Jynx

Hey guys I am really trying to kick up my weightloss for the winter and have started counting calories. Things have been going great but I am running into a pretty big problem. I have no clue where to start when it comes to homemade food. It is not too bad when the food is a couple of ingredients but it becomes a problem if i eat an item that contains 10+ items (like a soup or stew or something similar).

For example my mother made homemade italian wedding soup. unfortunately there are so many ingredients in it I do not even know how to estimate the calorie content. I know exactly what was used to make it so should I try to add everything up? It wont be easy as there was like 20 servings made at once.

I am trying to figure this out because a lot of food I eat is homemade. I am a big fan of soups and eat a lot of split pea soup, chicken soup, lentil soup, etc... I do not want to have to resort to not being able to eat homemade food like soups as canned soup is not going to be as healthy and has a lot more salt.

Any tips would be greatly appreciated. Thanks

CliftonGK1

It's a pain in the behind, but I've used Keyoe Diet & Exercise software and created custom entries for homemade items and frequently consumed items. I'm sure other tracker software lets you do similar things, though.

gearhead82

Its not too tough. I just made some hot cereal in a crock pot that uses 8 different ingredients. I just keep track of everything I put in the cereal. For example, my entire pot of cereal contained 3245 calories. I also weighed the cereal after everything was cooked and got ~115 ounces. So, it's about 28 calories per ounce. A 12 ounce serving is 336 cal. I've done the same thing with soup.

Askel

Just take a best guess and go with it. If these are foods you eat regularly- any errors will become readily apparent on the scale if you use the 3500 calories/pound rule.

Calorie counting is VERY, VERY inexact. Precision is important here, not accuracy.

cooleric1234

Exactly why I never bothered counting calories. Even a bigger problem is that a slight variation in recipes can make a big difference in total calories depending on the ingredient. I did something like the NO S diet (before I'd ever heard of it, another poster on the forum pointed it out) and it worked for me.

ECB1

I don't count the calories, I just watch the amount I take. I try to only use a regular bowl and only fill it once. This seems to keep me in the right direction. My wife is a very good cook and if I let myself go I would put back all the weight I lost. ECB1

paperback rider

If you go to bed slightly hungry, your count for the day has been about right.

dahvaio

As everyone else suggested, don't worry so much about the exact calories. Try to get a ball-park figure and then use that number. If I were you, I would overestimate alittle but that is just me. Personally, I do not count calories; however, I do make mental notes of what I consume. So far this has worked for me. I still eat out about 12 meals a week (Lunches and Dinners) and have still been losing weight.

Another thing you could do on days where you are not sure about the calories, is to RIDE the BICYCLE an extra 10-20 minutes or so...

</intolerance>

I use the fact that it is a pain to my advantage. I eat alone because my wife is at work. I enter an ingredient after a bite or two. It slows my eating down and makes me feel fuller at the end of the meal.

John Bailey

I use fitday.com to estimate my calories. I know that what the site says is probably an underestimate, but, if I make it too hard, I'm not going to keep it up. I've done a number of custom foods. They are a pain at first, but once you've done them you can keep going back.

One thing you'll notice, the more home cooked meals, the easier to lose weight. Eating out always causes me to gain weight.

John