Counting calories from home-made meals - Weight Loss Support

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Counting calories from home-made meals

Murid profile image
8 Replies

I'm doing the 12-week NHS weight loss plan. We have to count our daily calorie intake as part of it. My question is: how do people count calories of things made themselves with dozens of ingredients in it?

Would you weigh each ingredient and calculate the calories then tally them up?

I was thinking you could just Google the dish - but it won't be that accurate since everyone doesn't use exactly the same ingredient (or the same proportion of quantities).

Am I taking the calorie counting too far?

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Murid profile image
Murid
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8 Replies
GoogleMe profile image
GoogleMe

That's what I do too.

OlsBean profile image
OlsBean

If you use the MyFitnessPal App then you can save your own recipes and once you've added them in once they will always be there when you need to add them to your Food Diary.

fibronfedup profile image
fibronfedup

I use myfitnesspal app and put the ingredients into that. You can save meals so you only have to do it once. But being as accurate as possible will give you best chances

Judywood profile image
Judywood

I've been using Hairy Dieters recipes - and Rosemary Conley - all calorie counted and lovely!

nhs2015 profile image
nhs2015

I weigh each ingredient separately then get on the net to get the number of calories for the weight. I total it, then divide it per serve. I keep a record of everything as separate items and as a full dish. Example: hamburgers : 500 lean beef / 2 tbspoon mustard / 1 teaspoon chili chutney (homemade) / 2 frozen garlic cubes / 1 medium onion / 1 egg. Total 805.6 calories. Using egg ring I can make up to 12 hamburgers. So 805.6 : 12 = 67.1 calories each. I have two : 134.2 calories. .. And so on

I also find that by keeping busy with counting, cooking, reading about it and following advice, I keep to the program. If I don't worry about it so much and just fill in the NHS chart, I get slack and think, I will just get this or that, and before you know it I am above the 1400. So live and breeze the program. Give it you 100%

nhs2015 profile image
nhs2015 in reply to nhs2015

And I forgot : tomato paste !!!

julie762 profile image
julie762

I have just got the hairy dieters cook books, not tried any yet, only got them on mother's day. Have had a look through them and they look really yummy meals and desserts cannot wait to try them. All the recipes are calorie counted.

DebsWilder profile image
DebsWilder

I use Cook&Count app - you can cook any dish/ recipe you like. You enter in the ingredients and it does all the working out for you, and then you can save it in your digital recipe book to go back and use again. It's designed for home cooking and unlike other apps like my fitness pal it doesn't use crowdsourced data which can often be wrong.

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