I use Lose It! Which is a great calorie app, but I’m having trouble tracking dinners, which are almost always homemade in my house. For example on Sunday we roasted a chicken. I had a drumstick, rice, and gravy. Then the next day, we took the leftover half of the chicken, shredded it, added it to some pasta, with peas, cream sauce, and broccoli.
I have no idea how to add either of these meals. I have been putting them in as each individual component, but is there a better way?
When calculating mixes the easiest way to do it is get the cooked values per oz of the meat and carbs. Gravies are toughest because they vary so much in water, carb,fat content. Unless the gravy is very fatty or oily I estimate at 60 cals per oz. I usually ignore the veggies in admixtures or assign some nominal calories like 20-40 because their calorie counts are (as a percentage of the total ) so low,.
Ie
Chicken 35 cals per oz
Rice cooked - 32-37 cals per oz
Gravy cooked 60 cals per oz.
Cals per oz cooked meats
Fish 25
Lean Pork 30
Chicken 35
Steak 40
If you want to get really specific re cuts here is a guide
http://www.freedieting.com/tools/calories_in_meat.htm
The calorie density by weight of prepared rices, grains, breads and other starches is remarkably close in many cases. There are things like sweet potatoes that can fool you however by being lower calorie than they look for the volume, or avocadoes which are much higher calorie than they look.
Most of the time just assigning 45 calories per oz to admixtures will get you to within 10% - 15% of the real total in most cases which is about as good as you ever do with true calorie estimates. If you are in prep mode and have the time you can weigh the items and eyeball the volume if you want to get an on the fly grasp of volume relative to calories in calculating portion calories. Once you have done it a time of two you can estimate prepared meal calories fairly accurately (for dieting purposes) in a few seconds just by looking at the components.
It should be noted this assumes moderate use of gravies or sauces, if you are big oily gravy or butter hound the aforesaid estimates will need to be adjusted accordingly.
Thanks…most of the time I don’t cook (I am VERY lucky). I will use your estimates. Thank you so much!
I use SparkPeople’s recipe calculator at Sparkrecipes.com. It is a pain in the ass, and one of two or three major reasons I stopped counting calories.
I have an ancient cookbook program, and it allows you to enter your own personal recipes and will give you nutritional breakdowns. Now You’re Cooking is ancient, I have had it for around 10 years, it is not the prettiest program, but I like it.
I also use Lose It! and frequently make homecooked meals. I tally the total calories of the entire dish’s ingredients, and then divide it by number of servings. I use either the app’s built-in calorie amounts, or look at the labels.
For instance, I made chicken marsala the other night. Four chicken boobs (600 calories) plus half a box of pasta (3 servings x 180) plus mushrooms cooked in 1 tbsp butter (100) plus 1c marsala wine (170) equals 1410 calories. I split it between lunch and dinner, so 705 calories each meal. In Lose It!, it was entered as “Homemade Chicken Marsala”, with 1 serving = 705 calories.
You have to make and serve the dish the same way each time for this to work, but that’s how I do it anyway.