logging mish-mashes of food

[nobe]

How do you log, say, soup? Or stew? Do you just estimate how much of each ingredient is in the bowl? I'm making some soup right now, and I'm actually using a recipe (I usually just make it up) but there's no nutritional information on the recipe and it says it makes 4 servings but it's a huge pot and I think it will divide into a lot more than 4. I didn't use exact measurements for anything anyway. Seems like such a tedious process, but I guess estimating ingredients is the only way?

[wildbeanerz]

One thing I have done is (if I know the nutrition of each ingredient) is to go a day or so ahead in my food log and create a custom food for each ingredient, put them all together in the list and then write down (or print out) the complete nutrition that you get from them all and create one more custom food with those values and label it with the name of you finished product. Don't forget to divide out the servings when doing your math and to add into the custom food name what size the serving is for easier reference later.

I do believe others know of a recipe builder site or have fitday pc which I think has that option as well. Someone correct me if I am wrong.

[jonjaxmom]

That's what do, too wildbeanerz... I will log the ingredients in on another day, then get my totals and create a custom food so I will always have it for next time.

[nobe]

That's what I did with a bean salad I made this afternoon, but it took foreverrrrrrrr. A recipe thing would be great but I don't have the PC version. Sometimes if it's something pretty standard I'll just log it as the most similar thing they have to save me the hassle. It's really making me rethink my usual cooking style of throwing a bunch of things in a pot, though, haha.

[cjohnson728]

I use a recipe builder site, then enter the info as a custom food. If you Google "recipe builder," the first one that comes up is the one I use. Doing it in the FitDay log is good as well, but I like to use the site because I think there are more ingredients in their food list.

[nobe]

Cool, thanks, I'll look for it. I should have checked in here before making a custom food out of each ingredient

[Rubystars]

Originally Posted by nobe

How do you log, say, soup? Or stew? Do you just estimate how much of each ingredient is in the bowl? I'm making some soup right now, and I'm actually using a recipe (I usually just make it up) but there's no nutritional information on the recipe and it says it makes 4 servings but it's a huge pot and I think it will divide into a lot more than 4. I didn't use exact measurements for anything anyway. Seems like such a tedious process, but I guess estimating ingredients is the only way?

With a food scale there's no reason you should be 'guessing' how much of any one ingredient is in your pot of soup.

Weigh and measure, weigh and measure.

If you don't want to do that, then you're going to have a lot harder time losing weight. Nobody said this was going to be easy.

[clarkslp]

Originally Posted by Rubystars

With a food scale there's no reason you should be 'guessing' how much of any one ingredient is in your pot of soup.

Weigh and measure, weigh and measure.

If you don't want to do that, then you're going to have a lot harder time losing weight. Nobody said this was going to be easy.

+1

I've come up with a way to build recipes in an excel file so that when I have some of the soup/chili/dip/stirfry I enter in the weight of what I am having that day it it tells me how much of each ingredient I need to enter into my log. It is a bit of work, so it encourages me to make big batches! I often do it this way instead of making a custom food because I will change up recipes based on my ingredients at hand.