle-of-the-road approach is going to have to be the one that works.  

[Sun]

I don't go to the trouble of entering recipes if it's a recipe I can easily guesstimate like redsquirrel did above. I will often measure just the more caloric items (cheese, oils, butter, coconut milk, beans, potatoes, rice, etc.). Then I'll dump the whole pot into a serving bowl that I've placed and tared on the food scale and weigh the completed dish. Then I can tare my plate/bowl on the scale and weigh out a portion of the total (1/10 or 1/4, for example) and enter the appropriate amount of each of the higher-calorie components (e.g. 1/4 of the total amount of cheese). Then I'll guesstimate how much I have of the other components (low-calorie vegetables like greens and onions).

 

I do the same thing for restaurant meals, but there I obviously have to guess on all the components. In those situations, I tend to add a couple of tablespoons of vegetable oil to my guesses of the other ingredient totals.

 

I also found that it was worth it in the long run to enter a lot of my recipes into sparkrecipes, so I could easily track them in the future. If I alter a recipe, I'll go in and edit it to reflect what I did that time, and I regularly edit the number of servings to reflect what portion of the dish I plan on eating.

 

It really gets much easier and faster once you have a bunch of your stored recipes and most-often eaten foods.