how do you count calories accurately for home cooked meals that are supposed to serve several members of your family? If I weight all the raw ingredients, add up the calories and then weight the whole cooked meal and then weight my portion and calculate my calories and repeat it every day then I will go crazy . I cook with fresh (and freaking many!) ingredients and I find weighting everything super difficult. It takes all the fun out of cooking. And if I just estimate kcal in a meal, then I always rather overestimate in order to secure weight loss but too large calorie deficit will sooner or later make me binge, im sure.
Any suggestions or help? How do you manage calorie counting when cooking for several people?
All the best,
Britten
Written by
BrittenK
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I did try calorie counting for a while but it was a bit of a faff and that was just for me. I think with a family there would be an awful lot of guess-timating. Have a look at this healthy, straightforward guide that would work for all the family and doesn't call for any counting phcuk.org/wp-content/upload...
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That's why so many give up on calorie counting and realise it isn't a sustainable way to maintain a healthy weight. Once you realise that not all calories are the same as well, because some drive hunger and others fill you up, then you might try different diets which are much easier to follow, mediterranean, low GI, LCHF (low carb high fat), primal, keto, etc. Many are low or slow carb and reduced sugars (at least everyone agrees on low sugar these days).
Many people on here follow LCHF and you can find many links justifying this, apart from the NHS ones.
I agree on the fact, that not alla calories are the same and in fact I have tried different diets long before I came to my senses and started eating balanced meals without excluding any food groups or restrict the timeframe. I dont have much to lose and I have fairly healthy and clean diet, thats why I would like to try NHS recommendations (inc kcal counting) this time. I think they make good recommendations that one should continue even after weight loss, such as eat 5 servings of fruit and veggies, move your body etc. This seems reasonable and more importantly - sustainable.
In the end we can not ignore the fact, that in order to lose weight you do need to be in calorie deficit. . some foods or diets may make it easier (less hunger during the process due to healthy fats or long periods of fasting that really make your hunger go away for the most part..), but I dont find any of them sustainable for the rest of my life.
It's good that things are going well for you I hope you'll enjoy being a member of the forum and will come across some useful discussions. It really isn't about calorie deficit. It's about how our bodies break down and use what we put into them, and key to that is the role of hormones - insulin, leptin and ghrelin.
Im a big fan of Dr Jason Fung! Really helped me understand the whole hormone role in weight loss and gain & I agree with him on many aspects. Altho even him says, that if you consume way over the calorie limit you will gain weight But thanks for sharing your view!
I feel like you have posted my thoughts 😁. I’d love to calorie count but it makes me crazy and I can’t imagine doing it for life. It’s so unnatural and I’ve done it so much in my life that I’m tired of it. I’m doing the No S diet right now which is similar to how my Gran maintained her weight years ago. I’ve yet to see if it works long term. Like you I need something sustainable and cutting out whole good groups also isn’t something I envisage doing long term x
I'm with you: to me, counting maintains the weird relationship so many of us have developed with food. I don't know the plan you mention. I find this phcuk.org/wp-content/upload... the most straightforward plan around, and suitable for any member of the family.
You'll find all the information you need about the forum in our Pinned Posts healthunlocked.com/nhsweigh... including a Welcome message. A good place to start is by joining a weekly weigh in on the day of your choice, and using the Daily Diary, where members share their meal plans.
This gives you a tour of the forum healthunlocked.com/?tour=true and, along with Pinned Posts, will show you how things work. I hope you'll become an active member and we will see you joining in around the forum 😊
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I use the recipe function on My Fitness pal, in the diary entry tab you can manually add all ingredients in a recipe , say how many it's for and it works it out. It's brilliant! It may take a while to add ingredients but it saves it so you only need to do it once!
I use the lose it app to track my calories and it has a recipe function where you input everything in a particular recipe and then you divide by how many servings it covers and then it divides it for you for each serving
I found the Hairy Dieters books really helpful for the year I was losing weight. The meals are all family favourites and all calorie counted for you. There’s also an app called Kitchen Stories which is really useful as it adjusts the amounts depending on how many you are cooking for, and also tells you the calories per person. They were a life saver for me and still are. 😊
Thank you for your book recommendation! Will add it to my "to read" list
When I started on this, I did as you said: weighed all ingredients and weighed my portion. Then I did hard sums with a calculator and worked out the calorie level per 100g and wrote it down. Since my range of recipes is not that wide, I have a reference bank. And when I do something new I match it with something similar that I've already recorded.
Yesterday I did a tough hike and a climb for me of about 500m. That's tough for me as I hadn't done anything like that in decades. I cane home starving. Portion size went out the window!
It doesn’t need to be perfect! Think of it as a learning curve to get more realistic about portions.
I installed the MyFitnessPal app, bought accurate kitchen scales. I either I record weight of ingredients in meals as I make them, scanning product barcodes into phone as I go, or putting empty packages aside ready for scanning later (rather than taking out of bin) or write it down on paper. Then during mealtime I take a quarter portion of the full amount etc, and jot that down.
Then later when it’s quiet I take time to create My Food or My Recipe in MyFitnessPal. And then add portions of that meal to my day. It does take time, but means less time to snack 😊 It also gets easier over time as the app remembers meals so you can choose eg same as yesterday etc.
At the beginning I have had days where I just record breakfast then forgot etc, or I ate in canteen and didn’t know how much; so I have shortcuts like a canteen meal is basically 700 calories. You can also plan ahead and add tomorrow’s meals, to save time on a busy day.
You can also weigh the dish containing the meal, take out your portion, weigh again and calculate the portion that way. That is too detailed for me. My scales aren’t strong enough for that, so I just do by eye eg a quarter or a fifth etc.
One key tip I learned is to find the button to change the Unit of foods listed in MyFitnessPal from oz or cups to grammes.
If you just decide to try for a week it will open your eyes how many calories are in junk food, and you will hopefully decide to not have that second biscuit as it’s not worth the calories/sugar. I was weighing out sweets and biscuits.... getting quite shocked! Especially mince pies (yum).
Are all members of your family trying to lose weight? Do they all need calorie counted meals? If not you only need calorie count your own portion.
I live alone, but I frequently cook batches of food, weigh my raw ingredients as I am preparing them. I have my diary on the work top beside my chopping board and write it all down as I go along. Including the calorie counting, so my calculator, Carb/Cal counter book, pen and diary are all within reach.
If I am not adding any fat to the vegetables, ie boiled or steamed, I just divide the cooked vegetables into however many portions I am going to end up with, if I was adding butter to mashed potatoes I weigh the butter and divide the calories accordingly..
For meat/fish/ poultry again I go from raw weight, unless I am adding fat or a sauce of some sort - in which case I would measure say flour for thickening gravy and divide into portions, but mostly I don't bother, I use so little to thicken it.
If you want gravy or other sauce from granules, the calories would be on the container. Or if you use ready made sauces, to make a curry, bolognese sauce etc they are all calorie counted and divide the end result. I rarely use them though, most things of that sort begin with a tin of chopped tomatoes, garlic and onion anyway!
For things that I make regularly, I keep my own recipe check list, ie for a salad, I have 2 inches of cucumber and 6 cherry tomatoes etc etc. So no weighing.
I also tend to stick to 50g portions of chicken, fish etc. Fresh meat/fish/chicken/bacon etc etc all get frozen into single portions, it is surprising how many 50g portions there are in a regular sized piece of rump steak, or a chicken breast for instance - very thrifty, though that isn't the reason I do it. So they come out of the freezer in 'my sized portions'. Zip lock bags are a godsend as are good fine liner permanent marker pens.
I am so used to doing it I don't think of ever not doing it this way.
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. I cook with fresh (and freaking many!) ingredients and I find weighting everything super difficult. It takes all the fun out of cooking. And if I just estimate kcal in a meal, then I always rather overestimate in order to secure weight loss but too large calorie deficit will sooner or later make me binge, im sure. 
Does anyone else have trouble counting calories when cooking from scratch?
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